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English 3564 |
Assignment One
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| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—September 25, 2006 Final Draft—October 2, 2006 |
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To construct a persuasive argument about the meaning of a brief passage from a selected work of literature or a poem. The argument should be based on a close reading of the text in question.
| A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun-hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford-while, Scarlet and blue and snowy white, The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind. (Walt Whitman, "Cavalry Crossing a Ford," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 110) |
"Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing! de Lord God Almighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef and dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb-en I'd ben a'treat'n her so!" (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 324) |
| I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday school. (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 228) | Much Madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Much Sense—the starkest Madness— 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail— Assent—and you are sane— Demur—you're straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain— (Emily Dickinson, "Much Madness is divinest Sense," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 182) |
Choose one of the above passages.
Take notes including specific details in the passage that explain its meaning and significance. Such details may include context, word choice, comparison/contrast, imagery, punctuation, and anything else the author has used in order to make his or her meaning clear to an audience. Focus on those details that are the most useful in explaining the meaning of the passage.
Formulate a thesis statement about the meaning and importance of the chosen passage. This thesis will undoubtedly change as you write your paper, but at least it will give you a place to start.
Write a draft of your argument about the passage in question. Refer to specific words and phrases in the selected passage in order to support the points in your argument. You may also refer to other quotations in the larger work, as long as you use them to explain the meaning of the passage in question.
Bring a word-processed, correctly formatted draft of this paper to class on September 25, 2006, for peer editing. Include the entire chosen quotation at the top of the first page.
After considering feedback you received from peer editors and reconsidering your own argument, revise your paper. You may also sign up to meet with me to discuss a draft at this point.
Proofread your draft to remove spelling and grammatical errors.
Turn in the completed final draft along with a peer-edited working draft in class on October 2, 2006.
Close reading means paying careful attention to details in a written work. Since you will be looking more closely at this passage than most people who read it, your paper can offer perspectives on its meaning that will interest your audience and challenge their expectations. In analyzing a brief passage, you may ask yourself the following questions:
What, literally, takes place in the passage?
Where in the larger work does the passage occur?
Who speaks in this passage? To whom?
How is this passage different from any other passage in the text?
Does the author use any terms that could be unfamiliar to 21st-century readers? What do these terms mean? How have these terms changed since the author first wrote the passage? Are there any terms that are unfamiliar for other reasons?
Is there anything distinctive about the arrangement of ideas in the passage? Are there clear parallels or contrasts implicit in the order of ideas? Is there anything distinctive about the author's diction or use of punctuation (distinctive as in unconventional, different from other authors' diction and punctuation).
Does the author use any imagery in making his or her point? The most common forms of imagery include metaphor, simile, personification and symbol.
Does the author allude to any other works of literature? Common sources of allusions are the Bible, Greek mythology, the works of Shakespeare-any work of literature could be the source of an allusion in a subsequent work of literature, though.
What will make this paper interesting to an audience consisting of your classmates, your teacher and yourself? You will want to tell them something new-that would not otherwise have occurred to them after reading this passage.
I have based the following writing tips on common difficulties that students encounter when writing papers for this class.
Develop an arguable and interesting thesis statement that applies directly to the passage (i. e., that you could not write about any other poem).
Example:
She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously. (Kate Chopin, The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 648)
ARGUABLE THESIS: Adèle Ratignolle's description of Edna Pontellier in the above passage provides us with the main cause of Edna's tragedy, which is that she does not belong to the community that surrounds her.
NOT AN ARGUABLE THESIS: In the above passage, Adèle Ratignolle tells Robert that Edna does not fit into Creole society.
Organize your argument around this thesis statement. Think of between two and four sub-points and structure your argument around them.
Sample Outline (for the above thesis):
Adèle's description of Edna is accurate. She is not "one of us".
Adèle's description of Edna's potential blunder subtly indicates Robert's low status within Creole society.
Adèle's prediction accurately foreshadows the outcome of the novel.
MLA format means you should include a list of works cited at the end of your paper, even if it only includes one work. For example:
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume C. Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. pp. 633-723.
Some grammatical tips:
Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. When writing in the passive voice, you remove the subject from the sentence or at least de-emphasize it. This makes writing less engaging to most readers.
Example:
ACTIVE VOICE: Huck loves Emmeline.
(Note structure: subject/verb/object)
PASSIVE VOICE: Emmeline is loved.
(Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)
ACTIVE VOICE: Huck loved Emmeline.
PASSIVE VOICE: Emmeline was loved.
(Passive voice can exist in any verb tense.)
Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace "they're" with "they are" and replace "don't" with "do not" (these are just a few examples of the numerous possible contractions out there.
Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents. Notice how I am using italicization of the terms in the following section "e". You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like je ne sais quoi or hoi polloi or Bildungsroman.
The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of it. Its and whose both deviate from the standard rule for possessives.
Refer to events that take place in your chosen work in the present tense. It may sound strange at first, but it is the standard convention for writing about literature.