English 3564
Assignment One
Passage Analysis
| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—31 January 2022 Final Draft—7 February 2022 |
|
Objective
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.
Passage Choices
| Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm'd Manhattan? River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide? The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter? What gods can exceed those that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach? What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face? Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning in to you? (Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, Ninth Edition, ll. 92-97) |
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 anywhere; 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, Ninth Edition, p. 186) |
| 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 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, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, Ninth Edition, p. 129) | There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons— That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes— Heavenly Hurt, it gives us— We can find no scar, But internal difference— Where the Meanings, are— None may teach it— Any— 'Tis the seal Despair— An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air— When it comes, the Landscape listens— Shadows— hold their breath— When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death— (Emily Dickinson, "There's a Certain Slant of Light," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, Ninth Edition, p. 97) |
Procedure
Choose one of the above passages or identify a passage of your own from the assigned readings for the course. Please run this passage by me if it is not from above.
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 their meaning clear. Focus on those details that are the most useful in explaining your interpretation 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 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 your main points. 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. Provide parenthetical page references after prose quotations and parenthetical line references after poem quotations.
Have a correctly formatted draft of this paper ready to share via GoogleDocs on 31 January 2022, for peer editing. Include the entire chosen quotation at the top of the first page. Be ready to share the document with at least one peer editor and with me (the instructor).
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.
Submit the completed final draft via Canvas by the end of the day on 7 February 2022.
Close Reading
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, your paper can offer engaging perspectives on its meaning challenge readers' their expectations. In analyzing a brief passage, you may ask yourself the following questions:
What, literally, takes place in the passage (it is often a good idea to begin with the literal)
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 may 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 passage? Is there anything distinctive about the author's diction or use of punctuation (distinctive as in unconventional, deviating from normal usage).
Does the author use any imagery in making their 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, though any work of literature could be the source of an allusion in a subsequent work of literature.
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.
Writing Tips
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:
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
(William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume D, Ninth Edition, edited by Robert Levine, et. al., p. 288)
NOT AN ARGUABLE THESIS: "The Red Wheelbarrow" is a poem about a red wheelbarrow with white chickens standing next to it.
AN ARGUABLE THESIS: In "The Red Wheelbarrow," William Carlos Williams undercuts traditional approaches to finding meaning in everyday objects by impeding symbolic interpretations and insisting instead on such objects' raw physical presence.
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):
The contrast between white chickens and a watery red wheelbarrow draws the reader's attention.
Traditional poetic interpretations seek to identify symbolism along conventional lines, and Williams' invites that approach with the opening stanza.
The brevity of the poem and lack of detail prevent readers from attributing a symbolic meaning to the wheelbarrow and compel to the reader instead to focus on its material presence as an object within a setting.
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:
Williams, William Carlos. "The Red Wheelbarrow." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume D. Ninth Edition, edited by Robert S. Levine. W. W. Norton, 2017. p. 288.
Of course, being so brief, the Williams poem is a bad example for works cited entries. Most cited works take up more than one page, so be sure to include the page range in the citation:
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C. Ninth Edition, edited by Robert S. Levine. W. W. Norton, 2017, pp. 119-302.
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 befriends Jim.
(Note structure: subject/verb/object)PASSIVE VOICE: Jim is befriended by Huck.
(Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)ACTIVE VOICE: Huck befriended Jim.
PASSIVE VOICE: Jim was befriended by Huck.
(Passive voice can exist in any verb tense.)Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace they're with they are and 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 "d". You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like samizdat and status quo. In addition, titles of books (and magazines) should always be in italics. Titles of poems and short stories go in quotes instead.
The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of it.
13 January 2022