Paper Ideas

I have many different ideas for my paper topic. I feel that all of them are good ideas but it is difficult for me to narrow them down just yet.

Common themes that are needed to create a popular adolescent novel. With this topic I could go into what is the makeup of a young adult novel. What kinds of things are needed to make it popular to make it stand out and to also make it up to date. This topic could also allow me to delve into the idea of writing in a younger voice.

Common adolescent themes that can be found in the novels that we read for this class. This one would encompass the whole semester of reading. I would take a look at what themes are common among each book and also discuss which of these themes are found in the American young adult novels that we present in the class. This topic would be very structured but there are so many different themes that the paper could be very long or I could just focus on a few of the common themes to make it more manageable but this topic would definitely have enough information.

Different levels of teen angst that can be found in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield the quintessential American teenager offers the reader so many different views of what it means to be essentially lost in the mess of things. The ideas and emotions that he emits in the book and also with the other characters around him are enough to write a thesis on so I would have to think very hard about doing this topic. I would need to refresh myself on The Catcher in the Rye but luckily it can be read in a sitting.

These ideas were before I looked at the list of options on Angel. There were two that really caught my attention.

The first one is the quest in teen novels, I feel that this topic would be very interesting and very different for each book that I would wish to write about. But I could also tie this aspect of teen novels into the paper topic of common themes.

The other topic that I thought would be a good paper was the topic of accepting and/or rejecting society. Teenagers are either trying to fit in to society or rebel against it entirely. I could also draw onto the topics of society, family and friends.