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English 3564 |
Assignment Two
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| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—April 20, 2006 Final Draft—April 27, 2006 |
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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 focus on the most useful evidence from this longer text. Furthermore, it will be important to situate the work within a larger literary context.
In writing this paper, please avoid simply summarizing the work. You can presume that your audience has already read the text, so devote your energies to an analysis of the text. Break it 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):
The Individual and the Community—We often associate rebellion with youth and sometimes glamorize it. However, youthful rebellion can sometimes a cross a line into extreme, sociopathic alienation. Choose a work that addresses concerns about the often-strained relationship between an individual and his or her community.
Body and Soul—There has been a running argument for much of history about whether body and soul are at odds with each other or happily unified. In the grander scheme, this question relates to the connection between heaven and earth or the spiritual and the physical. Choose a work that somehow addresses this debate over our priorities and develop a thesis that explains how this work either takes sides or instead seeks a middle ground between the two sides.
Man and Woman—Feminists have argued for years that gender shapes one's experiences in the world. Accordingly, being a man gives one political and economic power. Being a woman gives one some power over the household but dooms one to an inferior status in political and economic matters. Choose a character from one of the assigned works whose experiences either support or disprove the basic tenets of feminism and explain how this character's experiences do so. Free will and fate-Some writers argue that we control our own destiny through decisions that we make, and other writers argue that our destiny is out of our hands, that, regardless of our choices, we are doomed to our success or failure. Choose a character from one of the assigned works whose experiences support the principles of free will or the principles of fatalism.
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 approximately three subtopics that are likewise arguable. Think about the most logical arrangement of subtopics for the structure of your argument. Do not equate subtopics with paragraphs. In a 6 to 8 page paper, you will likely need more than one paragraph per subtopic.
Write a draft of your argument. Go back and reconsider your thesis statement. Revise it.
Bring the draft to class on April 20, 2006, 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 six pages long. Six pages is the absolute minimum length, and papers under six pages will lose some points. That is, please write six full pages of text (not six pieces of paper with some writing on them).
Revise and proofread the paper over the weekend and turn in the final draft on April 27, 2006.
I have based many of these tips on my comments on previous papers.
Thesis Statements. 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 the issues in this paper and their importance.
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.
Two systems: the official government order and the anti-government codes of honor of the First Families of Virginia.
These two systems come into conflict in the argument between Tom Driscoll and Luigi.
In the greater context of the work, this conflict explains the persistence of racism in the post-Civil War American South.
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 structural logic of your argument clear to the reader.
Follow the 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. Notice that page numbers at the end of citation from the Norton Anthology include all of the pages of the entire work in question-not just the pages you have cited from within the work.
Examples:
James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle." 1909. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C. Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. pp. 524-553.
Faulkner, William. Light in August. 1932. New York: Vintage, 1990.
NOTE: HTML does not allow me to indent the above examples of works cited correctly. So, consult the hard-copy guidelines for correct indentation.
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 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.
Paragraphs. The paragraph is a basic unit of your paper, and its optimal length is generally between 1/2 and 3/4 of a page, though there are exceptions. Each paragraph should have a clear topic and should play a clear role in the development of your overall argument. If paragraphs are too short, the paper reads as fragmentary-as a list of unrelated thoughts about the book. If paragraphs are too long, they lose focus and leave the reader confused. Acceptable paragraph lengths vary according the type of writing one engages in. Typically, newspapers and magazines will have very short paragraphs, while college papers and works of literary criticism will have much longer paragraphs.
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)
The Compson family sells Benjy's pasture in order to send Quentin to college at Harvard. Subsequently, Quentin commits suicide.
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.
Do not forget the grammatical tips that I gave you with Assignment One: