Brooklyn College | English 2: “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” | MW5B | Instructor Beth Schwartzapfel

FINAL RESEARCH PAPER

• Papers must be 5-7 pages, typed, double-spaced, 1” margins, Times New Roman font, with a properly-
formatted MLA-style bibliography.
• You must use at least four outside sources.
- One must be an assigned reading from the semester. (You can use more than one if you like, but you
must use at least one.)
- Three must be articles or books that you find on your own. These can be literary, scientific, historical,
sociological, cultural--as long as they’re relevant to your topic.
- These articles must be from a reputable source, preferably a published book or a peer-reviewed journal.
If any of your sources are not from a published book or peer-reviewed journal, your bibliography must
include a 1-2 sentence explanation of why the sources are trustworthy. I will allow a maximum of one
website.
• These papers are designed to take your research outside of the bounds of what we’ve done so far this
semester. Your research should tie in with our readings, of course, but instead of literary analysis, your
paper should take up a scientific, historical, technological, or cultural question.
• Papers are due 12/17.
• Your final paper is worth 20% of your grade for the semester.
• There are no re-writes.

Suggested essay questions

1. Walt Whitman published “Song of the Open Road” in 1856, a time of great change in Whitman’s home,
Brooklyn. According to Channel 13/WNET’s history of Brooklyn, “the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825
produced [a] burst of industrial and economic expansion,” and “the next 25 years saw the town grow into a city
with smoking factories along the river, gas lights illuminating the public streets, a public school system, and an
impressive city hall” (“From Village to City”). This period also marked a huge wave of immigration, with an
influx of Irish, German, and English immigrants transforming Brooklyn into the country’s third-largest city.
Research what Brooklyn was like during this time in order to answer the question of how, if at all, Whitman’s
specific place and time in history influenced the poem. Is there evidence of 1856 Brooklyn in “Song of the
Open Road”? How so? Or, if not, why not?

2. Jeff Chang’s “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” and Phillip Lopate’s “Waterfront” offer two very different pictures of the
infamous New York City planner Robert Moses. Research Moses and one of his projects (you may choose to
focus on the Cross Bronx Expressway, as Chang did, if you like, or you may choose from any number of other
projects that he envisioned or oversaw, such as Riverside Park, Jones Beach, the Triborough Bridge, the United
Nations building, the Fresh Kills landfill, to name just a few) and take sides: was this project good for New
York? Did Moses, in the case of the project you choose, do more harm than good or vice versa? Why?

3. “Song of the Open Road,” On the Road, and Blue Highways all approach “the road” as if it was the
quintessential symbol of America. But the meaning of “road” has changed drastically over the history of this
country. The car only began to gain prominence in the 1920s, when General Motors secretly began to purchase
the nation’s then-extensive system of streetcars and trolleys in order to pave over rail lines and make Americans
more dependent on cars. The interstate highway system, which, today, accounts for one-third of all long-
distance travel, wasn’t funded until 1956, during the Eisenhower administration: after On the Road was already
written. William Least Heat-Moon’s choice to only travel on the smaller, rural highways was in some ways a
rejection of Eisenhower’s orderly interstates, in which travelers don’t so much travel through a place as bypass
it. To cite a more recent example, the American auto industry is in deep financial trouble; some say that
Detroit’s automakers have lost touch with what Americans want. Research a particular period in the history of
American roadways--you may choose one of the periods mentioned here or a different one--in order to:
a. examine its influence (whether conscious or unconscious, acknowledged or unacknowledged) on one or
more of the works we’ve read this semester. Would On the Road have been the same book if the interstates
 had been built when Jack Kerouac went on his road trips? Would “Song of the Open Road” have been a
different poem had the Brooklyn Bridge been completed in the early 1800s instead of 1883?
b. answer the question: is “the road” the quintessential symbol of America? If so, how so? If not, why not?

4. “Lessons of the Golden Spike,” a chapter from Rebecca Solnit’s River of Shadows, includes a quote from the
San Francisco Bulletin about the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific rail lines. The completion of
the railroad, the Bulletin said, was “a triumph bloodless, deathless, but no less glorious to the Nation and the
State: a victory over space, the elements, and the stupendous mountain barriers separating San Francisco from
the world” (58). Has any other, more recent, technological advance been so momentous that newspapers and
commentators might have considered it to be “glorious to the Nation” or “a victory over space, the elements”?
The automobile? The atomic bomb? The internet? The moon landing, as Solnit suggests? And if so, were they
right?

5. “The Annihilation of Time and Space,” another chapter from Solnit’s book, argues that as a result of the
railroads, humans’ perceptions of time and space were actually altered. “If distance was measured in time, then
the world had suddenly begun to shrink” (9), Solnit writes; “the railroad shrank space through the speed of its
motion” (13). Has any other, more recent, technological advance actually changed humans’ perceptions of time
and space? Which one? How so? Did this technology alter time and space as radically as the railroad did? Or
was it merely an extension and/or expansion of the changes that began with the railroad?

