From a freshman paper that I apparently turned in:
…Dickens gives to the true workers, who put in long hours and perform their duties with pride, virtue, happiness, and, in all but one sense of the word, success.
[assume that this unwritten section demonstrates adequately the rottenness of the idle rich and the dangers of capital. Also assume it’s about a page and a half long]
Thus, we have it that Dickens is keen on a labor-centric Karma, in which only the hard, honest worker truly prospers through contentment. As jobs like Joe’s, though, are…
Another gem, from the same class, I think:
In his essay “The Northern Pedestal,” Nicholson Baker addressed the following to James Joyce:
…you sad intimate. I see your blind bane now. Adam woke. Cluster globe tendencies; meld proliferation. Debug the profanities!
Of course, this makes little sense, which is not surprising considering the horrible mind-bending drugs that influenced Baker at the time. Now, how could one writing a paper late at night (we’ll assume night; the sun is not yet visible, although it will be soon) make a transition from the above nonsense into a discourse on the visions of religion portrayed in Joyce’s “Eveline”? One could, perhaps, mention the addictions often associated with both drugs and Christianity, but this would be overlooking the meat of Baker’s delirious entreaty. A comparison could be drawn from the misplacement of religion in the environment of “Eveline” and the awkwardness of Baker’s quote above, which clearly serves no useful purpose. We must, however, as inquisitors, analyze more deeply.
If memory serves, I passed.
More:
The writer notes, as he has many times before, that late at night (early morning?) is perhaps not the ideal time to begin a paper of any magnitude. There is always the counter-argument, however, that such procrastination inevitably leads to the taking of chances and the chance of creativity, no matter how much it may be dulled by lack-of-sleep. One wonders if Joyce, in his constant revision, ended up stripping a certain layer of rawness and invention from The Dubliners in the course of each story’s many rewrites….
A death wish, surely!