Question 1: The narrator in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” transforms from an innocent, naïve, “faithful” Puritan into a jaded, gloomy, withdrawn human being. The narrator in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” begins the story quite sure of himself and his comfortable position but ends the story saying, “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” at the foot of his dead copyist. Analyze the transformative journey of each. Why and how do they each transform?  
Question 2: The subtitle of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is as a “a story of Wall-street.” Thus, one way to interpret the story is as a critique of capitalism. The narrator, after all, makes a lucrative living using his human copyists to produce deeds of title, which concern the buying and selling of property; moreover, Bartleby actually “squats” (lives in) the narrator’s office, without paying rent, and ends up in jail as a result. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, also offers his observations on the problems of materialism, trade, and human technology. Analyze these two works as critiques of capitalism. What does Thoreau say is “wrong” with capitalism, and what is the “solution”? How does “Bartleby” enact a critique of American capitalism?
Question 3:  Compare and contrast the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. They both write about nature, about sex and death, and about the soul, but in very different ways, though also in some similar ways, too. Use any section of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” THAT I ASSIGNED in last week’s lecture (EXCEPT Section 6, which I already analyzed) and any Dickinson poem(s) THAT I ASSIGNED in last week’s lecture (EXCEPT #359, which I already analyzed in my lecture.)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50976/i-started-early-took-my-dog-656
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51612/much-madness-is-divinest-sense-620
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45703/i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died-591
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47651/after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-comes-372
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45706/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain-340
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45723/theres-a-certain-slant-of-light-320
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51610/it-sifts-from-leaden-sieves-291
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44087/wild-nights-wild-nights-269
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52138/some-keep-the-sabbath-going-to-church-236
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
THESE POEMS ALONG WITH THE 3 ARTICLES FILES I GAVE ARE THE ONLY SOURCES YOU ARE ALLOWED TO USE