Critical Analysis
Beloved

Objective

To identify a specific issue in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved and analyze two different critical perspectives related to it.

Overview

One goal of this course is to examine the varieties of literary criticism and to apply them to the study of literature. In this assignment, students will have the opportunity to build on the close-reading skills used in the previous assignment. They will add to this by supplementing their own interpretation of the novel with arguments by at least two published critics of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.

Procedure

1. Choose an issue in the novel that interests you and that will be amenable to an approach to the study of literature that you find rewarding and engaging.

2. Read at least two critical works on Beloved and take notes on the salient points as well as similarities and differences between related works. These articles can be from the assigned readings in Canvas and/or from another source that you find on your own, as long as it has a named author and appears in peer-reviewed academic journal.

3. Formulate a thesis statement that interprets Morrison's novel and that allows you to consider ideas from the two chosen critical works.

4. Break the argument down into between two and four subtopics that are arguable. Think about the arrangement of subtopics that is the most appropriate for the structure of your argument. Avoid an arrangement that lends itself too much to plot summary.

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

6. Share a draft with peer editors on April 13th, 2023.

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

8. 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.

9. Revise and proofread the paper over the weekend and turn in the final draft on April 20th, 2023.

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 is truly arguable and interesting. Do not hesitate to revise it after you have written a complete draft of the paper. The thesis statement should directly address your chosen works.

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.

   Turn each subtopic 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 the MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:

   1. Use blended quotations for quotations of four lines or fewer and block quotations for quotations over four lines. Remember the 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 Little Seagull Handbook. See also the manuscript examples at https://style.mla.org/sample-papers/.

   2. 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 and the title of the larger work in which it appears, if applicable. Notice that you should italicize the name of a book whenever you mention it, including in the list of Works Cited.

      Examples:

      Henderson, Paul. "Tangled Roots, a Bloody Forest: Trees, Trauma, and Black Female Bodies inÊBeloved."ÊAfrican American Review, vol. 53 no. 3, 2020, pp. 217-230.ÊProject MUSE, "doi:10.1353/afa.2020.0037".

      House, Elizabeth B. "Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Is Not Beloved." Studies in American Fiction, vol. 18, no. 1, Spring 1990, pp. 17-26. Project MUSE, "doi:10.1353/saf.1990.0016".

      Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. Knopf, Doubleday, 2004.

      Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. There are many other rules for MLA format for peculiar instances that will come up, but the above examples should serve as useful models for the vast majority of cases for this class. Again, do not hesitate to look these rules up in a style manual or credible online source.

   3. Grammar points:

      1. 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:

         PASSIVE VOICE:

         It made sense for a lot reasons because in all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men and women were moved around like checkers. (Morrison 27)

         (Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)

         ACTIVE VOICE:

         It made sense for a lot reasons because, in all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, slaveholders moved men and women around like checkers.

         (Note structure: subject/verb/object—with the addition of the implied subject)

      2. Refer to events in a work of literature in the present tense. This may sound strange at first, but it is the convention for discussing works of literature. Notice that we tend to follow this rule in class discussions, too.

      3. Avoid contractions in academic writing. Contractions produce a casual tone 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.

      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 (unless it is a command, but papers do not normally use commands). 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 of it.

      6. It is acceptable, on occasion, to use the first-person singular pronoun—I, me, my. However, in many cases, doing so makes your sentence redundant. Everything in your paper is something that you have thought. Thus, writing "I think" at the start of sentence often adds nothing of value to that sentence.

      7. Semicolons (;)—These have two specific purposes.

         Most commonly, a semicolon replaces a period between sentences as a way to unite the two together (maybe this reinforces a sense of shared purpose or subject matter in these two sentences). In most cases, it is preferable to keep the period and maintain these sentences as two separate sentences.

         If the sentences on either side of the semicolon are grammatically incomplete, this makes usage of the semicolon incorrect.

         The less frequent use of the semicolon is as a "strong comma" in a complicated list.

         Example:

         On our trip, we visited New York; Topeka, Kansas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Needles, California; and Los Angeles.

         With this in mind, it is okay to use a semicolon on occasion, but infrequently.