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English 3564 |
Assignment Two
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| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—April 22, 2011 Final Draft—April 29, 2011 |
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To identify the important issues in a work of literature and construct a persuasive argument addressing those issues in a paper.
In the first assignment, you considered very brief passages and examined them in minute detail. It is now time to apply those same skills to an overall literary work from this semester. Attention to detail will still be important, but now it will also be important to select the most useful evidence from this longer text.
In writing this paper, please avoid simply summarizing the work. You can presume that your audience has already read the text, so you should devote your energies to analyzing it. In other words, break the text down for your reader and only refer to those parts of it that contribute to your argument. Along these lines, do not let the structure of the chosen work determine the structure of your own argument. Structure the argument according to your thesis statement and the subtopics that will allow you to prove this thesis. Do not hesitate to take quotations from the work out of order in doing this.
In writing this paper, you may focus on one selection from the semester. Choose from among the following topics or choose one of your own (though, please, talk with me about the topic before you start writing the paper if you are choosing your own topic):
Gender—Women have it better now than they did in the past. That, at least, is our typical understanding of the history of the twentieth century as employment and other opportunities once denied women have now opened up. Choose a work that provides a sense of what it means to be a woman in a particular time period and consider what has changed between then and now.
The Individual and the Community—We often associate rebellion against the larger community with youthfulness, and sometimes we even glamorize this rebellion. At other times, we condemn the rebels in our midst as unhealthy sociopaths. Presumably, such judgments hinge on how we define our community. Choose a work that addresses concerns about the often-strained relationship between an individual and his or her community.
Overcoming the History of Slavery—We have covered a time period in the aftermath of slavery and the war that brought that institution to an end. Choose a work that tries to offer guidance to America as it seeks to redress the numerous wrongs that slavery perpetuated. Are this work's suggestions still useful? How does a changing historical context change the usefulness of these suggestions?
Realism—Can we claim that one work of literature is more realistic than another? Consider the factors that shape our understandings of realism. Choose a work that tests the limits of literary realism in one way or another. What are the advantages of "keeping it real", and what are the advantages of warping reality into new shapes?
Tradition—The modernists celebrated and mourned a rupture with tradition resulting from the trauma of global wars and rapid industrialization. Choose a modernist work and explain how it either revels in the freedom of a new age or bemoans the resulting confusion or how it manages to do both of these things at the same time. How does the writer's stance on this question influence the structure of the work in question?
Coming of age—Huckleberry Finn, Edna Pontellier, and Joe Christmas are three characters among others from this semester who have matured to adulthood and, to varying degrees, integrated themselves into a community. What are the ordeals that they encounter on their way into adulthood? How stable are the communities that they join? To what extent does the author regard this integration into a community as successful or failed?
Choose a Topic of Your Own—But consult with me about it in advance.
Choose a topic from above and one work that genuinely interests you and that will allow you to elaborate the most effectively on the chosen topic.
Read through the work again and take notes on the salient points as well as similarities and differences between related works.
Choose a topic and develop a thesis statement that makes an argument pertaining to that topic.
Break the argument down into between two and four subtopics that are likewise arguable (three, of course, is the standard number of subtopics). Think about the most logical arrangement of subtopics for the structure of your argument.
Write a draft of your argument. Go back and reconsider your thesis statement. Revise it.
Bring the draft to class on April 22nd, 2011 for peer-editing. If you cannot attend class on that day, let me know. You can regain some of the points lost to an absence on peer-editing day if you can exchange papers with another classmate and edit it before turning in the final draft.
Be sure to include a Works Cited List on the last page of the paper.
Be sure the paper is at least five pages long. Five pages is the absolute minimum length, and papers under five pages will lose some points. That is, please write five full pages of text (not five pieces of paper with some writing on them).
Revise and proofread the paper in the following week and turn in the final draft on April 29th, 2011. Please turn a peer-edited working draft in along with this final draft.
I have based many of these tips on my comments on previous papers. They address problems that often come up for students when writing papers.
In most cases, your first thesis statement will not be arguable enough. Keep revising it until you have a statement that truly arguable and truly interesting. Do not hesitate to revise it after you have written a complete draft of the paper. The thesis statement should directly address your two chosen works.
