Gender Equality in Han Jin’s Waiting Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

Essay on Ha Jin’s book Waiting
This “performance” asks you to deepen your understanding of the novel by crafting a written
argument about it.
The prompt below is based upon questions that have come up in our class discussions. Your objective, however, is not to repeat what you have already shared or to reiterate a consensus that has emerged in class. Rather, your method should be to pursue these questions by closely analyzing the text of the novel, with the aim of understanding the novel’s attitude toward that topic more deeply than you currently do.
The prompt contains a set of focused interpretive questions about the novel. Successful essays will offer a detailed and focused answer to these questions in their introductory paragraph and provide close textual analysis to support their claim in their body paragraphs. Effective conclusions will reiterate and elaborate the argument, perhaps by exploring some implications of the novel’s view of the topic.
Hint: The novel’s view on each of these questions is likely to be complex; hence, the best answers to these questions should acknowledge and explore that complexity.
Prompt: The novel emphasizes that the Communist government of China formally ensures gender equality to its citizens (see page 37). One intention of the novel, however, is to scrutinize this claim.
To what extent are men and women in fact equal in the society depicted by the novel? What obstacles to such equality does the novel draw attention to? How does the novel’s language, technique and/or structure draw attention to them?
*The essay must contain about two to three body paragraphs besides the intro and conclusion, each paragraph should contain at least three detailed analysis quotes.
*Ideas and quotes should be very detailed, well supported and clarified throughout the essay.