Unsure of my IOP topic

[Kelly Yiao]

HELP

I'm going to have to do an IOP in April. The teacher gave us 3 things that we can do our IOP on which are poems by Bruce Dawe, "Othello" by Shakespeare and "Things Fall apart" by Chinua Achebe. At first, I was planning to do my IOP on Dawe's poems cause I really like his poems but after I've read "Things fall apart" I am not sure for my decision anymore because I also like "things fall apart" a lot...and I realised that the protagonists of "Things Fall Apart" and "Othello" actually has a lot of similarities and the two books both have similar themes like the roles of women in the society and reputation. I am thinking that I could do a comparison on the theme of the roles of women on"Things Fall Apart" and "Othello" but I am not sure if this is a good idea or not... It is probably easier and less workload if I just focus on just one book or a poem... Any suggestions? 

[Jaysun]

In my school we were given similar choices, so we had some selected poems, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood (so poems, play, and book). Poems was definitely the more popular choice, as it doesn't require that much close reading, and you have abundant options (like studying literary features of the poem as well as what it meant in that time setting and stuff like that). I personally did Macbeth, and chose a pretty broad and slightly cliché topic, but it ended up ok I guess. I think it would be good to focus on one work, and while you can make references to the other work in your presentation, you should shape your IOP around both because I think a sustained focus would be better (I'm not entirely sure if focusing two works for your IOP is even allowed), and the workload would probably be really massive. 

Hope that helped. Good luck!