English 2850
Spring 2017
Professor Sylvor
Essay #2
Topic Due: Tuesday, May 2nd (submit electronically via email to jennifer.sylvor@baruch.cuny.edu)
Paper Due: Sunday, May 21st, uploaded to turnitin.com by 5 p.m.
5-6 pages typed, double-spaced, and printed on one side of the page only.
Drawing on any two readings we’ve read over the semester, consider the complicated relationship between the individual and society as it’s explored in the works we’ve read. What issues emerge when society’s demands are not in line with the desires of the individual? How do the authors we’ve studied see that struggle?
This is a broad subject, so you will need to narrow your scope in order to construct a tightly focused analytical essay. Your written topic (to be submitted by Tuesday, May 2nd) should show how you’ve adapted the broad issue of the individual and society to suit the particular texts you’re discussing. For example, you might choose to think about the issue in terms of gender and focus your attention on the conflict between societal demands and individual desires as they relate to women in two of the texts you’ve read. (This is just one example; we could come up with many more!) Formulate your topic in the form of a question you are asking about the two texts you’ve chosen. Keep in mind that this is an analytical essay, not a descriptive one; be sure that your paper does more than simply describe the two texts you’re discussing.
One strategy you may find useful for coming up with your topic is as follows:
–What two texts do you want to write about?
–What area of overlap do you see between the two texts?
–What are you asking about the two texts?
–Once you’ve identified the question you’re asking about your two texts, be sure that your question is not a “yes or no” or “either/or” question and that you will be providing an answer to the “so what?” question.
You may choose your texts from anywhere in the syllabus up to and including “The Metamorphosis.” However you may not write about the text you wrote about in your first paper of the semester. Like your first essay, this paper is a close textual analysis, based on your own thinking about the texts we’ve studied. DO NOT CONSULT ANY SECONDARY SOURCES IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING THIS PAPER.
Essay #1
Due: Your paper must be uploaded to turnitin.com by 11pm on Sunday, March 12th.
3-5 pages – 12pt. type, double-spaced
In a thoughtful, well-organized analytical essay, grounding your response in a close, detailed reading of the text at hand, please address one of the following topics:
- Concentrating on any one of the readings we’ve done so far, consider the relationship between appearances and reality. How are appearances used to deceive or to manipulate? What does this text seem to be saying about the difference between what we think we perceive and what is actually true? How do characters use masks (real or figurative) to deceive those around them?
- Discuss the theme of passion as it relates to any one of the texts we’ve read thus far. Here you can focus either on passion in the context of romantic love or on passion in the sense of any strong feeling or emotion. What does your text seem to be saying about passion, particularly when passion is in conflict with other more rational values?
- Choose any one of the texts we’ve read thus far, and identify what you consider to be its central message with respect to human destiny. In several of the texts we’ve read, characters or authors appear to be struggling to determine their purpose in life. How does your text seem to answer that age-old question? How does your text balance human agency with the idea of a pre-ordained fate?
General Guidelines
–All successful papers will illustrate their claims by quoting directly from the text. When you include a quotation, be sure to explain its significance.
–Assume that your reader is familiar with the text and does not require any plot summary.
–Always use the present tense when writing about literature.
–Your essay should have a title. Use your title as an opportunity to let your reader know what your paper is about!
–As a general rule, the question that you find genuinely perplexing will yield a stronger paper than the question whose answer seems readily apparent to you, so resist the impulse to shy away from tough topics.
–My prompts are meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive. Use my questions as a guide to thinking about your subject, but don’t feel that you have to address every question I raise in an essay prompt.
–You should be able to articulate your paper topic in the form of a question. Be sure that the question will yield a thoughtful, complex response – rather than a yes or no answer.
–Test your main idea or central claim (a.k.a. your thesis) by asking the following: “Could a reasonable reader conceivably disagree?” If the answer is “No, no reasonable reader could conceivably disagree with what I’m saying in this paper,” then you need to do more work to refine your thesis. You want to be staking out an interpretive claim that someone else might disagree with; otherwise you’re simply articulating ideas that are readily available to any reader of the text.
–The opening paragraph of your paper should introduce your topic to the reader (i.e. what question are you asking?), and it should also tell the reader where you’re going to be going in order to answer your question. In that way, even without necessarily spelling out a thesis, your introduction acts as a road map for the rest of the paper. For this reason, you might find it useful to go back and rewrite your introduction after you’ve completed a first draft of the paper.
–Your introduction should lead the reader straight to your topic without resorting to any kind of sweeping generalizations or universal claims.
–Rather than simply restating your introduction, your conclusion should both summarize the important interpretive claim you’ve made in the paper and indicate how your analysis might help readers to understand the text in question.