Some additional quesitons for the "official" topic

Dear Class: Nolan C. and others have helped me to see an internal flaw in the original "prompt" for this paper. Below I've included some questions that might help you pump up your thesis if you are having trouble with it:

Here's one of the original questions: "Is This Side of Paradise an adequate study of young manhood, or an exposé of the "country club" nature of college life?"

Here's my response to Nolan's questions about this quote:

If you were to take the first part of the sentence as your argument you would violate my "don't
write a boring descriptive thesis" dicta.

Determining whether or not it is an "adequate" study of young manhood, either in terms of the present or the past, would require a lot of sociological knowledge of youn manhood, and is probably be beyond the scope of what you can do in the next few days.

So, maybe another way to think about the prompt, is, is this novel really about college life? Does it present an elitist version of college life? If yes, how? If not, how would you build that argument? Or, is TSOP really about an individual (Amory Blaine) and not about college at all? Or, alternatively, does it portray college in a positive light? (there's a lot of evidence on both sides here). If it is more of a study of "young manhood," then is this an admirable young man? A model? A hero? Or would this novel scare away any mother from sending her child off to college?

I hope these questions add to your argumentative arsenal if you are struggling!