6. There are literally hundreds of versions of the song “John Henry.” Each has its own take on the story of the man
who beat the steam drill.
a. Research the history of the building of Big Bend tunnel, in Talcott, West Virginia, where the ‘real’ John
Henry (if there was one) is said to have worked. You might look into the system of convict leasing or slave
leasing, the methods that the C&O Railroad used to blast the rock, or the working conditions of the
workers. You might look into theories about who the real John Henry was, and what his life was like. Then
choose two or more versions of the song and craft a thesis statement about either their differences or
commonalities, and how they relate to the history they’re portraying. Do the songs capture the realities of
the lives of the railroad workers? Does one version capture this reality better than another? If so, how so? If
not, why not? Feel free to take into account the music as well as the lyrics. One of your sources should be
cultural source about the version(s) of the song you choose or biographical source(s) about its singer.
b. Research the phenomenon of the song and its many versions. How many different versions are there? When
did the first version appear? What have music scholars and sociologists discovered about the different
versions of the song and how they’ve been handed down and altered over time? What does the fact that
there are so many different versions of this song teach us about our country? What can the songs’ many
versions teach us about the place of the railroads in American mythology? About the country’s relationship
to slavery? To African-American culture? To technology? To humanity?

7. In her essay, “When I Was a Child,” Housekeeping author Marilynne Robinson describes several of the stories
from classics and history--“the intellectual culture of my childhood”--that she used to craft the character of
Ruth: “Carthage sown with salt and the sowing of dragon’s teeth which sprouted into armed men...Emily
Dickinson and the Bible...there are not many references in Housekeeping to sources other than these few,” she
writes (13). Research one of these intellectual influences in some depth in order to identify its place in
Housekeeping. What does this story/poem/history/character teach you about Housekeeping, and what does
Housekeeping teach you about this source? What other works of literature have used these stories, and to what
effect? How does Robinson build upon these other works? [If you choose Emily Dickinson, choose one or two
poems to focus on, and make sure that at least one of your outside sources is a text of literary criticism about
Dickinson and/or a source of biographical/historical information about Dickinson’s life and times. In the case of
the Bible, chose one story (Ruth and Naomi, e.g., or Noah and the ark) and make sure that at least one of your
outside sources is a text of scholarship about the Bible and its literary/historical context.]

8. When Barry Lopez’s “Flight” was first published in 1995 (in Harper’s magazine, as “On the Wings of
Commerce”), the Boeing 747 was “the one airplane every national airline strives to include in its fleet as
confirmation of its place in modern commerce.”
 a. Since that time, has another airplane--or perhaps another means of transport entirely (truck or car or rail or
spaceship)--supplanted the Boeing 747 as “the ultimate embodiment of what our age stands for” (310)?
How so?
b. Is there anything being transported now, in 2008, via freight airplane that Barry Lopez couldn’t have
dreamed of in 1995? How has this new type of cargo changed the airline industry? Us as a country? The
age that we live in?

9. Daisy, the late wife of Aloft’s protagonist Jerry, suffered from bipolar disorder. Jerry seems to believe that
Daisy may have survived if she had received different, more appropriate medical treatment. A recent article in
the psychiatric literature describes bipolar disorder as “a chronic mental illness that affects many aspects of a
person’s life...Despite its chronic nature, when correctly diagnosed and treated, long-term outcomes can be
good” (Cullen-Drill 110). However, some people who themselves have bipolar disorder take issue with the
medical community’s understanding of their lives; as the activist/advocacy organization the Icarus Project
writes on its website, “we believe we have mad gifts to be cultivated and taken care of, rather than diseases or
disorders to be suppressed or eliminated.” Research the symptoms of, and conventional medical treatments for,
bipolar disorder. What is the epidemiology of bipolar disorder? What are the benefits and drawbacks of
treatment? What is the success rate of treatment? What are the side effects? What is the danger of receiving
treatment? What is the danger of not receiving treatment? Research these questions from the points of view of
both the medical/psychiatric establishment and those who oppose it. (Remember to take into account the
speaker’s expertise when you’re deciding how much authority to grant him/her: the medical community has
evidence and numbers on its side; activists have lived experience. Both are compelling.)
a. Which take on bipolar disorder do you agree with? The medical community’s? Or those who believe they
are blessed with “dangerous gifts”? Or somewhere in the middle?
b. Barry Lopez uses the same metaphor in his essay, calling the Boeing 747 “Icarus’s dream of escape and
freedom” (311). Research the Greek myth of Icarus and answer the question of why Lopez, in his essay on
flying, and a group of activists/advocates for a different way of thinking about bipolar disorder might have
chosen the same story as a symbol.

Works cited

Chang, Jeff. “Necropolis: The Bronx and the Politics of Abandonment.” Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the
Hip-Hop Generation. New York: Picador, 2005. 7-19.

Cullen-Drill, Mary and Donna Cullen-Dolce. “Early and Accurate Diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder
Leads to Successful Outcomes.” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 44 (2008): 110-119.

“From Village to City.” A walk around Brooklyn with David Hartman and historian Barry Lewis: History of
Brooklyn. 2008. WNET/Thirteen online. 7 Dec 2008. <www.thirteen.org/brooklyn/history/history3.html>

Heat-Moon, William Least. “Eastward.” Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1982. 3-39.

The Icarus Project. Home page. 2007. 8 Dec 2008. <http://theicarusproject.net>.

Lopate, Phillip. “Robert Moses, A Revisionist Take.” Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan. New York: Crown
Publishers, 2004. 308-315.

Lopez, Barry. “Flight.” Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Ed. Williford and Martone.
New York: Touchstone, 2007. 308-333.

Solnit, Rebecca. “The Annihilation of Time and Space” and “Lessons of the Golden Spike.” River of Shadows:
Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. New York: Penguin, 2003. 3-24 and 57-74.