Unit 5 complete

Description

For the Unit 5 Complete assignment, you will write a comprehensive APA compare/contrast analysis paper using all that you’ve learned in ENG1021. For your essay, you will choose two literary works from Units 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 to compare and contrast. You may choose from poetry, short stories, essays, or even drama; you could select two texts in the same genre, or you can select two texts from different genres (e.g., a poem and a short story). Your two literary texts may come from different units. Select a different comparison from the one you wrote in week 3. Do not self-plagiarize from previous weeks.

Begin by selecting two literary texts that can be compared and contrasted for the authors’ point of view, literary style, or other points of comparison. Once you have selected two literary texts, it’s time to decide what within each selection you will compare. For instance, you may choose to compare/contrast the use of food or the portrayal of grandmothers in Baca’s”Green Chile” and Rios’ “Nani” (poems). You could choose to compare/contrast the use of the grotesque in Faulkner’s”Rose for Emily” and O’Connor’s”A Good Man Is Hard to Find” or the coming-of-age theme in Kincaid’s”Girl” and Updike’s”A&P” (short stories). If you decide to mix genres, you could focus on a shared theme, such as assimilation in Mora’s”Immigrants” (poem) and Staples? “Black Men in Public Space” (essay) or stereotypes in “We Real Cool” and “Black Men in Public Space.” The possibilities are many.

Ultimately, when writing a literary comparison, you will answer the question: So what?

In other words, you will not only explain the similarities and differences between the two literary works, but also explain the significance of your comparison. A comparison intends to inform readers of something they haven’t thought of before. Therefore, for a comparison to be illuminating, the things compared typically appear different but have significant similarities or appear similar but have significant differences.

You must have a purpose for your comparison. The reader of the comparison should not have to ask, So what? at the end of your essay. To help you with this, your essay should be anchored by a strong thesis statement that makes a claim about these two works and how they compare and contrast with one another.

Your essay’s introduction should contain:

the names the texts to be compared
the purpose of the comparison
what is being compared and/or contrasted

Sample Thesis Statements:

Weak thesis: – I am going to compare the similarities and differences between the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “A Rose for Emily.”

Strong thesis – A close examination of the grotesque in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and in “A Rose for Emily” demonstrates that… [insert your idea here].

Another strong thesis – Comparing the imagery and word choice in Mora’s poem “Immigrants” and Staples’ essay “Black Men in Public Space” demonstrates how each writer presents the stark realities of being a minority in contemporary American society.

ADDITIONAL ESSAY REQUIREMENTS:

1,000 words or roughly four double-spaced pages.
Your essay must include a formal organization structure with an introduction, body and conclusion. Your essay must include a thesis that makes a compare/contrast relationship between the two texts that you have chosen to analyze. Each body paragraph should begin with a strong topic sentence that presents your main idea. Your essay should consist of no fewer than five paragraphs.
Be sure to rely on your chosen readings for support in your essay by using details and quotations from the readings to explain your ideas/response.
Make use of at least three scholarly sources to support and develop your ideas. Our course text may serve as one of these three sources.
Your essay should demonstrate a thorough understanding of the READ and ATTEND sections.
Be sure to cite your sources using proper APA format (7th edition). For help with APA, visit the Bethel Library website to explore a plethora of APA-related tutorials, help videos and resources.
Upload to the Dropbox when complete.

