In a 4-7 page, 12 pt. font, double-‐spaced, MLA formatted, thesis driven essay, address the
topic below.
Topic: 1ST HUNGER GAMES
Howard Suber suggests that the power of film lies in its ability to convey to audiences some key
concepts we share as humans and that influence our behavior and how we view ourselves. He
says that films can help us understand how we try to hide essential truths about ourselves but
that unmasking these truths can lead to personal growth and acceptance. He argues that
movies mirror our need to see justice, truth, compassion, and sacrifice rewarded and honored.
Suber claims that movies help us reflect and understand more about the roles happiness, loss,
and decision-making make in shaping who we are as individuals and as a society. Suber notes
too that mentors are frequently depicted in films because, just as in life, key people serve as
role models and shape many of the decisions we make and the people we become. Ultimately,
Suber is saying that fictional characters typically develop by learning something important about
themselves, about who they are and who they can become, by understanding more about the
people around them, their families, the place they grew up, the social and cultural norms and
traditions they participate in. In both short stories assigned, Joyce Carol Oates and Herman
Melville also touch on how the formation of our identities and our understanding of the world are
powerfully influenced by the people, situations, traditions, and values we’ve experienced over
time.
Write a reflective essay about how a character in one of the films you watched comes to
understand who he/she is in the world and how he/she has come to be that way. What are
some of the ways his/her identity becomes more clearly formed, more changed over time, or
more revealed and revealing? Is something unmasked in this character or some crucial decision
made or mentoring experienced? Does this character come to understand something more
deeply about justice, truth, compassion, happiness, or sacrifice?
Use your opening paragraph to introduce your overarching ideas about why the character
you’ve chosen reveals essential truths about how human identity is formed over time and
influenced by people, situations, traditions, and values experienced at key moments such as
those depicted in the film. Use analyses of the character and key scenes involving the
character as the body of your paper, taking care to relate how specific dialogue, scenery,
costumes, camera angles/movement, and body language depict how the character is evolving.
Your concluding paragraphs should relate your chosen character to insights you gathered from
Oates or Melville and to your own experience. By your conclusion, the reader should
understand why you think the changes the character experiences are so important in
understanding human behavior and in understanding something about how you view your own
identity and relationship to the world around you.
This essay will be evaluated according to the rubric for essays for this course.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Be sure to present your observations/arguments/evidence in the form of a
coherent essay—unified by a clear argument about what your character analysis says about
human identity, its meaning and development. Provide an introduction and a statement of your
controlling idea, organize the body of your essay into logical subdivisions, use transitional
sentences as needed, and suggest something of the wider significance of your analysis in your
concluding sentences.
Additional note: Make sure to include an MLA “Works Cited” LIST (center the title; use title case
for the title; don’t use boldface or any special formatting for the title; use the left margin for the
first line; indent second and subsequent lines; double‐space evenly; punctuate carefully).
Work Cited