Assignment One
Analysis of a Brief Passage

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

Procedure

1. Choose one of the above passages.

2. 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 his or her meaning clear to an audience. Focus on those details that are the most useful in explaining the meaning of the passage.

3. 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.

4. 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 the points in your argument. 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 for prose quotations and parenthetical line references for poem quotations.

5. Bring a word-processed, correctly formatted draft of this paper to class on January 27th, 2016, for peer editing. Include the entire chosen quotation at the top of the first page.

6. 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.

7. Proofread your draft to remove spelling and grammatical errors.

8. Turn in the completed final draft along with a peer-edited working draft in class on February 8th, 2016.

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 who read it, your paper can offer perspectives on its meaning that will interest your audience and challenge their expectations. In analyzing a brief passage, you may ask yourself the following questions:

What, literally, takes place in the passage?

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 could 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 order of ideas? Is there anything distinctive about the author's diction or use of punctuation (distinctive as in unconventional, different from other authors' diction and punctuation).

Does the author use any imagery in making his or her 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—any work of literature could be the source of an allusion in a subsequent work of literature, though.

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.

1. 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. Eighth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. 309)

   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 and instead demands that readers concentrate on an object's physical appearance within a larger composition.

2. 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 appearance in the composition.

3. 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 C. Eighth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2013. 309. Print.

4. Some grammatical tips:

   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:

      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.)

   2. 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.

   3. 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.

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