Upload File

Unformatted Attachment Preview

Analysis: Inquiry,
Interpretation, and
Argument
Learning Objectives
 Define analysis and describe the process for analyzing
literary texts
 Use inquiry to ask productive questions about a literary
text
 Develop an interpretation of a literary text
 Choose a topic and develop an analytical thesis
 Create a strong argument that expresses your
interpretation of the text
Explication vs. Analysis
 Last week, we practiced the process of explication,
which is used mostly for poems or other short texts.
 Analysis is the process of breaking a larger work down
into parts to better understand the whole.
 The goal of analysis is to understand a work more deeply
by exploring the ideas and issues that the work
addresses.
 Analysis is concerned with seeing the relationships
between the parts of a work, but it is also concerned
with taking notice of what is not in the work.
What Is Literary
Analysis?
 Analysis attempts to find
truth.
 The process of analysis is to
divide a problem into various
parts, which may then be
examined more easily; their
natures, functions, and
interrelationships may be
more fully understood when
they are examined one by
one.
Narrow Focus
 It is not possible to address every idea, detail, or interpretation
of a complex literary text.
 Therefore, in analysis, you need to narrow your focus to one
aspect of the text that you will discuss.
 You could not talk about everything in Hamlet at once, for
example, without being guilty of the greatest superficiality.
 It is better to narrow the scope of your topic by talking about
the diction, epic conventions, theology, OR dramatic action.
Don’t try to talk about all these elements in one essay.
 Make the subject small enough so that you can go deeply
into it.
Analysis is a process.
 Close reading
 Inquiry
 Interpretation
 Evidence
 Argument
Starter Questions
 What is the function of the setting in this story or play?
 Why has this character been introduced?
 What is the author trying to tell us?
 How has this idea been developed and made more
complex?
 How exactly can we describe the work’s tone?
 What is the difference in assumptions between this essay
and another one?
Moving from Inquiry to Interpretation
 After jotting some of your questions and initial responses
to those questions, you might use some previously
discussed strategies to move toward interpreting the
significance of your responses.
 Brainstorming & journal writing – developing ideas
beyond the initial question
 Look back over your notes and annotations and
consider what ideas seem significant.
Moving from Inquiry to Interpretation
 Draft a working thesis that states what
claim you would like to make in your essay. That is,
what interpretation of some aspect of the text will
you present?
 Remember, no two readers will respond in exactly
the same way. You want to present your interpretation
using evidence from the story as well as from
scholarly external research to support your claims.
What goes into a literary analysis?
 Four broad areas that literary analysis explores:
 Meaning
 Structure
 Style
 Background and influences
 Usually, there is an overlapping among these. For example,
writing about point of view, you would emphasize its impact
on both meaning and style.
 It is always wise to emphasize that your particular topic has a
relation to the entire work.
Principles of a Literary Analysis
 Early in your essay, name the author, the title of the work, and your
thesis.
 Do not merely re-tell the story. You might summarize certain parts
briefly, but you can assume your reader is familiar with the basic
plot. Your goal is to present an interpretation rather than to retell the
story. Any reader of the story knows what happened. Your goal is
to explain the significance of particular details—what the details
add up to.
 You will probably be telling your reader something about how the
work functions, that is, how it develops. How is the work structured?
What is the focus of a particular section? How does that section
contribute to a larger meaning?
Two Basic Requirements
of Literary Analyses
 The need for a central idea or point
 Short, accurate, and forceful
presentation of ideas or descriptions,
well contrived as a totality or unity
 Should not ramble in any way but
should be clearly united around a
dominating central thought – a brief
“mind’s full” on any particular subject
 A clearly discernible organization
An example
 Let’s revisit a story from a previous week—”Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield.
 The first step would be to read the story to familiarize yourself with its basic
plot and characters.
