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As promised, I am sharing a written version of the information that I provided in class about how to organize your final essay. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about these guidelines.

How does one organize an essay about two different texts?

To begin, let me state the obvious:  Before you begin to draft your essay, you MUST have a plan!  It doesn’t matter whether your plan is a traditional outline or just a list of body paragraph ideas, but you need to sketch out the structure of your essay before you begin to write.

When I write a paper, I start by collecting the “textual evidence” that I want to use (all the quotations and examples from the text that address my question).  Then I sort the evidence into different paragraphs, based on the idea that each piece of evidence illustrates or supports.  Then I decide what order of paragraphs would be most effective.  This means that before I begin writing my first draft I already know what idea each body paragraph will be exploring, what textual evidence I will be including in each body paragraph, and what order I will be presenting my ideas in.

For your final essays, you have two different possible paths for organizing your body paragraphs:  The Sequential Option and The Alternating Option.  I describe both below.  The alternating option is slightly more challenging to execute.  It works best when you discover that your texts are very closely aligned and that the ideas you have about one text hold true for the other text as well.  Do not “mix and match.”  Choose one of these structures, and stick with it!  These examples each have three ideas.  I just stopped at three because that was enough to make my point; I would imagine that you would have at least three ideas for each of the texts you’re writing about.  By “ideas,” I mean claims about the text that respond to your over-arching question.  Each of these ideas gets its own body paragraph.  You will notice that in both options, only the introduction and conclusion discuss the two texts together in a single paragraph.  Each body paragraph focuses on a single text.

The Sequential Option 

1.Introduction:  Lays out your question in relation to both Text A and Text B

2. Text A – Idea #1

3. Text A – Idea #2

4. Text A – Idea #3

5. Text B – Idea #1

6. Text B – Idea #2

7. Text B- Idea #3

8. Conclusion – Brings together Texts A and B, recaps the argument you have made in the body of your paper, and provides an answer to the “so what?” question.  What are the implications of what you have shown us in this essay? What do we learn from it?

The Alternating Option

1.Introduction – Lays out your question in relation to both Text A and Text B

2. Text A – Idea #1

3. Text B – Idea #1

4. Text A – Idea #2

5. Text B – Idea #2

6. Text A – Idea #3

7. Text B- Idea #3

8. Conclusion – Brings together Texts A and B, recaps the argument you have made in the body of your paper, and provides an answer to the “so what?” question.  What are the implications of what you have shown us in this essay? What do we learn from it?

–What do you think the significance of Allende’s title is? What does it mean to be made of clay? –

-What happens to Rolf in his encounter with Azucena?

–Why do you think Azucena becomes a symbol of the tragedy that is unfolding in the story?

–What did you make of the President’s visit to the site of the disaster? What kind of commentary is Allende making here?

–How can you connect this story with your own experiences of natural or other disasters? Are there elements of the story that you can relate to? How?

The work I chose for this assignment is called Eternal City, which was painted by Peter Blume. Peter Blume was born in a small town in Russia called Smorgon. He then emigrated to the United States and ended up settling in Brooklyn, New York. Before fully pursuing painting, Blume left high school early to work at a jewelry factory and a lithography plant. In 1932, he was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship which allowed him to travel to Europe. In this trip he visited Rome 10 years after the fascist takeover of Italy; which sparked his inspiration for the painting, ” The Eternal City”.

In the ” The Eternal City”, the most prominent piece of the painting is the blue head popping out of the jack in the box. The blue head is a representation of the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. You can see the head is looking over the elderly woman with a leg covered in plaster; surrounded by ruins of Roman statues and people in tunnels running down the underbelly of the scene. The tone of the painting is chaotic and oppressive, with people in the background being seen fearful as a threatening officer lords over them with a horse and armor. I believe this painting is trying to represent how Mussolini and his idea of fascism ruined one of the most historically significant and beautiful cities in all of history. I also think the naming ” The Eternal City” was to showcase how no matter what, Rome will always be present and significant; I believe when Blume chose this name he shared his hope that one day Rome will be free of this oppressive regime and return to it’s former glory and beauty.

This work incorporates some of the key characteristics involved with modernism such as surrealism and cubism. From the distant mountains to the use of a pink sun; the bold colors force a sense of amazement and attention to detail. Using vibrant colors on the head of Mussolini overlooking the dark corner which the elderly woman in a cast with a bejeweled christ being displayed. Blume used this painting to show his feelings of disgust towards fascism and how it made a once beautiful city, a ruin.

I chose this piece because I am always attracted to bright/vibrant colors and the amount of detail in this painting made me find something new every-time I looked at it. The use of shading and shadows in the window pane of the bejeweled Christ left me in awe. The mixture of realism and surrealism gave me the vibe of a dream like appearance; the amount of detail in every little face and even the ruins of the statues makes this ridiculously impressive to me. The use of landscape and depth also adds to the wow factor of this painting.

Some questions I may have is: Were any aspects of this painting foreshadowing the coming of WWII? Do the two men staring at Mussolini while everybody else runs in chaos have any significance? And lastly, what does the bejeweled Christ represent?

The artwork that I chose is “Wheat Field with Cypresses,” by Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent was borned on March 30,1853 in a city called Zundert. He is one of the most famous impressionist painters whose work had a impact on the history of art. Throughout his life, Vincent struggled with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. His emotional state serves as an important factor that influences his artwork and we can see this affection in his use of color and brushwork.

He created this paint work during his stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. This artwork displays a peaceful and vast wheat field, Vincent’s use of color on the wheat field conveys a sense of energy and brightness to the painting, the rhythmic pattern of the wheat indicates a calm breeze flowing through the field. Overall the use of strong colors such as yellow, green and white provide a visually appealing image.

This artwork reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism because of its unique style and its significance in modern art. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, most of the artists were seeking for new ways of expressing themselves and moving away from conventional techniques in art. Van Gogh’s unique style in using color and brushwork in this painting. For instance, the swirling pattern in the sky and the distinctive shape of the tree is a symbolization of an abstract work and played a crucial role in the transition from traditional art.

I think what drew my attention in this painting is Van Gogh’s use of expressive brushwork and color. His use of color on the wheat field makes the artwork visually captivating. Furthermore, the unique pattern of the wheat and the sky gives me the impression as if these objects were moving. 

The artwork I selected is Vetheuil in Summer by Claude Monet. Claude Monet is a French artist. His active period was during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Claude Monet is the founder of impressionism, which became a core feature of modernist artwork. Claude Monet is a master at using colors, lights, and shadows in terms of expression. Monet experimented with the combination of light and color by depicting the same spot at different seasons and drawing a conclusion on the application of color in expressing impressionism.

Vetheuil in Summer was created in 1880. The artwork depicted the view of Vetheuil from the opposite side of the Seine river bank. The painting is a typical representative work of Claude Monet in terms of color and light depiction. Monet’s art focused on accurately recording the sensation of color and light in nature, which is a reputation of modernism in the visual arts. Modernism focuses on the reflection of society, nature, and the real lives of people in artworks. While Impressionism focused more on depicting light and shadow in nature, it emphasized conveying ideas from nature and ideas from humanity instead of only recording nature and human activities.

This painting is not my favorite work among Monet’s paintings, but it was the most outstanding to me during this visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The contrast of the indoor lighting at the museum and the sunlight outside made this bright painting of a sunny afternoon at the Seine River bank catch my attention. The painting illustrates the ideal sunny afternoon that’s always in my imagination. The combination of the blurry contour of objects and the use of bright color conveyed the feeling of being at the river bank instead of how it looks at the river bank. By looking at the painting, I can sense the warm breeze of early spring and the joy of a relaxing day.