INSTRUCTION
Choose two or more of the poems, essays, or short stories read this unit and analyze them considering a particular theme in which you compare and contrast the works. Remember that analysis requires one to separate a work into parts in order to understand it as a whole. Things you may want to consider in the analysis include voice, tone, plot, characters, foreshadowing, setting, symbolism, theme, or themes. One of the best ways to approach this type of assignment is to ask yourself what you found to be interesting about a work; trace how it develops and what argument is the author making using these elements. How are the characters, plot, and/or setting used to create meaning and what insight do you bring to the work as a reader that provides significance?
When you write a compare/contrast essay about literature, you have two goals:
· Goal 1: To provide excellent analysis that shows a deep understanding of each individual work you are writing about. Your analysis should give your reader insight into the works of literature that they might not have had just reading it.
· Goal 2: To look at the works of literature side by side and make observations that could not have been made if you were writing about only one In other words, when you compare/contrast the works you choose, you must say why these similarities and differences you are pointing out MATTER
Important note: Analysis of literature is not summary. The biggest mistake writers make when analyzing a piece of literature is that they just retell the audience what the story was about. This is why the thesis of a literature analysis is so important. A well guided thesis with supporting topic sentences in your paragraphs will keep this from happening. Make sure this is what you do. Also, you must use the text as evidence. This means quoting the text and summarizing brief aspects of the text to support your topic in a paragraph and, overall, to support your thesis. If you do not use quotes to support your work, you will not earn a passing grade, so you will be submitting a revision that does so.
While you may be creative in deciding how to approach the literature you are analyzing, following are thematic few suggestions:
Honor/Dishonor
Child Development
The Rights of Man
Gender
Death
Meaning of Life
Purpose
Creation
God
Love
Utopia/Dystopia
Science or Scientific Method
Rationalism
Religion
Marriage
Deism
Suicide
1. Parts of this Essay: Introduction. Define the topic of your essay so that a reader knows what to expect from your writing. Give background if needed. Make a clear thesis statement that you can support with the rest of your essay. This essay is analytical and should provide some insight what you have discovered about a work. Decide what your essay’s position is and that will be your thesis. A question is not a thesis; the answer to that question is your thesis. Please read the additional materials under the online reading for this week’s module to help you create a proper thesis statement for this type of assignment. Your thesis statement should go beyond stating what is obvious to most readers.
2. Body Paragraphs: The body paragraphs will provide support for your essay’s thesis. Each body paragraph should include a topic sentence that helps you demonstrate your thesis statement. Body paragraphs for literature analysis should include textual evidence from the work or works you are analyzing. Taking quotes from the piece of literature you have chosen to analyze is ENG necessary for this type of assignment. While you may decide to include personal observations and other sources, the bulk of your evidence should be from the literature you are analyzing and your interpretation of it.
3. Conclusion: Here you should provide closure to your essay. But note, conclusions are not placeholders in your essay. Make them matter. Make the conclusion help the reader see why your interpretation of a work is important and worthy of attention.
Audience
Consider your readers to be familiar with the work you are writing about but you may provide your audience with a brief summary of the work – the summary should be no longer than one paragraph and is often built into the introduction or the second paragraph of the essay. Consider your audience to be intelligent and address them with some sense of formality. In other words, slang is not appropriate. Be sure to not expect too much of your audience. They will not have thought as long and hard about your subject as you have. What may be obvious to you by the writing of your final draft may still require explanation even to an intelligent audience. Remember that analysis is not a retelling of the story you are writing about. Analysis should take aspects from the stories that are pertinent to your claim.
Dead
Formal Requirements
All papers for this class should be word processed or typed and in MLA format. Always proofread your papers. Margins should not exceed 1” all the way around. 1.5 -space the text of your essay. 3. Papers under three full pages of text will automatically lose 10 points off the grade if less than three full pages. Also, your works cited page does not count as one of the three pages.
Grading Criteria
This paper is worth 150 points (approximately 15%) of your grade for this course. The primary criteria for grading this essay is whether you include a clear thesis statement, supported by relevant topic sentences and well-developed body paragraphs, and whether the essay provides adequate closure. It will also be evaluated on how well you use textual evidence to support your analysis. Do not make a claim about your interpretation of a work without supporting it with textual evidence. In addition, your thesis must be more complex than just discussing the theme of the work you are analyzing. Please see the section on theme in your textbook for clarification. Your essays for this class will always consider how well you use the conventions of the English language. You must submit this assignment in order to pass the course. No exceptions.
Topic