 Then, you might re-read the story more slowly with a pen in hand—close
reading.
 You might annotate as you read. You might also brainstorm or journal in
response to the starter questions.
 Perhaps through this process, what interests you most is how you feel about
the main character Miss Brill. You might decide that you want to argue that
Miss Brill is a sympathetic character. That is, she is worthy of our sympathy.
 As we saw in a previous week, you then would ask why Miss Brill is
sympathetic?
Organizing
your Theme
around the
Central Idea
Looking back over your notes/annotations, you might
make a list of evidence from the story that supports the
idea that Miss Brill is a sympathetic character:
 1. Miss Brill has little human contact except what she
imagines.
 2. She is lonely and vulnerable.
 3. She doesn’t have much insight into her life until
the end of the story, or else she is self-indulgent.
 4. She is no threat to anyone in the park. Therefore,
the young people who insult her must be at least
somewhat unkind if not vicious.
 5. The author views Miss Brill with apparent
understanding and kindness, but she underplays the
ending.
 6. If Miss Brill can keep people at a distance, she
seems to function fairly well. When they get close,
they hurt her.
Organizing your Theme around the
Central Idea
 1. Miss Brill has little human contact except
what she imagines.
 2. She is lonely and vulnerable.
 3. She doesn’t have much insight into her life
until the end of the story, or else she is selfindulgent.
 4. She is no threat to anyone in the park.
Therefore, the young people who insult her
must be at least somewhat unkind if not vicious.
 5. The author views Miss Brill with apparent
understanding and kindness, but she
underplays the ending.
 6. If Miss Brill can keep people at a distance,
she seems to function fairly well. When they
get close, they hurt her.
 Looking over your list, you might
select the ideas you think are the
strongest. You might combine
ideas that seem similar. You might
add new thoughts as you go
along.
 Create labels or topics for the
different points on your list. For
example, for #4, you might use
the label “harmlessness,” #2 might
be labeled “loneliness and
vulnerability,” and #5 might be
labeled “artistic treatment.”
 These labels can help you form a
thesis statement and outline.
The Thesis Sentence
 A thesis statement is like an
itinerary of a journey, a plan of
action.
 The thesis statement connects the
central idea and the plan of
topics.
 The first thing to do, then, is to put
the central idea with the topics
to form the thesis statement.
 Central idea:
 Miss Brill is worth my sympathy.
 Topics:
 1. harmlessness
 2. loneliness & vulnerability
 3. artistic treatment
 From this arrangement we can now write
the following thesis sentence:
 Feelings of Miss Brill’s worthiness result from her
harmlessness, from her loneliness and
vulnerability, and from Katherine Mansfield’s
skillful treatment of her plight.
The Topic Sentence
 Just as the entire theme is to be
organized around the thesis
sentence, each of the
paragraphs should be organized
around a topic sentence. The
topic sentences are derived,
grammatically speaking, from the
topics of the thesis sentence.
 Thus, the first topic will be Miss
Brill’s harmlessness. But something
more must be done than just
announcing the topic; the topic
must be shown to have a bearing
on the central idea.
 Her harmlessness [topic] makes
the hurt done to her seem
unjustified and unnecessarily cruel
[connecting topic to the central
idea].
 Notice that the words
“unjustified” and “unnecessarily”
indicate a judgment by you the
writer which is related to your
conclusion that Miss Brill is worthy
of your sympathy.
Topic Sentences
 Create topic sentences for each body
paragraph or section of your paper.
 Topic sentence – Her harmlessness makes
the hurt done to her seem unjustified and
unnecessarily cruel.
 Topic sentence – Her loneliness and
vulnerability make her pitiable.
 Topic sentence – Katherine Mansfield’s
skillful treatment of Miss Brill’s plight
encourages the right proportion of sympathy.
The topic sentences belong at the
beginnings of the paragraphs in the body
of your essay.
You may, of course, use the sentences just as
they are, or you may, as you become more
experienced as a writer, wish to modify
them to make them seem less obvious or
clunky.
Additionally, the labels you created for the
different sections could serve as headings
throughout the paper.
Develop each section of the paper with details
and analysis that relate to the specific
label/topic.
Sample Essay
Thesis Statement
Topic sentence
Details related to first
topic sentence
Topic Sentence
