FOCUSED ANALYSIS OF HOME IN ONE OF THE STORIES
Essay Topics for Short Analysis
Length: 700-1000 words. Times New Roman, 12 pt. font
What is the significance of the home in one of the following short stories:
• Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Write a short essay, with a focusing on the home, and paragraphs advancing your argument.
Your evidence should be drawn from your own close reading of the text, and not from any secondary sources.
Essays should follow MLA style.
In any of the stories I would like you to think about the significance of the home.
– Consider the connotation of the home
– Things that are associated with the home
– The relationships that take place
– The feeling of comfort or lack of comfort
– Security
– Tensions that take place in the home
What these tell us about that particular time and place – why they are still relevant – and why do we still care about these things – how do they speak to us now.
Should focus on the home
Paragraph:
With each paragraph advancing your argument. – each paragraph brings the argument they should be organized logically that there is a progression from one on to the next. A paragraph focuses on one main idea which it develops in detail. (Half a page long).
Provide ideas and various examples to show how that main idea works. As examples, you should use quotations from your primary text. The quotations bring evidence in support of your own ideas. The main idea of the paragraph usually stated in the topic sentence at the beginning which you also link that idea to your overall argument. A topic sentence is like a mini- claim and it tells your reader how that particular paragraph will be advancing your thesis. The other sentences in the paragraph give support for what the topic sentences asserts.
Evidence:
Your evidence should be drawn from the story that you chose and not from the secondary sources. You are not allowed to use secondary sources.
Writing about literature often starts with a feeling or an intuition about how a piece of writing works.
Writing about literature requires you to consider your won assumptions, as well as the assumptions of the literary work.
Talking and writing about literature means taking part in a continuing dialogue rather than solving a problem with a predetermined answer.
Think of your interpretation of the story or home in the story as entering the dialogue rather than solving a problem with a predetermined answer.
Keep these questions in mind:
• Where is the narrative set? Is the setting significant?
• How/ by whom is the story being told?
• How is the plot developed? What are the implications of that?
• What are some of the themes of the narrative?
• What are the recurring images and symbols?
these questions let you think about the aspects and not only the plot
REMEMBER THAT: writing about literature means discovering ideas rather than simply expressing them.
Audience:
– Write for an audience you can persuade and enlighten – for example, an audience of the more advanced students in your class.
– Adopt a natural, unpretentious style.
– Your audience has read and understood the surface meaning of the work you are writing about. Don’t summarize plots or review obvious points.!
– Don’t assume your audience has seen reasoning similar to yours before, so develop arguments fully and clearly.
Topic:
– Your essay should have a topic.
– Your essay should have a thesis (claim) about that topic.
– As part of your , address the “so what” question (why your observation is significant).
– The argument developed throughout the paper should progress logically from point to point.
• Your essay has a “what question” that is the topic that you are talking about.
• It has as part of the thesis you address the “so what” question why your observation is significant.
• ONE OVERALL ARGUMENT AND AS MANY POINTS AS IT TAKES TO BUILD THAT ARGUMENT
