You are assigned a final presentation of approximately 5-10 minutes on one of the stories in the course, and there should be a visual element, such as a movie, animation/cartoon, PowerPoint, or Prezi, etc. You are also welcome to partner up with one other person in the course if you want to do the final presentation in pairs (5 minutes per student). Finally, you will need to cover the following areas in your presentation:
Briefly discuss author bio/background and why this story and author were your favorite reading.
Summarize the plot and highlight the themes that were central to this story.
Discuss at least three of the following literary elements from the story that helped to convey one of the themes in the story: characters, symbols, irony, setting, and/or point of view.
Here’s a list of the stories that we are covering in the course, so you must select an author and their story listed below.
The Story of an Hour
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville
“The Death of Ivan Illych” by Leo Tolstoy
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
“Araby” by James Joyce
“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
“The Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
“The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams
“Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison
“August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“A Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara
Your instructor mainly wants you to be creative and enjoy teaching everyone in the course about an author and their story through a fun visual presentation. Some students become one of the characters in the story and teach us about it through that character’s point of view while other students present as the author when they teach us about them and their story. Still, others do their presentation like a news reporter or they create a cartoon or comic book version of the story to accompany their PowerPoint. In other words, you have many options to be creative for your final presentation.