Details related to first
topic sentence
Conclusion reemphasizes thesis
Sample essay taken from Roberts, E. (1977). Writing themes about literature. Prentice-Hall.
 You may be tempted to simply retell a story or do no
more than list the ideas in an argument. Even when you
begin with specific approaches, you might end up
retelling the story. Although this is the path of least
resistance, simply summarizing is inadequate for literary
analysis.
Main
Problem in
Writing
 You can imagine your reader as another student like
yourself, who has read the assigned work but who has
not thought very much about it—they know the
events, who says what, and when it is said. As a result,
you do not need to tell this reader everything that
happens but should regard your role as an interpreter.
 References to the story are thus made primarily to
remind the reader of something he or she already
knows, but the principal emphasis of the theme is to
draw conclusions and develop arguments.
 Whenever you write on any topic, you are in a position
much like that of a detective using clues as evidence for
building a case or like that of a lawyer using evidence as
support for arguments.
 When writing about a literary topic, you should make
references to the work not for their own sakes but as part of
the logical development of your discourse/argument.
Using
Literary
Material as
Evidence
 In the essay on “Miss Brill,” the fourth paragraph is about
how Mansfield’s artistic skill keeps a balance in the reader’s
sympathy for Miss Brill. The writer uses the conclusion of the
story as the main evidence in their argument. The event at
the conclusion is this: Miss Brill returns to her room and thinks
she hears “something crying,” but the reader immediately
perceives that Miss Brill herself is the one crying.
 Notice how the paragraph from the sample theme uses this
rather simple and brief episode as evidence. The writer’s
argument is more important to him than a description of
the episode.
 In the paragraph below, notice that the student simply retells the
story.
 After a short lapse of time, the second stranger enters to seek
shelter from the rain. He is a rather full-fleshed man dressed in gray,
with signs on his face of drinking too much. He tells the guests that
he is on the way to Casterbridge. He likes to drink, exhausting the
large mug full of mead that is offered to him and quickly
Summary
vs. Analysis
demanding more, which makes Shepherd Fennel’s wife extremely
angry. With the mead going to his head and making him drunk, he
relates his occupation by singing a song in the form of a riddle. This
second stranger is a hangman who is supposed to hang a man in
Casterbridge for stealing a sheep. As he reveals his occupation,
stanza by stanza, an increasing air of dismay is cast over the guests.
They are horrified by the hangman’s description of his job, but he
makes a big joke about all the grim details, such as making a mark
on the necks of his “customers” and sending them to a “far
countree.”
 The revised paragraph below has a clear topic sentence, and the
student provides details and discusses the significance of these
details in relation to the topic sentence.
 Hardy uses the second stranger—the hangman—to produce
sympathy for the shepherd’s distrust of the law. By giving
the hangman a selfish thirst for mead, which drains some of the
Fennel’s meager supply, Hardy justifies Mrs. Fennel’s anger
and anxiety. An even greater cause for anxiety than this personal
Summary
vs. Analysis
arrogance is the harsh legal oppression that the
hangman represents to the shepherds. Indeed, the shepherds were
already sympathetic to the plight of Summers, the first stranger
(whose crime seems rewardable, not punishable), but the
domineering manner of the hangman clearly makes them go
beyond just sympathy. They silently decide to oppose the law by
hiding Summers. Hardy thus makes their obstructionism during
the later manhunt seem right and reasonable. Perhaps he has
stacked the deck against the law here, but he does so to make
the reader admire the shepherd folk. In this plan, the hangman’s
obnoxiousness is essential.
Two Essays Analyzing Hardy’s “The Three Strangers”
Compare two sentences which deal with the same details from the story:
 He likes to drink, exhausting the large mug
of mead that is offered to him and quickly
demanding more, which makes Shepherd
Fennel’s wife extremely angry.
 By giving the hangman a selfish thirst for
mead, which drains some of the Fennel’s
meager supply, Hardy justifies Mrs. Fennel’s
anger and anxiety.
Sentence 1 has details but no more. Sentence 2 links the details as a pattern
of cause and effect within the author’s artistic purpose. Notice the words
