Optional Paper on How Props Function Symbolically in The Wild Duck (about 500 words, typed and double-spaced, worth 100 points). The purpose is to explore how two or three stage properties or stages actions contribute to the exploration of a central question in The Wild Duck. (An example of a stage prop would be the flute; an example of stage action- usually called "stage business- would be eating the bread and butter or the people playing "blind man's buff" in the first act.) The stage actions need to be something connected to props. Do not choose the wild duck or anything else discussed in class.

Pre-writing (how to go about brainstorming for the paper):

1. Formulate a central question that the play explores. If you wish, you can use one of these two questions: 1) What kinds of people do not seem to benefit from or want "truth"? 2) Some people think they are telling other people truths about their lives that will help those people; what do the tellers perhaps not realize about their own motives? Try to put the question in a form that will relate to the props or stage actions that you wish to discuss.

2. Choose 3 props (or aspects of the stage setting or stage business). Brainstorm on each prop: 1) what qualities/characteristics do you associate with it? 2) what things are done with that prop that tie it to an idea important in the play? 3) what significant quotes relate to an idea explored in the play and to characteristics of that prop? You're trying to gather ideas by just writing anything that occurs to you. Don't worry about being organized. You can look at the play for quotes that seem meaningful and write them here-- they might help you think. You should have about 1 ½ or 2 pages of brainstorming

3. Summarize what each prop seems to represent.

Organization for the Paper

Introduction:

1. Generate interest in reading this paper (for instance, what interested you about this play? What is surprising about props?)

2. Communicate the author and title of the play and your thesis (which includes the question the play deals with, the props the paper deals with, and what these props contribute to exploring the question). It's easiest to come back and write this part after you've written the body of the paper because until you've written the body, you don't really know how your props contribute.

One section on each prop. Each section should have 1) the point, with regard to that prop, 2) an elaboration of what you mean, 3) showing details or quotes, and 4) explanations of why the details or quotes support the point.

Conclusion:

1. Reassert how these props contribute to the question explored in this play

2. Answer the question "So what?" (Why should a reader care or why is this interesting or significant?)

Basis for the Grade:

1. How clear is the argument (organization and coherence)? (Do intro, body, and conclusion include what is specified above?)

2. How convincingly does the paper make its case (showing evidence and explanation)

3. Does the writer make the reader feel the point is interesting and significant?

4. Is the paper reader-friendly (does it follow conventions of spelling, punctuation, grammar)?

"A" papers will comment on subtle relationships/data and they will integrate evidence tellingly.

Sample Introductions: Here are a couple sample introductions to papers written previous semesters. They are not on how props are used in a play, but you can get an idea about how to generate interest and how to introduce the author and title of the play7 gracefully in the course of setting up the purpose of the paper.

The More Things Change. . .

Everywhere we look, we see magazines and television commercials telling women that we can, "Just do it." They tell us women that to be a woman does not mean that we are weak, obedient, or unintellectual. Why do they feel the need to point this fact out to women? We are still trying to change the way people think when gender roles have been set for centuries. Apparently when Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata in 5^th C. BCE women had many of the same gender characteristics they have today. The play seems to examine the gender differences between women and men, and affirm that feminine characteristics might be more productive in solving social problems if men adopted them. [now the thesis of the paper, a statement listing these gender characteristics and stating why they would benefit society]

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," according to John Keats. If beauty is truth, then is illusion ugly? Apparently not, to many of us, at least according to Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck. Gregers Werle, the "truth-seeker," is described as ugly and clumsy, and Hjalmar Ekdal, a person who lives in illusion, finds beauty in a tawdry attic. The play seems to examine the reasons many people need illusion to give a sense of meaning to their lives and the attic is a central image conveying these reasons. [now the thesis, a statement summarizing the reasons people need illusions and how the attic relates to those reasons]