Literature HOMEWORK

LIT 100 Introduction to Literature April 2025

Essay One Assignment

Write an essay of 750-1000 words in response to one of the topics below. (If you would like to create a topic of your own, check with me first.)

Here are some key points for success on this assignment: • Your essay must have a clear thesis; see the thesis guidelines document for more detail. • You must support your claims with concrete evidence from the text. Evidence can

include details from the text, paraphrased passages, and, most importantly, carefully chosen quotations.

• Essays that do not effectively incorporate and analyze direct quotations from the text will receive minimal credit.

• Consider your audience for the paper to be other students in the class—in other words, people who have read the story but may not have thought about it as carefully as you have. Because your reader has recently read the story, you don’t need to summarize the basic plot in your paper.

Remember, your goal in writing about literature is to show how an author (or authors) use language to create meaning and literary effects. You can only do that effectively by using direct quotations. You should use quotations whenever the exact wording is important to your argument or to remind the reader of a detail they might not remember. Always be sure to explain fully how the quoted material supports your point and/or creates the literary effect you’ve identified. Keep your quotations as brief as possible, quoting only those words necessary to your argument. Don’t overquote to pad the paper.

You’re welcome to use outside sources if they help your argument, but it’s not required or even recommended. I’m most concerned to see that you can use carefully chosen textual evidence to make a coherent and interesting interpretation of the text(s).

Option 1: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” “Lusus Naturae,” and “A Hunger Artist” all feature characters (the “angel,” the girl in Atwood’s story, and the hunger artist) who can be viewed as misfits or outsiders. Write an essay in which you compare at least two of these stories, highlighting both similarities and differences. Discuss not only the characters and their lives but also the responses of others (including families and communities) to them. Your focus will vary depending on which stories you choose, but you could also talk about how the characters view themselves and their situations. Ultimately, what do the authors want to show through these stories and what do the stories say about the communities depicted?

Option 2: Write an essay in which you contrast the point of view in the stories “Araby” and “Hills like White Elephants.” Begin by describing the differences between the points of view in the stories. Then, discuss why the point of view is appropriate for each story and how the authors’ choices of point of view contribute to the meaning of each story. You might also think about how the stories would be different if they were told from different points of view.

Option 3: Write an essay in which you describe the nature and evolution of the relationship between the narrator and Sonny in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Be sure to show how the relationship changes through time. There are many details you could discuss, including the story the narrator’s mother tells him about his father and uncle and how Sonny’s performance at the end of the story changes the narrator’s understanding of his brother.

Option 4: What insights does O’Brien offer about the psychology of soldiers at war in “The Things They Carried”? There are many ways to approach this topic. You might want to talk about the intangible “things” the men carry, the way the soldiers speak, even the way O’Brien tells the story. The soldiers’ views on fear, courage and valor could also come into play. Also perhaps discuss how key incidents and characters help answer this question.

Option 5: O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” are largely about how people misunderstand each other, fail to communicate, and even deceive each other—and sometimes themselves. Choose one of these stories and use examples from the story to elaborate on these themes. What, in other words, does the story say about how and why people get things (and each other) so wrong?

Option 6: Using multiple perspectives has become a common narrative technique. Use examples from Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon to discuss some of the things multiple perspectives help a filmmaker (or author) do. Also discuss how using multiple perspectives helps Kurosawa create the meaning in his film. (You can use the Rashomon script available in Module One to find quotations to support your analysis.)

Option 7: The contemporary short story writer George Saunders wrote of Chekhov’s Gooseberries that “The story is not there to tell us what to think about happiness. It is there to help us think about it. It is, we might say, structure to help us think.” How does the story help us think? In particular, why does Chekhov have Ivan tell his brother’s story (rather than telling it directly) and what is the effect of the other character’s reactions to it? To put this more simply, what effect do you think Chekhov wants the story to have on his readers and how did the choices he makes in the story create that effect?

Writing About Literature

The essays you write in literature courses attempt to answer interesting questions about works of literature. These questions are interesting for at least two reasons: a) their answers are not obvious, and b) their answers (or at least the attempt to answer them) can enrich other readers’ understanding and experience of those works of literature. In short, you should strive to make your essays interesting to a reader who is familiar with the stories by making non- obvious points and offering insights can enrich the reader’s understanding of the story.

Note that your textbook provides a very useful and detailed discussion of writing about literature starting on page 1994.