“By giving” and “Hardy justifies.” These indicate the writer’s use of the facts
to which they are referring. There are many qualities in good writing, but
perhaps most important is the way in which the writer uses known facts as
evidence in a pattern of thought that is original.
Keeping to Your Point
 Whenever you write an essay about literature, you must pay great attention
to the proper organization and to the proper use of details from the work you
are analyzing.
 As you write, you should try constantly to keep your material unified, for
should you go off on a tangent, you are following the material rather than
leading it.
 It is all too easy to start with your point but then wander off into a retelling of
events or ideas.
Diverted Analysis
 The following paragraph is taken from an essay on the “Idea of Personal
Responsibility in Homer’s The Odyssey.” This is from the third paragraph; the
writer has stated the central idea in the first paragraph, and in the second
has shown that various characters in The Odyssey believe that men are
responsible for their actions and must bear the consequences. In the third
paragraph, he writes:
 More forcefully significant than these statements of the idea is the way it
is demonstrated in the characters’ actions in the epic. Odysseus, the
hero, is the prime example. Entrapped by Polyphemus (the son of
Poseidon the Earth-Shaker by the nymph Thoosa) and threatened with
death, Odysseus, in desperation, puts out the eye of his captor, who
then begs his father Poseidon for vengeance. Answering his son’s
anguished curse, Poseidon frustrates Odysseus at every turn in the
voyage back to Ithaca and forces him to wander for ten years before
reaching home.
Diverted Analysis
 The first sentence adequately states that the idea is to be demonstrated in the
characters’ actions. That the remainder of the paragraph concentrates only
on Odysseus is not a flaw because the writer concentrates on other characters
in the following paragraphs.
 The flaw is that the material about Odysseus does not go beyond the story itself;
it does not come to grips with the announced topic of personal responsibility; it
does not indicate understanding.
 The material may be relevant to the topic, but the writer does not point out its
relevance. Remember always that in expository writing you should not only rely
on making your meaning clear simply by implication; you must make all
relationships explicitly clear. That is, you should “connect the dots” between
your detail and your claim.
Keeping to Your Point
 If the ideal paragraph could be schematized with line drawings, we might say that the
paragraph’s topic should be a straight line, moving toward and reaching a specific
goal (explicit meaning), with an exemplifying line moving away from the straight line
briefly in order to bring in evidence, but returning to the line after each new fact in
order to demonstrate the relevance of this fact. Thus, the ideal scheme would look like
this:
Keeping to Your point
 The best way to achieve this goal is to reintroduce the topic
again and again throughout the paragraph to keep
reminding the reader of the relevance of the exemplifying
material. Each time you mention the topic you are bringing
yourself back to the line, and this practice should prevail no
matter what the topic.
 If you are analyzing tone, for example, you should keep
pointing out the relevance of your material to the tone of the
work, and the same applies to structure or whatever aspect
of literature you are studying.
Keeping to Your point
 According to this principle, we might revise the paragraph on The
Odyssey as follows, keeping as much of the original wording as we can:
 More forcefully significant than these statements of the idea is the way
it is demonstrated in the characters’ actions. Odysseus, the hero, is the
prime example. When he is entrapped and threatened with death by
Polyphemus (the son of Poseidon the Earth-Shaker by the nymph
Thoosa), Odysseus, in desperation, puts out the eye of his captor.
Though his action is justifiable on the grounds of self-preservation he
must, according to the main idea, suffer the consequences.
Polyphemus begs his father Poseidon for vengeance. Poseidon hears,
and accordingly this god becomes the means of enforcing Odysseus’
punishment, since Odysseus, in injuring the god’s son, has insulted the
god. The Ithacan king’s ten years of frustration and exile are therefore
not caused by whimsy; they are punishment for his own action. Here
the idea of personal responsibility is shown with a vengeance; despite
the extenuating circumstances, the epic makes clear that characters
