Week 4: Research Proposal

I plan on doing my research paper on the transition from innocence to experience that is a common theme in a variety of adolescent literature books. I am still working on tweaking my thesis, but it will sound something like this: The transition from innocence to experience is a common strand found in a diverse array of adolescent literary works. I will be using references from parts of The Call of the Wild, My Side of the Mountain, Esperanza Rising, The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as other literary works that I come across in this class. I also have several literary criticisms collected on the transition found in The Call of the Wild, which will help to provide a good foundation for the transition from innocence to experience found in literature, and how it is an important theme in adolescent literature. I think that I want to focus on the transition that takes place through nature as one of my main points, the transition that takes place through oppressive times (such as The Copper Sun and Esperanza Rising), and one more main point that I have not yet discovered. If I could get your help and opinion on good main topics for this research paper, it would be much appreciated. I picked this topic because throughout my years of reading works of adolescent literature, I have noticed that there tends to be a common transition from innocence to experience found, and I believe that it has great impacts on the readers and am interested in looking further into the impact of this theme of transition. I love nature related works, and I think that this transition through nature is very interesting and kind of relates to Emerson and Thoreau’s works. I may want to twist this research topic to be more focused on the transition through nature, but I would like you input on this idea, and what I could further do with it.