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 poems or play but may not have thought about it as carefully as you have. Because your reader has recently read the poems or play, 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: Write an essay in which you analyze either Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” (964- 966) or Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (packet) in detail. Don’t feel that you have to explicate the poem in its entirety. Rather, I suggest you focus on a handful (maybe three or four) key poetic features and how they contribute to the meaning of the poem. For example, you may want to discuss key images, metaphors, word choices, imagery, or the structure of the poem. (There are certainty other possibilities.) Also, note that these are both Romantic poems, and you may want to discuss how they reflect Romantic ideas. (See the introduction to Romanticism videos in Week Three and feel free to consult outside sources.)

Option 2: Choose three or four poems by Romantic poets; the Romantic poets on the syllabus are Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Analyze these poems to show how they illustrate aspects of Romanticism. Be sure to discuss poetic devices, such as metaphor, symbolism, allusion, and imagery in your analysis. Remember that Romanticism was a very diverse movement and that individual poems (and poets) may illustrate different aspects of it. You can refer to the videos in the Module Three Videos folder for information about Romanticism. You’re welcome to consult outside sources, but it’s not required.

Option 3: Read all the poems in our textbook by Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Pat Mora, OR Adriene Rich. Write an essay in which you discuss common themes in the poems by one of these authors and how the author conveys those themes in different poems. Don’t feel that you necessarily have to discuss every poem by the author, but you should discuss at least three or four. [Note: this topic requires you to read poems not on the syllabus. Check the “Index of Authors” on page A45 near the end of the book to find all poems by an author; they aren’t always together.]

Option 4: Read all the Harlem Renaissance poems on pages 1094-1102. Write an essay in which you discuss common themes in the poems and how the authors convey those themes in different poems. Don’t feel that you necessarily have to discuss every poem, but you should discuss at least three or four. You may want to read and perhaps refer to the contextual material on pages 1089-1094, the “Contextual Excerpts” on pages 1102-1119, or both. [Note that this topic requires you to read poems not on the syllabus.]

Option 5: A Raisin in the Sun takes its title from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which begins with the question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Write an essay in which you discuss the “dreams” of various charters (such as Walter, Mama, Beneatha, Asagai). How do these dreams come into conflict? Does Hansberry seem to approve of any of these dreams more than others? Does the play answering Hughes’s question? If so, how? It might be worth looking at the rest of the poem to help you answer this question. (The poem is quoted in full at the beginning of the play on 1555.)

Option 6: Write an essay exploring the psychological and emotional effects of racism and discrimination as shown in A Raisin in the Sun. You will need to discuss how multiple characters—and perhaps their relationships—are affected.

Option 7: Write an essay in which you discuss the role of gender in A Raisin in the Sun. Be sure to discuss the relationship between Ruth and Walter and the one between Beneatha and Asagai, though Mama’s role as head of the family might also be worth analyzing in this context. The piece by Weaver in your textbook (1636-1640) contains some material that might be relevant to this discussion.

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.