Examples:
FIRST TRY: American society is regulated by two separate justice systems.
SECOND TRY—NOT THERE YET: Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson includes two separate justice systems.
A GOOD THESIS: Of all of the doubling that takes place in Pudd'nhead Wilson, the division of the Southern civil order into two separate, conflicting systems explains the problem of racism the most clearly.
Notice the evolution from an overly general, though accurate, statement about the two works to a statement about the difference between the two works to a precise explanation of how these books compare.
Organize your paper around the thesis statement and be sure each part of your argument bears some clear relationship to the thesis statement. Do not leave it to your reader to figure out what each subtopic is doing in your paper. Consider the following outline for an argument supporting the above thesis:
THESIS: Of all of the doubling that takes place in Pudd'nhead Wilson, the division of the Southern civil order into two separate, conflicting systems explains the problem of racism the most clearly.
Turn each of these subtopics into a unified paragraph with supporting evidence in the form of quotations. If a paragraph gets too long, break it down into two paragraphs, but make careful use of transitional phrases to keep the logic clear to the reader.
Follow MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:
Use blended quotations for quotations under four lines and block quotations for quotations over four lines. Remember the tricky punctuation rules for each type of quotation. If you have questions about this, ask me or look it up in a style manual such as Keys for Writers.
Write a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper. The last name of the author comes first, then the title of the selection. Then, if applicable, the title of the book in which you found the work (i. e.: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C). Notice that you should italicize the name of a book whenever you mention it in your paper. Titles of poems and short stories go in quotes instead of italics.
Examples:
Faulkner, William. Light in August. 1932. New York: Vintage, 1985. Print.
James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle." 1909. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume C. Sixth Edition. Eds. Nina Baym, et. al. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. pp. 524-553. Print.
NOTE: These two examples lack proper indentation (of each line after the first line) because of online formatting problems.
Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. The year of original publication after the work's title in the above two examples is optional, but the year of publication after the publisher is required. There are many other rules for MLA format for peculiar instances that will come up, but the above two examples should serve as useful models for the vast majority of cases for this class. Do not hesitate to look these rules up in a style manual.
Grammar issues:
Refer to events in a work of literature in the present tense. This may sound strange at first, but it is the convention for addressing literature. Notice that we tend to follow this rule in class discussion.
Transitions. These are words that serve as signposts pointing out the direction of your argument to your readers. Some of these transitions are like "One Way" signs leading your reader on to the next point. Others are like "U Turn" signs indicating a reversal of direction. There are other more subtle transitions that alter the tone or indicate approval or disapproval of what you are discussing.
Examples:
One Way Signs (leading from before to after or from cause to effect)
Edna Pontellier returns from attending Adéle Ratignolle's childbirth to find out that Robert has once again left her. Subsequently, Edna returns to Grand Isle and swims far out into the waves of the Gulf of Mexico.
World War I caused many young artists to question the very basis for their systems of belief. Consequently, their art depicts a world of disorderly and, at times, indecipherable fragments.
W. E. B. DuBois was an early supporter of Booker T. Washington. Thus, his public disenchantment with Washington's educational programs surprised his readers at the time.
U-turn Signs (establishing a contrast between ideas)
Whereas Sherwood Anderson portrays living characters in a small town in prose, Edgar Lee Masters depicts dead characters in a small town in poetry.
Wallace Stevens evokes many different traditional images of religious belief and practice in his poem "Sunday Morning." However, these images fail to provide him with a unified basis for his religious contemplations.
These are just a few examples of the numerous transitions out there that can help you arrange your ideas. Most style manuals will give you a more exhaustive list of options and fuller explanations of how to use them. Your best resource, however, is your own experience with written and spoken language. You undoubtedly hear and use dozens of these transitions per day. Integrate the appropriate ones into your writing.
Keep in mind also that these transitions are often the most important as you move from one subtopic in your paper to the next. Very frequently, the first sentence in a new paragraph needs to provide the reader a clear transition between ideas in the previous paragraph and ideas in the new one.