Modernism Essay

This assignment helps you develop your critical reading, thinking, and writing skills. You will practice analyzing literature through a critical/theoretical lens as we have been learning in class.

Write a 1000-word essay that presents and defends a thesis (main argument) in answer to the following question:

According to Howe’s definition of modernism, is Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”more or less “modernist” than Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”?

Defend your thesis using examples from the primary sources (the texts we're analyzing) and the secondary source (the theory we're using to analyze the texts).

Writing Instructions

Include an underlined 1-2 sentence thesis statement that answers the question.

Support your claims with direct quotations from both primary texts ("Girl" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place").

Support your claims with direct quotations and/or page references from the secondary text (Howe's article), and

Use aspects of college-level composition (cohesion, argument, support, paragraph structure, etc.)

Compare the two literary texts. Don't just focus on one or the other.

Format your document according to MLA standards (headers, spacing, titles, etc.) See section 34 of A Pocket Manual of Style.

Use MLA format for in-text citations and a Works Cited page. See section 33 of A Pocket Manual of Style.