Essay analysis

ENG4U ESSAY ANALYSIS TEST (READING 30%)

Instructions: ● Carefully read the essay “Song for the Special” by Marina Keegan and answer the

questions below.

● Write all answers in sentence form; provide specific details from the text to support your

ideas.

● Pay attention to the length requirement. Be concise and articulate in your answers.

● Spelling and grammar are being evaluated.

Questions: 1. Identifying the thesis:

a. Identify the author’s explicit thesis; quote the text exactly. b. In two (2) sentences, state the WHAT of her argument. Be sure to use your

own words.

2. State and explain two (2) arguments that Keegan uses to develop her thesis. Keep in mind you are focusing on the “HOW” the author develops her argument.

3. IN YOUR OWN WORDS, clearly evaluate the effectiveness of Keegan’s anecdote on the second page of the essay (paragraph 4).

4. Identify the dominant tone of the essay. Examine the effectiveness of the tone by tying your points to the author's purpose. Use specific details from the essay to support your ideas.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of one (1) rhetorical device. Identify the device and provide a specific example from the text. DO NOT USE ANY DEVICES FROM QUESTIONS 1- 5

“Song for the Special”

By Marina Keegan, 2011

Retrieved from Yale Daily News.

Every generation thinks it’s special – my grandparents because they remember

World War II, my parents because of discos and the moon. We have the Internet.

Billions and millions of doors we can open and shut, posting ourselves into profiles and

digital scrapbooks. Suddenly and totally, we’re threaded together in a network so

terrifyingly colossal that we can finally see our terrifyingly tiny place in it. But we’re all

individuals. It’s beaten into us in MLK Day assemblies (one person can make a

difference!) and fourth-grade poster projects (what do you want to be when you grow

up?). We can be anything! Our parents are divorced but we’re in love! Vaguely, quietly

we know we’ll be famous. For being president, for starring in a movie, for writing a

feature at 18 in The New York Times.

I’m so jealous. Unthinkable jealousies, jealousies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning

novel I’m reading and the Oscar-winning movie I just saw. Why didn’t I think to rewrite

“Dalloway?” I should have thought to chronicle a schizophrenic ballerina. It’s

inexcusable. Everyone else is so successful, and I hate them. There’s a German word I

learned about in psychology class called schadenfreude, which means a pleasure

derived from the misfortune of others. The word flips into my head like a shaming

pop-up when a girl doesn’t get the internship either or a boy’s show is bad. I was lying in

bed the other night wondering whether the Germans created a word for its opposite

when I realized that the displeasure derived from the fortune of others is easier to spell.

I should have thought to coin its green eyes.

I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything. Success is

transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk

into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are

just SO MANY PEOPLE. 1035.6 books are published every day; 66 million people

update their status each morning. At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of

elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking

me what I want to be when I grow up don’t want me to make a poster anymore. They

want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say Hello This is What I

Do.

I went to an arts conference in Manhattan last spring and everyone was

scrambling to meet everyone, asserting their individuality like sad salesmen. This is my

idea, I would say, this is my thing. We stood in cocktail circles and exchanged earnest

interest. Hoo, hoo! Open spaces! Ohh yes! The avant garde! I didn’t have a business

card. It didn’t even occur to me. It might have been funny or endearing but I ended up

just being embarrassed. I don’t have one, I’d say again and again. (Ha Ha!) Then I’d sit

down for another panel to take notes and nod. There were so many people there. There

are just so many people.

The thing is, someday the sun is going to die and everything on Earth will freeze.

This will happen. Even if we end global warming and clean up our radiation. The

complete works of William Shakespeare, Monet’s lilies, all of Hemingway, all of Milton,

all of Keats, our music libraries, our library libraries, our galleries, our poetry, our letters,

our names etched in desks. I used to think printing things made them permanent, but

that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to

create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I

want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can

comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library.

Everyone thinks they’re special – my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my

parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite.