Assignment Two
Literary Analysis

Objective

To identify the important issues in multiple short stories by a single author.

Overview

Having written about a single short story by an author from our syllabus, you will now have the opportunity to consider multiple stories by a single author. Use your analysis of these stories to identify patterns and contrasts within an individual author's body of work. How do stories build upon each other to achieve an overall effect?

In writing this paper, please avoid simply summarizing the works. You can presume that your audience has already read the stories, so devote your energies to an analysis of them. Break them 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 works 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 works out of order to substantiate your claims.

Procedure

1. Choose at least two short stories by a single author that genuinely interest you and that will allow you to elaborate the most effectively on a chosen topic.

2. Read through the works again and take notes on the salient points as well as similarities and differences between related works.

   Compose a thesis statement that directly addresses this author's stories and challenges your reader's expectations about their meaning.

3. 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.

4. Write a draft of your argument. Go back and reconsider your thesis statement. Revise it.

5. Bring the draft to class on April 11th, 2016, 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.

6. Be sure to include a Works Cited List on the last page of the paper.

7. 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).

8. Revise and proofread the paper over the weekend and turn in the final draft on April 19th, 2016.

Writing Tips

I have based many of these tips on my comments to you on your previous papers.

1. 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: Growing old and dying is not easy.

   SECOND TRY—NOT THERE YET: In her story "Tell Me a Riddle," Tillie Olsen writes of a woman who suffers in old age and dies.

   A GOOD THESIS: In her story "Tell Me a Riddle," Tillie Olsen breaks her plot exposition into fragments in order to dramatize the slow and steady collapse of her protagonist's perception of reality.

   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.

2. 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: In her story "Tell Me a Riddle," Tillie Olsen breaks her plot exposition into fragments in order to dramatize the slow and steady collapse of her protagonist's perception of reality.

   1. Her writing style progresses toward increasing fragmentation as the story proceeds.

   2. Her protagonist loses control of her life and her perceptions as a result of her illness.

   3. The disintegration of the writing style mirrors the disintegration of Eva's subjective identity and the reality that depends upon it.

   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.

3. Follow MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:

   1. 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 The Online Writing Lab at "http://owl.english.purdue.edu/".

   2. Include 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.: Dear Life). Notice that you should italicize the name of a book whenever you mention it.

      Examples:

      Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Immortal." Labyrinths. 1962. Trans. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 2007. 105-118. Print.

      ------. "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Labyrinths. 1962. Trans. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 2007. 3-18. Print.

      Please note that the indentation in the above examples of work cited entries is incorrect. Consult the hard-copy of the assignment guidelines for the correct indentation format.

      Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. The year of original publication after the author's name 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.

4. Grammar points:

   1. 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.

   2. Avoid the passive voice whenever possible.

      PASSIVE VOICE: Ichabod Crane is chased out of Sleepy Hollow.

      ACTIVE VOICE: The Headless Horseman chases Ichabod Crane out of Sleepy Hollow.

      Notice that the passive voice sentence does not tell us who chased Ichabod out. Leaving out the subject makes the sentence less interesting, and doing so repeatedly will bore your readers.

   3. Avoid contractions in academic writing. Contractions say "casual" and academic work tends to be more formal. The same rule applies to business letters. So, replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not (just two among many examples of contractions).

   4. A grammatically complete sentence has at least one subject and one verb. If it is missing a subject or a verb, it is a sentence fragment. Sentence fragments are sometimes acceptable, but only if you mean to use them.

   5. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive form of it.

   6. Comma rules can be complicated, so look them up in a style manual if you had trouble with them on the previous paper. A comma splice is what happens when you try to separate two grammatically complete sentences with only a comma. Comma splices are bad. Avoid them.

      Example:

      WRONG: I am moving to Canada, I have taken a job there.

      CORRECT: I am moving to Canada because I have taken a job there.

      ALSO CORRECT: I am moving to Canada. I have taken a job there.

   7. 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.

      One Way Signs (leading from before to after or from cause to effect)

      A Native American raiding party captures Mary Rowlandson in a violent raid on her homestead in Massachusetts. Subsequently, her child dies from a bullet wound.

      Frederick Douglass reaches his breaking point and has as serious fight with Mr. Covey in which he defeats him. Consequently, Mr. Covey never lays a hand in anger on Douglass again.

      Crèvecœur's second reference to a prospect is much less conclusive than his first such reference. Therefore, we must presume that his disenchantment with America is causing him to doubt all of his earlier certainties about what makes the land so rich.

      U-turn Signs (establishing a contrast between ideas)

      Whereas Emerson sits behind his desk to develop the theory of Transcendentalism, Thoreau goes out into the woods in order to practice Transcendentalism.

      William Bradford believes the American colonies are the most religiously pure in the world. However, he must still acknowledge the Devil's repeated incursions into this territory.

      Though Thomas Morton does not hesitate to erect a Maypole in Merry-mount, he also vigorously defends himself against charges of heresy coming from the Puritans.

      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 acquire the most importance 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.