must answer for their acts.
Using Accurate and Forceful
Language
 Sometimes in seeking to say
something, we wind up saying
nothing. Here is a sentence from an
essay about Robert Frost’s “Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
 It seems as though the author’s
anticipation of meeting with
death causes him to respond as
he does in the poem.
 The sentence is satisfactory up to the
verb, but then falls apart. If Frost has
created a response for the speaker,
it is best to describe what that
response is. A more forceful
restatement of the first sentence
may be: “It seems as though the
author’s anticipation of meeting with
death causes him to think about the
need to meet his present
responsibilities.”
Using Accurate and Forceful
Language
 Consider another sentence from the
essay about Robert Frost’s “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
 This incident, although it may seem
trivial or unimportant, has substantial
significance in the creation of his
poem; by this I mean the incident
which occurred is essentially what
the poem is about.
 This sentence is so vague that it
confuses rather than informs. Be
specific. A revised sentence could be:
“Although stopping in the woods to
watch the snow fall may seem trivial or
insignificant, the incident causes the
poet to meditate on beauty and
responsibility; the important thoughts in
the poem thus grow from the simplest of
events.”
Using Accurate and Forceful
Language
 When you write your own sentences, you might test them in a similar
way.
 Are you referring to an idea? State the idea directly.
 Are you mentioning a response or impression? Do not say simply, “The
poem left me with a definite impression,” but describe the impression:
“The poem left me with an impression of sympathy,” or “of
understanding of the hard life of the migrant farmer.”
 Similarly, do not rest with a statement such as “I found this story
interesting.” Try to describe what was interesting and why it was
interesting. If you always confront your impressions and responses by
trying to name them and to pin them down, your sentences should
take on exactness and force.
References
 Barnet, S., Burto, W., Cain, W. E., & Nixon, C. L.
(2018). Literature for composition: An introduction to
literature. Pearson.
 Roberts, E. (1977). Writing themes about
literature. Prentice-Hall.
Chapter 12
LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
DEFINE FICTION
IDENTIFY AND ANALYZE
THE ELEMENTS OF
FICTION
▪ A fictional story is a constructed
narrative based in the
writer’s imagination.
▪ The term fiction is most frequently
associated with novels and short stories.
▪ Historical fiction – authors weave fictional
FICTION
episodes around historical characters,
epochs, and settings
▪ Fictional biography – authors use
imaginative elaborations of incidents and
qualities of a real person
▪ Fiction generally reflects truth even if the
events or characters are not literally
true.
▪ Although readers do not expect fiction to
be literally true, they do expect it to be
pleasurable and meaningful.
▪ central or dominant idea
▪ What is the story really about? – plot vs. theme
▪ What is the subject of the story and what does
the author want us to understand about that
subject?
THEME
▪ Written as a complete sentence
▪ Universal rather than specific
▪ Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” is about a man who has
an obsessive desire for revenge.
▪ Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” suggests that when the
desire for revenge becomes obsessive, it can
deprive individuals of all that makes them human.
Title
Narrator’s or character’s statement
Arrangement of story’s events
INDICATORS OF
THEME
Central conflict
Point of view
Symbols
Changes in character
▪ Exposition
▪ Conflict
▪ Rising action
▪ Climax
▪ Falling action
▪ Resolution
▪ External
▪ Person vs. Person
▪ Person vs. Nature
▪ Person vs. Technology
▪ Person vs. Animal
▪ Person vs. Society
▪ Internal
▪ Man vs. self
▪ Protagonist
▪ Main character
▪ Story revolves around his/her desires
Foil
• Character who contrasts
another character for the
purpose of bringing out the
other’s characteristics
Dynamic
• Changes (clue to theme)
Static
• Does not change (can also
be clue to theme)
▪ Antagonist
▪ “Bad guy”
▪ Not always a villain
▪ Represents a conflicting point of view
▪ Impedes the protagonist’s goals,
desires, path
▪ Might not always be a person
▪ e.g., war or poverty
▪ Foreshadowing – presentation of
material in a work in such a way that
later events are prepared for
▪ Foreshadowing can result from
▪ the establishment of mood or
atmosphere
▪ an event that indicates the later action
▪ the appearance of physical objects or
