Essay Assignment I
Instructions:
1. Selecting one, or at the very most two, of the short stories we have read for this section as a base text, choose a topic which sparks your imagination and gets your mind working. Your goal is to discover your special interests within the boundaries of the assignment. Explore the topic to discover implications, possibilities, and relations not considered before. Even though each topic may list more than one work, CHOOSE ONLY ONE OR TWO OF THE STORIES LISTED TO DEVELOP YOUR THESIS. Use two literary works for analysis ONLY when a comparison or contrast between the two reveals something significant about the topic .
2. Next, develop a working thesis (topic + your attitude + your purpose) by asking yourself what central ideas emerges from the work you have done so far, how you can frame that idea as an assertion about your topic, and how you can convey your purpose and attitude in that assertion.
3. Then develop a list/cluster/outline (whichever you prefer) of the main and secondary points that you will develop in your essay. Apply order to ideas so that connections, distinctions, hierarchies, overlaps, and gaps will be apparent. This process helps you control and understand your topic, and helps you clearly see your central theme and how ideas fit into it. Collect a list of supporting details and quotations from the story that help to illustrate or prove your thesis and secondary points made to prove that thesis.
4. Finally, review the expectations of your general audience:
Your “general audience” includes people of diverse backgrounds and interests who read newspapers and magazines such as Time and Newsweek. These readers are skeptical and easily distracted, but they are also curious and thoughtful. They may not share all your interests, but they can understand and appreciate anything you write, as long as it is specific, clear, honest, and fresh. They will expect you to explain any specialized terms you use and to support any assertions you make with ample details, examples, and reasons. Further, they will expect you to present yourself as thoughtful and competent, the master of your information, and a careful writer. An appropriate tone depends on the topic and writing situation, but a moderate and assured tone will almost always work. Evaluate your purpose, tone, information, and development according to those expectations. Have you met the needs of your reading audience?
Paper format:
All final drafts of papers should be typed, double-spaced, 800 – 1200 words. I recommend that the final draft include your name, your instructor’s name, the course number, and the date on the top left of the first page, as specified in the MLA guidelines. The title of the paper should be centered just below the identifying information. The format of the paper should otherwise follow the MLA guidelines or the APA guidelines (whichever you choose depending upon your major of study) as described in the Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/, which includes parenthetical citations of quotations and a Works Cited page.
For each individual literary work, list the author’s name in last name, first name format, the title of the work, the translator’s name, the publisher’s name, and the date of publication:
Last name, First name. Title of Work. Translator’s name. Publisher, date.
Examples are:
Bambara, Toni Cade. “The Lesson.” Gorilla My Love, Random House, 1972.
Faulkner, William. “Barn Burning.” Harper’s Magazine, June 1935.
Jen, Gish. Who’s Irish? Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
O’Connor, Flannery. ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ and Other Stories. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1953.
Note that all of these should be alphabetized by surname AND that each entry should be a hanging indent in the MLA style, but that won’t show properly on the html version.
Suggested Topics:
Review any of the topics below, looking for ideas that meet the requirements of point #1 above. You might synthesize ideas from several sources for your topic, or formulate an independent topic based on your own interests and ideas, but that must be approved by me before you begin writing. The questions following each topic are meant to get you thinking about the topic and should NOT be addressed directly in your essay or be used as a structure for your essay. CHOOSE ONE TOPIC ONLY.
1. Examine the first person narrations of Sammy in “A & P,” Mama in “Everyday Use,” the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Sylvia in “The Lesson,” or the Chinese grandmother of “Who’s Irish?” How do the narrators reveal their characters in both what they say and what they don’t say? How does the narrators’ language (style, tone) affect the readers’ attitudes (sympathy for the narrator, interest in the narrative, feelings toward the characters and their actions)
2. Compare “Everyday Use” and “Who’s Irish?” as stories developing plots about clashing social and racial values. Which values are challenged and which are reinforced?
3. As in a folk or fairy tale, Sarty Snopes has three chances to “prove” himself: the first barn burning hearing (in which he does not have to testify after all), the hearing over his father’s lawsuit against Major de Spain (in which he tries to protest his father’s innocence but is pushed back), and the second barn burning attempt (in which he runs away to warn Major de Spain, but does not stay around to testify). Describe how Sarty’s character develops through each of the three trials, how his father attempts to influence his character development, and the final outcome.
4. Discuss the naivete of the character Sammy in “A & P,” the narrator of “Araby,” and/or the man in “To Build a Fire.” Why are they naive (“marked by unaffected simplicity” or “deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment”)? What actions does their naivete lead them to? What “educates” the two characters or alters their perception of their worlds?
5. Discuss the influence setting (immediate environment and cultural expectations) has to the conflict in “To Build a Fire,” “The Yellow Wall-paper,” “A & P,” “Who’s Irish?” and /or “Everyday Use.”
6. Analyze how the opening and closing scenes of “Everyday Use” or “Who’s Irish?” signify the changes the main characters have undergone (Dee/Wangero, Maggie & their mother; or the Chinese grandmother).
7. Analyze how “The Yellow Wall-paper,” “A & P,” or “Who’s Irish?” deals with women. Are the stories friendly or hostile to women? What level of understanding do they show of the roles that women play in the societies portrayed in the stories? What evidence of sympathy do you find in the stories?
8. Analyze the use of imagery in “The Yellow Wall-paper.” [An image is a vivid or graphic representation or description that enables an audience to call up a mental recreation of a physical sensation experienced through one of the five senses–sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell–or through motion (kinetic imagery)]. Images of sight (visual), including light and dark imagery, as well as images of smell (olfactory) are utilized as dramatic devices in this story. What is the effect of these images on the reader? on the narrator?
9. Analyze the theme of reality vs. illusion in “Araby,” “A & P,” and/or “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” Consider what creates the illusion, what sustains it, who represents reality, and how the two opposing states interact. (compare no more than two stories).
10. Objects take on more importance than their simple functions in “Barn Burning,” “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” or “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Analyze this symbolism and how it reflects or contributes to the themes (or conflicts) of the story.
11. Satire is a literary manner that blends a critical attitude with humor and wit for the purpose of improving human institutions or humanity. Satire is of two major types: formal or direct satire, in which the satiric voice speaks, usually in the first person, either directly to the reader or to a character in the satire; and indirect satire, in which the satire is expressed through a narrative and the characters or groups who are the satiric butt are ridiculed not by what is said about them but by what they themselves say and do. Examine the use of satire in “Harrison Bergeron,” “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and/or “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Is the satire directed at society at large or at human nature?
