Over the course of this semester, we’ve read and discussed a number of short stories and poems. Each of these texts has provided an opportunity to practice a certain kind of reading—not simply the passive absorption of information, but an active (and often transformative) critical engagement with the artwork. So far, most of our work has been conducted in the classroom, as a group. This assignment is an opportunity to perform some of that same work on your own.
Here are the technical details of the final product:
• Five-to seven (5-7) pages in length
• 12-pt. Times New Roman font; double-spaced; stapled
• A relevant title*
• 2 academic sources, cited in proper MLA format**
* Please do not submit a paper with a title like “Midterm” or “Paper.” The title plays an important role in the success of your argument! More on this later
The Final Draft is due in class on Monday, December 17th
The core of this assignment is literary analysis. In other words, you have three-to-five pages to “make sense” of one short story or poem from the syllabus. At the most basic level, you are attempting to answer three key questions regarding the story/poem:
• What does the text accomplish? (i.e. what effect does it achieve? what does it do—to, for, through, in, or with the reader?)
• How does the text accomplish this?
• Why is this significant—in the text itself, and beyond?
You will need to support your thesis with evidence drawn not only from the text itself, but from outside sources, too, and this means you must conduct research. As always, what matters most is that you articulate a clear, sufficiently narrow thesis and support that thesis with reasonable, compelling evidence. The evidence will come from both primary and secondary scholarly sources.