facts
▪ the revelation of a fundamental and
decisive character trait
▪ Setting – often thought of as “when”
and “where” the story takes place;
however, setting is more than a
geographical location.
▪ Setting provides atmosphere, the
prevailing tone or mood of the story
or an emotional aura that helps to
establish the reader’s expectations
and attitudes.
▪ A symbol is a person, object, action, place, or
event that, in addition to its literal meaning,
suggests a more complex meaning or range of
emotions
▪ Archetypal, conventional, literary
▪ Many meanings; “peel back layers” or look at it
SYMBOL
in different ways
▪ How to recognize?
▪ Repetition – keeps coming up at key moments
▪ Considerable description or attention given to it
(by characters or author)
▪ In a noticeable or important location
▪ Lost and then found at a key point in story
▪ Parallels or corresponds with a character’s
development
▪ Title
▪ Participant (first person) and Non-participant
(third-person)
▪ Unreliable narrator – the reader cannot
POINT OF VIEW
necessarily take what the narrator says at face
value. For some reason, the narrator’s judgment
may be skewed. Just as with people, we
sometimes must question or be skeptical of what
the narrator says.
▪ Omniscient narrator – relates what he/she wants
to relate about the thoughts as well as the deeds
of all the characters (neutral vs. editorial)
▪ Style and Point of View – 1st person – more
distinctive; 3rd person – more objective; however,
even a supposedly objective point of view is not
purely objective.
▪ Annotations
▪ Double- (or Triple-)
Entry Notes
▪ Listing Notes
▪ Journal Writing
▪ In V-Camp, click on the
Library button and then click
on “Articles.”
▪ On the left side of the screen,
click on “Subject Guides” and
select “English, History, and
Religion.”
▪ Scroll down below the 1, 2, 3
boxes and notice the list of
databases in the Key
Resources box.
▪ These databases work in
similar ways to the regular
databases, but literature
databases will provide
articles geared specifically
toward literature.
▪ As practice, let’s select “Gale
Literature Resource Center.”
▪ Once in the database, search for
the text you’re researching.
▪ Browse results to find articles that
are helpful. Click on the various tabs
to find different types of articles
(e.g., Topic and Work Overviews).
▪ Once you decide to use
information from an article, get
the APA citation using the tools on
the right.
▪ Look over your annotations and notes.
What ideas seem most significant? What
did scholars who analyzed the story tend
to focus on?
GETTING IDEAS
FOR WRITING
ABOUT STORIES
▪ Consider some of the questions on the
following slides. Not every question will
fit every story; however, if a question
seems to be especially relevant to the
story you plan to write about, spend
some time jotting down your initial
responses, interrupting your writing
only to glance again at the story when
you feel the need to check the evidence.
Does the plot grow out of the characters, or does it
depend on chance or coincidence? Did something at
first strike you as irrelevant that later you perceived as
relevant?
QUESTIONS ABOUT
PLOT
Does surprise play an important role, or does
foreshadowing? If surprise is very important, can the
story be read a second time with any interest? If so, what
gives it further interest?
What conflicts does the story include? Conflicts of one
character against another? Of one character against the
setting, or against society? Conflicts within a single
character?
Are episodes narrated out of chronological order? If so,
were you puzzled? Annoyed? On reflection, does the
arrangement of episodes seem effective? Why or why
not? Are certain situations repeated? If so, what do you
make out of the repetitions?
Which character chiefly engages your interest? Why?
How does the author reveal character?
QUESTIONS ABOUT
CHARACTER
What purposes do minor characters serve? Do you find
some who by their similarities and differences help to
define each other or help to define the major character?
How else is a character defined—by their words,
actions, dress, setting, narrative point of view?
If a character changes, why and how does he or she
change? Did you change your attitude toward a
character not because the character changes but
because you came to know the character better?
How has the author caused you to sympathize with
certain characters? How does your response—your
sympathy or lack of sympathy—contribute to your
judgment of the conflict?
Do you have a strong sense of time and place? Is the
story very much about say, New England Puritanism, or
race relations in the South in the late nineteenth century,
