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English 3564 |
Assignment One
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| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—February 2, 2007 Final Draft—February 9, 2007 |
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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.
| On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush'd head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine, Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard, (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.) (Walt Whitman, "The Wound-Dresser," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 114) |
Col Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat, himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning, all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 292) |
| Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.(Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 221) | I heard a Fly buzz—when I died— The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air— Between the Heaves of Storm— The Eyes around—had wrung them dry— And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset—when the King Be witnessed—in the Room— I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away What portion of me be Assignable—and then it was There interposed a Fly— With the Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz— Between the light—and me— And then the Windows failed—and then I could not see to see— (Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, p. 184) |
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 February 2, 2007, 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 9, 2007.
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.