a essay for ENG

English 200H Argumentative Synthesis

Length: 3—4 pages, MLA style

Audience: College-level reader familiar with the work of Frederick Douglass and of Erich Fromm at a general level

Purpose: In this assignment you will use three skills fundamental to academic writing—summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing. These skills will also help begin to build our theme, the tensions and complexities involved in the struggle between obedience and authority.

Assignment: Compose a response to the following:

Drawing upon specific passages and elements from both Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” and Frederick Douglass’s “Learning to Read and Write,” address the following:

· Choose one key relationship or two related key relationships recounted by Frederick Douglass in “Learning to Read and Write” (often read as an essay but actually is Chapter 7 of his memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave).

· In order to gain insight into the personal dynamics involved, analyze this relationship or these two related relationships in terms of key ideas expressed in Erich Fromm's "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Drawing from specific passages in both essays, show how certain key ideas found in Erich Fromm’s essay sufficiently and/or insufficiently explain the relationship or related relationships you’ve chosen from Frederick Douglass’s essay.

· Your conclusion might include final broader remarks on what your analysis suggests about the institution of slavery in general.

· Be sure to include a works cited page as a separate, last page of your essay.

As you write, remember:

· Effective summary briefly and accurately restates a main point of a reading—and, in this assignment, you will be summarizing at least two main ideas (one from the Fromm reading and one from the Douglass reading).

· Successful analysis concisely and clearly explains a text or—in our case—part of a text by breaking down (analyzing) the text in light of some overriding analytical principle—in our case, ideas set forth by Fromm.

· If you choose to focus on Fromm’s discussion of the benefits of obeying and/or the drawbacks of disobeying, you should be able to paraphrase his discussion fairly easily and accurately. HOWEVER…

· If you choose to focus on a concept from Fromm’s essay regarding types of authority, types of obedience, or types of conscience, your best choice in establishing that focus is to quote Fromm directly—let him explain what he means by the terms he uses, and save your energies for considering those terms as they relate (or fail to relate) to some aspect of Douglass’s narrative.

· Successful synthesis combines two or more texts to create a coherent whole. In our case, you will be evaluating the usefulness and appropriateness of Fromm’s ideas to explain Douglass’s enslavement and struggle for freedom specifically and to better understand the institution of slavery in general.

Writing Tips:

· In your analysis, you cannot include all the points of the Douglass excerpt or all the points of the Fromm essay.

· Therefore, as you come to see what your purpose is in writing your paper, select the elements of the two works most appropriate to your purpose. (Please see next bullet point.)

· Unless your paper focuses on the passing of time in the Douglass excerpt, do not fall into a trap of organizing your paper by following the works chronologically. Instead, organize your paper according to the main points you wish to make.

· As you write, keep in mind your audience.