- Question Due: no later than Friday, May 7th, submitted via email to [email protected].
- Essays Due: Wednesday, May 19th, shared with [email protected] as a Google Doc by midnight.
- 5-6 pages typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins
Essay Prompt: 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.
Step One: Submit your topic to me in the form of a question. Your written topic (to be submitted by Friday, May 7th) 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.
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 the question you are asking will require analysis, rather than a simple description of what happens in the texts.
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!!!
Once you have submitted your question, you will receive a response to your email. If the response asks you to further refine or revise your question, you will need to send me a follow-up email with the changes I’ve suggested. Once your topic is “good to go,” the email response from me will conclude, “Good luck with the essay!” This means you are ready to start collecting quotations, putting together an outline, and drafting your essay!