Additional Information and Expectations

• For this assignment, I want to see your own interpretations of the stories. You can use secondary sources if they’re helpful, but it’s not required.

• Remember that your interpretations must be supported with evidence from the text in the form of specific details, paraphrase, or quotations.

• Make sure to integrate quoted and paraphrased material effectively; see a writing handbook, the Purdue OWL website, or the “How to Use Quotations” resource in the Learner Resources (in the “Additional Resources” folder) in Brightspace for help.

• Format your paper according to MLA conventions; include in-text parenthetical citations to show where your quotations and other evidence come from. Include a works cited list, though it will likely only include the story or stories you discuss. The Purdue OWL provides all the information you will likely need for formatting the paper: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_styl e_guide/index.html

• Your first paragraph should end with a clear, analytical (rather than merely descriptive) thesis. In other words, you need to make an insightful, non-obvious point about the text(s). See the thesis guidelines hand out for more info.

• Your writing should be clear, direct, and free of errors. Proofread carefully. Make sure your paragraphs are unified and coherent and have clear topic sentences.

• Don’t pad your paper in any way. Make sure everything you write is essential to your argument about the text and write as clearly and concisely as possible.

Remember, you MUST use concrete textual evidence in the form or direct quotations. Quotations must also be integrated correctly and grammatically; see the “How to Use Quotations” resource in the Learner Resources (in the “Additional Resources” folder) in Brightspace for more information. Your quotations should be:

• Clearly relevant to the point you want to make. Be sure to explain when appropriate how exactly the language you’re quoting supports your analysis—the last sentence in the sample post above is a good example.

• Short. Don’t quote any more than you need to make your point. Especially, don’t give the appearance that you are quoting more than you need to pad your response. Most quotations should not be more than a few words. In a short piece like a discussion post, they should rarely, if ever, be more than a sentence. The quotations in the sample above are good examples.

Steps For Writing Your Paper 1. Once you have picked a topic, reread the story with the topic in mind. Whenever you

find evidence in the text that might help you answer the question, mark it so you can find it later.

2. Formulate a tentative thesis. Try to write this thesis out in a single sentence if possible. If that is not possible, don’t worry, but do try to write down the thesis. See my handout (in Module One) with information about the thesis and examples.

3. Next, consider how best to organize your evidence and arguments. • For example, if you’re writing about a single story, would it make sense to divide

the story into stages or sections, and deal with each one at a time, perhaps in separate paragraphs? Or would it be best to organize the body of your paper around the key points you want to make about the story; that may well be preferable. If you’re comparing two stories, which should you discuss first? If the question itself has more than one part, should you address one idea first and then the other? There are different ways of dividing and arranging your points. Your goals should be to do so in a way that makes it easy for your reader to digest and follow your arguments. Try to sketch out an outline that indicates these different parts and how you’d like to arrange them. You could even make a more formal outline.

4. Once you’ve divided the task into its parts, draft each part as at least one separate paragraph; some parts may require more than a paragraph. Each of these parts of the paper should have a claim of its own to argue, a claim that helps you prove your general claim about the story. In each paragraph, you should explain how the evidence in the story supports your claim.

• Note that simply quoting or referring to the evidence will not be sufficient. You need to explain to your reader what conclusion they should draw from that evidence. If you’d like models for such paragraphs, there are several sample student essays in our textbook on pp. 37, 140, and 420 (a comparison-contrast essay). As mentioned above, consult the “How to Use Quotations” resource in the Learner Resources (in the “Additional Resources” folder) for more information on properly formatting quotations.

5. Write a draft of the essay based on your outline and the examples in the textbook. If possible, set it aside, and think of something else for a while. Then pick it up again and try to read it over as if you were a reader who had never seen it before. Consider the following general features of the draft:

• Do you agree with the thesis? Is the thesis clearly stated? Are there any terms used that are vague or could be more clearly defined?

• Does the evidence presented support the thesis? • Can you recall evidence from the story that might contradict the thesis? • Can you recall additional evidence from the story that might support the thesis? • Is it easy to follow the connections between paragraphs? (If not, you may need

to strengthen your transitions and topic sentences.) Does each paragraph clearly support the thesis of the whole paper?

• Are individual paragraphs easy to read? Are they each unified around a single topic or claim, or do some try to do too much?

• Is all evidence clearly explained? Will the reader be able to see how it supports the conclusions drawn from it?

6. Once you have revised the draft, edit it. Make sure sentences are clear and grammatical, and check spelling and punctuation.