Choose an issue, idea, or narrative element in Haroun and the Sea of Stories to explore/argue in a paper of at least 800 words (normally at least three full pages, including your header and required Works Cited page,). Some example topics are listed after the Requirements. The Topics for Discussion on CN for each class session may also provide additional ideas. There are also some additional writing guides in Document Archive 1 on CN and Canvas that you may find helpful.
Requirements:
First, review the syllabus statement on academic honesty, available here.
Your submission must be a Word document or a pdf file,
Your paper must have a “real” title representing the paper’s topic. “First Paper” is not a real title. “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is a good book title but not a real title for your paper. “The Importance of the Walrus in Haroun and the Sea of Stories” is a real title that tells readers what the paper is about.
The paper must have a thesis (some claim for which you have support). Here is an introductory paragraph on Hamlet Download Here is an introductory paragraph on Hamletfor a paper that I never wrote. Download Here is an introductory paragraph on HamletI wrote this introduction as an example of how to move from an opening sentence to the thesis without spending time with plot summary other than to identify the specific part of the play I will be focusing on (see the next point). Also note the explicit title of this paper.
Do not waste time telling your readers what happens in the text. You must assume that your readers have read Haroun and the Sea of Stories and thus know what happens in it. Avoid the plot-summary wording “Then Haroun encounters Khattam-Shud.” To point to the section you want to discuss, say “When Haroun encounters Khattam-Shud.” “Then” introduces plot summary; “When” points to a specific place in the text that you will discuss.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories is your only primary source. Your paper should include specific references to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This normally takes the form of short quotations followed by discussions of how the quotations support your argument. Avid long quotations, especially if they only describe what happens. That is just another version of plot summary.
For secondary sources, use only your posts and classmates’ posts, as described in the next points. (Exception: you may use outside sources for factual information that you need to make your argument.) In general, try to have the conversation within your paper have some texture, depth, and resonance, to the extent you can in a brief project like this.
One source must be one of your own posts. As with the next listed requirement, cite this source in the style of a typical secondary source, with “CN Post” as the title of the “book. For example: Last Name, First Name. CN Post. September 3, 2024. If you know the post number,, include it, as, for example, “CN Post 3.”
At least two classmates must be sources (quotations of claims, arguments, observations)—cited in the style of a typical secondary source (use “Conversation,” “Interview” or “CN Post” for the source type, including the date). These sources can be CN Posts or comments made in class, especially in your discussion group. (Use “Last Name, First Name, Class Cnebtm Septenber 3, 2025,”)
Your paper must include a Works Cited page in MLA style (see the next point). This works Cited list must include the primary text (in this case Haroun and the Sea of Stories) and any secondary sources you use, such as CN posts, the Delistraty article, and any other use of outside sources. Your primary source (the text you are writing about) and all outside sources, including CN posts and words or ideas taken from other sources, including AI-generated text, must be cited.
Use MLA style to format your paper. Here is the section on MLA style Download Here is the section on MLA stylefrom The Little Seagull Handbook. And here is a sample paper in MLA style Download here is a sample paper in MLA stylefrom the same source. Also, here. once again, is the opening paragraph Download the opening paragraphof my unwritten Hamlet paper, this time as an example of MLA style.
Final reminder: Be sure to present a strong argument. Be specific: use specific details from the text and explain why those details are important for your argument.
Late papers may be penalized, either by a lowered grade on the paper or by the deduction of points from your total course grade.
Some Possible Topics:
“What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” asks first Mr. Sengupta and then Haroun. And later Khattam-Shud might well be answering the question “What’s the threat of stories that aren’t even true?” (especially on pp. 159-161). Using Haroun and the Sea of Stories, write an essay in which you respond to either question, or both. Your paper must focus on the ideas presented in the Rushdie text (that is, what Haroun and the Sea of Stories tells us about the use of stories), but you are welcome to refer to other “stories” as well to supplement your discussion (for “stories” you might substitute “narratives,” not necessarily only print narratives). Write a solid argument about one use or threat. Do not just list a lot of uses or threats that you say very little about.