or midwestern urban versus small-town life?
QUESTIONS ABOUT
SETTING
If time and place are important, how and at what points
in the story has the author conveyed this sense?
What is the relation of the setting to the plot and the
characters? (For instance, do houses or rooms or their
furnishings say something about their residents?)
Would anything be lost if the descriptions of the setting
were deleted from the story of the setting were
changed?
Do certain characters seem to you to stand for
something in addition to themselves? Does the setting—
whether a house, a farm, a landscape, a town, a period—
have an extra dimension?
QUESTIONS ABOUT
SYMBOLISM
Do the seasons or time day play a significant role in the
story? Do the characters’ names hold any special
significance? Do you see any parallels between the
story’s plot or characters and those of the Bible or other
well-known texts?
Do any objects, references, or images recur multiple
times throughout a story? Does the author spend time
describing something using more detail that he or she
does in general?
If you do believe that the story has symbolic elements,
do you think they are adequately integrated within the
story, or do they strike you as being to obviously stuck
in?
Is the title informative? What does it mean or suggest?
Did the meaning seem to change after you read the
story? Does the title help you to formulate a theme? If
you had written the story, what title would you use?
QUESTIONS ABOUT
THEME
Do certain passages—dialogue or description—seem to
you to point especially toward theme? Do you find
certain repetitions of words or pairs of incidents highly
suggestive and helpful in directing your thoughts
toward stating a theme?
Is the meaning of the story embodied in the whole story,
or does it seem stuck in—for example in certain
passages of editorializing?
Suppose someone asked you to state the point—the
theme—of the story? Could you? And if you could,
would you say that the theme of the particular story
reinforces values you hold, or does it to some degree
challenge them?
Strengthen
REVISION
Strengthen your thesis.
Develop
Develop your ideas.
Integrate
and
explain
Integrate and explain your evidence.
Improve
Improve the organization.
Clarify
Clarify your style and edit for correctness.
Submit
Submit to SmartThinking to get feedback from a real person
(as opposed to computer-generated feedback).
▪ Barnet, S., Burto, W., Cain, W. E., & Nixon, C. L. (2018). Literature for composition:
Reading and writing arguments about essays, fiction, poetry and drama (11th ed.).
Pearson/Longman.
▪ Holman, C.H., & Harmon, W. (1992). A Handbook to literature (6th ed.). Macmillan.
Reading and
Writing
about Essays
Chapter 11
Learning Objectives
• Identify types of essays
• Identify an essay’s topic and thesis
• Write a successful paper about an essay, using a writing process
that moves from first annotations to final draft
Types of Essays
• Meditation (or
speculation or reflection)
• Argument (or persuasion)
• Exposition (or
information)
• Narration
• Description
• Most essays are not
pure specimens of a
single type.
• For example, an
argument—and
probably most of the
essays that you write in
English courses will be
arguments concerning
the meaning or
structure of a literary
work—may include
some exposition, such
as a brief summary, to
remind the reader of
aspects of the work that
you will be arguing
about.
Elements of Essays
Persona
Voice
Tone
“As a boy, I saw countless tough guys
locked away; I have since buried several,
too. They were babies, really—a teenage
cousin, a brother of twenty-two, a
childhood friend in his mid-twenties—all
gone down in episodes of bravado played
out in the streets. I came to doubt the
virtues of intimidation early on. I chose,
perhaps unconsciously, to remain a
shadow—timid, but a survivor.”
–from “Black Men and Public Space”
by Brent Staples
Judging only
from these
few lines,
what do we
know about
Staples?
• He is relatively quiet and gentle. We sense this,
not simply because he tells us that he was
“timid,” but because (at least, in this passage) he
does not raise his voice either in denunciation of
white society for creating a system that produces
black violence or in denunciation of those blacks
during his youth who engaged in violence.
• He is perceptive; he sees that the “tough guys,”
despite the fact that some were in their twenties,
were babies; their bravado was infantile and
destructive.
• He speaks with authority; he is giving a firsthand
report.
• He doesn’t claim to be especially shrewd; he
modestly says that he may have “unconsciously”
adopted the behavior that enabled him to
survive.
Topic and Thesis
• As you read an essay, try t