Psychology 214a: Adolescence
Fall, 2001
Assignment 1
Doug Davis

Halfway through Stephen King's novella "The Body," as the four 12-year-olds sit around the campsite they have set up on their way to find the dead boy, Gordie tells them a long fantastic story about how a kid named "Lard Ass Hogan" wins a pie eating contest. It's a gross-out -- Stephen-King-like -- story, ending with a lot of people covered in icky stuff. This sets the stage for a private conversation between Gordie and Chris about Gordie's storytelling, about what ninth grade is going to be like, and about something that happened to Chris vis a vis the disappearance of some money from a teacher's desk. Read these several pages of "The Body" (linked here -- and the film "Stand By Me" made from the story is on reserve) and review Erikson's writing about ego-development Stage 4 ("Industry vs. Inferiority") and Sullivan's writing about the early adolescent "chumship."

How do these two theorists' ideas help you understand what's going on between Chris and Gordie? Why is this conversation (as the author would have us believe) crucial in our understanding of the characters -- and important enough to have been remembered by the narrator decades later? I'm looking for evidence that you have read Erikson and Sullivan carefully, that you can express their ideas in your own words, that you have a sense both of how these two theories complement and how they contrast with each other, and that you can apply these ideas briefly to a fairly rich example of early adolescent experience.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is that I want you to do this in no more than 750 words (roughly the length of an op-ed piece in the New York Times), one and a quarter single-spaced pages. I am serious about this limit, against which you should check your essay before submitting it (Word counts words). Do not waste words quoting the King story (beyond a very short phrase, if absolutely necessary) back to me, and do indicate the parts of Erikson and Sullivan you are using with page references rather than quotations. I will be happy to try to answer questions about this assignment before it is due, and you are welcome to discuss the assignment in the Web forum and in conversation with other persons in the class. If the way you eventually approach the assignment has been affected appreciably by these conversations, however, please add a footnote to that effect (e.g., "I got the idea of Chris being Gordie's ago ideal from Jane Doe's 9/30/01 Web Forum posting"), which footnote I will not count among the 750 word total. This assignment may be submitted to me as a text email message or as an attached Microsoft Word file. I must have received it by 12:00 noon, Friday, October 5. Be sure to keep a backup copy; and make sure both the subject line of the email and the name of the file include your full name and the words "Psych 214 Assignment 1."

Enjoy.