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English 3564 |
Assignment One
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| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—February 3, 2005 Final Draft—February 10, 2005 |
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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.
| Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me, I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, I too receiv'd the identity by my body, That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body. (Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," The Norton Anthology of American Literature,, Volume C, Sixth Edition, pp. 79-83) |
Publication—is the Auction Of the Mind of Man— Poverty—be justifying For so foul a thing Possibly—but We—would rather From Our Garret go White—Unto the White Creator— Than invest—Our Snow— Thought belong to Him who gave it— Then—to Him Who bear The Corporeal illustration—Sell The Royal Air— In the Parcel—Be the Merchant Of the Heavenly Grace— But reduces no Human Spirit To Disgrace of Price— (Emily Dickinson, "Publication—is the Auction," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 190) |
| "Ef I could git de ten cents back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "Yes—en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'." (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 248) |
[A]nd as we struck into town and up through the middle of it—it was as much as half-after eight, then—here comes a raging rush of people, with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by, I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail—that is, I knowed it was the king and the duke, thought was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 369) |
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 starting point.
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 February 3, 2005, 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 February 10, 2005.
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 w
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):
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.
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 above rule about possessives.