Second Essay Assignment

The first essay assignment asked you to examine a particular moment in your life and relate it to a broader or more universal theme. The second essay assignment asks you to turn that mode of analysis onto a piece of literature. This assignment is designed to be open-ended, to allow you to explore a theme, word (or words), phrases, characters, etc. that have been important to you in this course, and to analyze why they are important in the context of the book, or the reading, overall.

Choose from any of the stories, novels, etc. that we have read this quarter. Reexamine your web-log postings - the main purpose of these, after all, is to announce to yourselves, and to the rest of the class, what specifically you found important or significant in that day's assignment. Now comes the tough part, the "why". Why does something announce itself in your reading, to you? How does it affect the way you interpret the work of literature? Once you have selected a work, refresh yourself on its contents, and single out one or two particular facets that interest you - it can be a character, a theme, a word, a phrase (either by the narrator or one of the characters), even a specific moment in the text. Why does it strike you? Taking a few notes on this question may help you organize your ideas, even help you come up with an interpretation.

Gather from the text all the evidence - all of the moments or quotations - that relate to your selected idea. Think about how they function - what, for instance, in my comment on The Old English Baron, is the purpose of the tension between Edmund's establishing relationships with others based on his virtue, as opposed to the hint that he might be a member of the nobility? Does the novel overall suggest that the tension between feeling and social status is one that remains unresolved? Does the novel suggest that feeling is fine, but that rank, in the end, is what matters; that feeling is fine, but needs social hierarchies to legitimize it? These are just examples of questions you might try asking yourself when looking over the evidence you've compiled. Ask yourself as many questions as possible about how the specific word, phrase, scene, character, etc. relates to the work as a whole. This will eventually lead you to be able to craft a thesis - a hypothesis about why the thing you have chosen is important to the way you interpret the work.

This is an analytical paper - that is to say, a standard English paper. You will present an argument and background in the introduction, and then support your argument in the body of the essay with evidence from the text. Again, I suggest that you look at my posting to the end of The Old English Baron as a model of how to incorporate quotations from the text into your essay. Please avoid using block quotes - make the quotes you use, the evidence you've gathered, work for you. Through this essay, you are offering YOUR interpretation of a work of literature - don't worry about how I read the work, or how anybody else reads it - this is your forum to offer and to support the way that YOU read the work of literature. Do not use outside sources, like criticism, or the internet - focus on how YOU interpret the text.

For Friday, May 6th (note the change in date), bring to class with you a hard copy of your first draft. The draft can be as little as your introduction, thesis statement, and the quotations (the evidence) you've amassed for your argument. It can be as much as two pages (the introduction and the first couple of body paragraphs. It can also be a full draft. What I want is to see that you have thought through what you are writing on, and can provide enough for your revision partner to offer their criticism, advice, and so on for the next stage of the drafting process.

Here, now, is what one of my students in the past has called my "middle school" instructions on what an English essay should look like. In my opinion, it never hurts to be reminded of proper structure and content.

1. Intro Paragraph
- should include author's name and title of the work
- should include the focus of your essay - whatever theme, character, scene, etc. you've chosen to analyze
- should suggest your interpretation - for instance, in my Old English Baron posting:
"the novel suggest that feeling is fine, but that rank, in the end, is what matters."
- should contain a strong central thesis - this may use your suggestion for interpretation, and must include the "how" of your approach. For instance, in my web-log posting, I look at the exchanges between 1) Edmund and Emma and 2) Emma and William. You don't have to number them, but make it clear specifically how you will approach your argument.

2. Body Paragraphs.
- topic sentence - first sentence of each body paragraph should allude to your thesis, and announce one of the "how"s. In my example, my first topic sentence might be "A conversation between Edmund and Emma, as Edmund prepares to leave Castle Lovel, exposes Edmund's awareness that the affection they share is not enough to legitimize a romantic relationship between them."
- in the rest of the paragraph, you give evidence from that scene, and even from related parts of the novel, if you feel like they are necessary, to support that conflict between affection and a legitimate relationship.

3. Transition/Topic sentences
- in a paper like this, each part of the argument should build upon what comes before. Each subsequent topic sentence should, then relate in some way to what has just been said. After the proposed paragraph I've just shown, I might lead off the next paragraph by saying, "Emma's idealistic view of romantic possibility with Edmund is undermined in her later conversation with her brother William." Then, that paragraph goes on to explain and illuminate how, between two people of rank, the issue of rank is immediately foregrounded, and the ideal of a relationship based on simple affection, no matter how deep, is always secondary.

4. Conclusion
- first few sentences can be used to recap your argument to this point, to summarize, if you will, what you've said. Example: "Reeve's novel engages in a debate over the extent to which romantic love and class differences can coexist. Edmund's relationships to Emma and to William expose the longing for a world where social status is not as important as virtue, where affection can establish real relationships, independent of rank. All three of these characters, though, acknowledge that nobility can only love and be loved by nobility. Edmund's marriage to Emma, then, depends on his ability to prove his true social status."
- then, you must "move beyond." This is a big thing with me - everything I just said recaps the evidence I've given so far. Now, as with your first essay, you should try to make a larger, broader suggestion about what this says about the novel, or the work of literature you are examining. For example: "Reeve's novel suggests that the tension between feeling and rank is split along gender lines." I'd then go on to say, in the last few sentences, that "While Emma insists that her feelings for Edmund are based upon knowledge of his virtue and actions while he was a peasant, that Edmund and William constantly betray their certainty that despite their powerful feelings for each other, while Edmund is a peasant, he can never be on an equal footing with them. As men, William and Edmund are aware of the primacy of social status to social relations. While men, from William, to the Baron Fitz-Owen, to Lords Clifford and Graham, all the way to the King, judge and determine social status, the idealism of women like Emma can only ever be an unreachable ideal."

Something like that - this is ONLY a model, and one way to go about an analytical paper, and I don't post it to put pressure on you, only to suggest, in the clearest possible terms, the kind of thing I hope, that over the remainder of the course, that you can produce.