[ninja-hummel]

Hey hey hey, all!
So it's the end of Y12, and our lit teacher just dropped the bomb on us that we have to have all three coursework texts for Y13 sorted out by this Thursday.
Yikes.
The critical anthology bit seems easy enough; I was thinking of doing John Steinbeck's East of Eden to analyse for use of metaphor, allegory and symbolism, but I am absolutely stumped as to which two books to pick for my comparative essay.

Does anyone have any ideas on which books I should choose? Any recs from your personal favourites, ideas on an interesting question/subject matter etc.? My teacher is pretty hardcore and very openly shoots down any and all pieces of literature which she deems to be "common rubbish", and I really don't want to sound like a complete d-bag when she screeches out my name on Thursday and demands my essay title....I'm counting on you fabulous people here!

[Naaadiiiaaa]

I'd recommend starting with a subject you enjoy reading about, I went with war time literature and looked at A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry and a collection of Wilfred Owen's poetry. There were a few in my class who looked at the portrayal of love, one went with two modern books (one was Dear John and I can't remember the other) and another looked at Lady Chatterley's Lover and a collection of love poems. Others looked at certain stereotypes, such as gender stereotypes.

Both my teachers recommended having at least one of the texts be a poem/a collection of poems as you are more likely to cover all the criteria.

[Groat]

(Original post by ninja-hummel)
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I quite liked how my school gave no choice on the texts, but then gave us choice on the questions! If your teacher is expecting you to have an essay title written before you even read and analyse the books, I'd fancy telling them that it's ridiculous.

[Natwaah]

Damn sounds like you have a lovely teacher! For the critical coursework I chose to look at the poem 'London' by William Blake and look at it from the Marxist perspective. For the comparative coursework the books I chose were 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey (which is good for themes like madness, role of female etc.) and 'Tender is the Night' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. My question was something to do with how women are presented.