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Assignment One
Passage Analysis

Due Dates:	Requirements:
In-Class Topic-Selection Exercise—28 January 2025 Working Draft—6 February 2025 Final Draft—13 February 2025 In-Class Process Post—13 February 2025	3-5 typed pages MLA Format

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

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.

(Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., vol. C, ll. 26-32)

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell ALL that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them.

(Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., vol. C, p. 212)

Many of them were delicious in the rôle; one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her, he was a brute, deserving of death by slow torture. Her name was Adèle Ratignolle. There are no words to describe her save the old ones that have served so often to picture the bygone heroine of romance and the fair lady of our dreams. There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in looking at them. She was growing a little stout, but it did not seem to detract an iota from the grace of every step, pose, gesture. One would not have wanted her white neck a mite less full or her beautiful arms more slender.

(Kate Chopin, The Awakening, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., vol. C, p. 580)

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

(Emily Dickinson, "The Brain—Is Wider than the Sky" [598], The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th, ed., vol. C, p. 98)

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. Be ready to write about your passage choice and a possible interpretation of it in class on 28 January 2025.
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 6 February 2025, 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 at "jschwetm@d.umn.edu".
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 13 February 2025. Write a process post on the paper in class on that day.

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 to challenge readers' 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, if anyone, speaks in this passage? To whom?

How is this passage different from any other passage in the same text or collection of poetry?

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. If so, explain what this imagery adds to the passage's meaning.

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, edited by Robert Levine, et. al., 10th ed., vol. D, p. 310)

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):
1. The contrast between white chickens and a watery red wheelbarrow draws the reader's attention.
2. Traditional poetic interpretations seek to identify symbolism along conventional lines, and Williams' invites that approach with the opening stanza.
3. The brevity of the poem and lack of detail prevent readers from giving the wheelbarrow symbolic meanings that transcend its material presence within the composition.
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, edited by Robert S. Levine, et. al., 10th ed., vol. D, W. W. Norton, 2024, p. 310.

Being so brief, the Williams poem is anomalous among 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, edited by Robert S. Levine, et. al., 10th ed., vol. C, W. W. Norton, 2024, pp. 131-322.

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.

Use the present tense for events in a literary text. Consider it this way: the words making up the text are currently on paper, so the story or poem exists in the present.

Grading Note

Papers will receive grades according to the following set of criteria:

Criterion	Point Weight
Writing Clarity	25
Thesis Statement and Argument	25
Organization	20
Evidence	20
Topic-Selection Exercise	2.5
Peer-Editing	2.5
Process Post	2.5
MLA Manuscript Format	2.5
TOTAL:	100