The best method is to put forward a thesis (agree or disagree with one of the propositions in one of the questions below) and then defend or attack it using examples from the text. You must quote directly but sparingly from the text you’re writing about. History, biography, and politics are not ordinarily relevant to the topics, so don’t bother to include them in your essays
No more than 600 (and no fewer than 550) words. Do not append footnotes to your essays: You should add a list of “works cited” to your suite of essays, but unless you’re using an unusual edition of the works we’re reading, don’t bother to give anything more than page references. Never use ibid, op. cit.—just quote with page references, an author or title reference (Poetics, p.65), and an entry in “works cited.”
Never quote dictionary definitions. Avoid the passive voice (“it is seen” or the politician’s favorite “mistakes were made”). Resist the temptation to quote at length [abbreviate: “Peter sneered . . . Sally screamed.”]. This includes critical texts: a short quotation with the critic’s name in parentheses following it, a full reference in the “works cited.” Refer to authors by their last name. Abbreviate titles to save words: OHYS, PMBC, PP Never, ever start an essay using the author’s name and the title of his book: “In his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez . . .” Also, you need not evaluate either authors or works: the essays invite you to explore a subject not your feelings about the subject.
Decorum (spelling, grammar [different from rather than different than], syntax) matters in the evaluation of your work. For the record: titles of novels are underlined or in italics (no fancy fonts, please), short story, poem, and essay titles are put in quotation marks. Please double-space your essays and, if possible, print them as Times New Roman, 16 point.
Prompt:
Symmetries and oppositions abound in Carpentier’s novella (Old World/New World; Black/White; vaudou/ Christianity. Write an essay about these conflicting energies, beginning with the difference using the contrast between Ti-Noel and Solimán as a point of departure.