What is the most (or an) important thing that Haroun learns from his experiences in the novel? He meets many characters and learns many things, both about the characters and, in a wider sense, about the world in which he lives. Write an essay in which you answer that question by arguing for what you consider to be the most important (or an important) thing that he learns. Think widely: there are many things for a boy to learn and many ways to learn them.
Threats. There are many threats represented in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, such as the threat to language (or at least to spoken language), the threat to stories and storytelling, the threat to the ocean by pollution, the threat to equality (in terms of gender; in terms of differences between groups of people). Write an essay in which you argue for the importance of one threat. Begin by pointing out what that threat is and how it is presented in the novel, and then expand your discussion to consider what Rushdie seems to be saying to us and to our world in his presentation of the threat you are addressing.
Opposites. It’s easy to think in opposites (or, more technically, dichotomies), as Haroun realizes when he looks at Mudra’s eyes on pp. 124-125. Yet by the bottom of the page Haroun is moving beyond thinking in opposites, or at least beyond thinking that one element of each set must be positive and the other negative. This seems to me, and perhaps to you, to be one of the most important moments in the novel in terms of the ideas the novel develops. So write an essay about it. Start from this passage and look closely at one way in which this idea is developed in the novel. Your argument should focus on the importance of the way you have chosen and on what Rushdie seems to want us to make of it.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories as narrative. Think about the novel in terms of the essay by Delistraty we read in the first week of class. How does what Delistraty says affect your understanding of Haroun and the Sea of Stories as narrative? Write an essay in which you argue in these terms. How can Delistraty help us to understand the way the novel works as a narrative, psychologically and in other ways? Are there other effects in the novel that Delistraty does not include?
The happy ending. In the end, Haroun gets the happy ending he undoubtedly wants. But it’s not that easy. How do you respond to the ending? the most important elements I see are the Walrus granting Haroun a (rare) happy ending, the changing tone in Haroun’s city, the return of his mother, and the restoration of his father’s ability to tell stories.. Write an essay about this happy ending (you are welcome to focus on only one or two of the elements of it). How does it work? Does it need the Walrus’s intervention? What is Rushdie saying about the ability of fiction to provide the (artificial?) happy endings that we seem to long for? Does the essay we read by Delistraty help to explain the nature of this happy ending? (See topic 5.).
Focus on a single short passage. Do a close reading of how a single short passage works. (This can be a paragraph or two, but it could even be a single sentence,). What is the passage doing within the novel (or in its part of the novel as a whole)? How does the passage focus in on whatever its topic is? How does Rushdie use language to make the passage work? There are many ways of looking at a single passage within the context of a larger work.
Character relationships. There are many relationships between characters in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Write an essay in which you consider one set of relations between characters (or perhaps a comparison of relations between two of them if you find a good argument that way). Focus on one or two relationships.
A theme or motif. Trace a theme or motif through the novel and show how it works. As a reminder, here is my page on the two Download here is my page on the two. Some of those themes are identified by Isabel Allende on the cover of my older copy of The Kite Runner as “Love, honor, guilt, fear, redemption,” And there are more. Write an essay on one theme or motif that you find in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Begin by identifying the theme or motif and explaining its use in the novel. (For example, “juggling” is a clearly an important motif in the novel; does it add up to a theme?) Then show in greater detail how the theme or motif yu have selected is used in the novel and consider how it relates to the novel as a whole. Please remember that a work of literature is much more likely to be putting a particular theme “on the table” for discussion and then presenting different aspects of the theme for the readers’ consideration. Good works of literature normally do not tell you what the theme “means” but ask you to look at the many things it could mean in that particular work. Your details could be specific motifs that add up to a theme. Not all do. I encourage you to think more about showing how a specific motif works through the novel.
Your own topic. Feel free to pick a different topic that interests you, but please check it with me first via email.
Book: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=9f7c4da979&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1809192501232846839&th=191b8afe8e48c7f7&view=att&disp=inline&realattid=f_m0mmx4wu0
be sure to give in text citations and citations to the websites that you use.