Essay 1: Fiction Essay Instructions
In this first essay, you will be selecting a short story from the assigned reading, or your textbook, to analyze. The thesis, or main point, for the essay will be based on your careful analysis of the story. In other words, you’re going to make a claim about some part of the story’s meaning on a deeper level. For example, your claim could be what you think the theme (the author’s main point) of the story is or how the author addresses an important idea in the work. In order to support your claim, you can discuss how the author uses literary devices (such as characterization, setting, symbolism, or irony) in order to express the theme or an important idea in the work.
Formatting requirements: Use standard MLA document formatting requirements. Google “OWL Purdue MLA documentation style” and click on the first link for a sample and detailed information.
Length: 800 to 1,000 words, not including the Works Cited page
Due Date: End of Week Six (see syllabus for exact date).
Submission Directives: An electronic copy of your paper must be submitted through Blackboard in the Fiction Essay Drop Box (found in LU 6) before 11:55 pm on the paper’s due date.
Assignment Objectives: Your goal is to analyze or apply a critical strategy to a work and to develop and support a specific thesis. Your essay should be unified, developed, organized, and coherent, and should use sophisticated sentence style while meeting the demands of standard English.
Rubric: Be sure to read the designated rubric carefully so that you have a clear idea of what criteria I will be using as I grade your essay.
Must Haves: In any good paper, you must have a clearly identifiable claim or thesis (usually found at the end of the first paragraph) and provide concrete, specific examples in the form of textual evidence as support. A good thesis statement is composed of the following elements:
TOPIC + CLAIM + POINTS OF SUPPORT
The topic would be the short story, the claim is whatever specific conclusion you’ve come to about what the author is trying to communication within the story, and the points of support are the two to three literary devices you’ve decided to discuss the use of in order to support your claim.
You can also think of it this way: TOPIC + 2-3 LITERARY ELEMENTS + ANALYSIS
Example: In his work “Letters from an American Farmer,” Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur uses characterization, setting, and symbolism to express how a nurturing environment is essential to becoming a successful American.
The topic would be the author’s work, the literary elements are the devices you’ve chosen to discuss in order to support your claim, and the claim is whatever specific conclusion—based on careful analysis—that you’ve come to about the work. In order to support your claim, you’ll have to discuss how the author uses these literary devices, pulling directly from the work for textual support. For example, in an essay with the thesis above, I would have to have three body paragraphs (the first about the use of characterization, the second about setting, and the third about symbolism) that all support my claim (or analysis) that Crevecoeur is expressing that the key component to becoming a successful American is a nurturing environment.
For this first essay, you should NOT use outside sources, only a quote or two from the shorty story, and your ideas and writing should be your own. You may want to submit your essay to one of the UPSWING online tutors (See the Student Page on the Savannah Teach website for link). For additional help, you can also use the writing help on the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. (For the Purdue site, type “OWL,” “Purdue,” and “Writing about Literature” into Google). Again, be sure to follow all of the guidelines and suggestions discussed in your texts about writing a good, college-level essay.
Finally, your essay should have a title that is creative or includes your essay’s focus. For example, one might use a title like Feminism and Exploitation in John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums.” Your paper should have a clear introduction and thesis statement, body paragraphs supporting your thesis, detailed evidence and argument supporting each topic sentence, and a conclusion. Your paper should also have a Works Cited page if you incorporated any quotes into your paper. Use the MLA style (specifically, a selection from an anthology or selection from a collection of works). Remember that you need to put quotation marks around any exact words that you use from the text as evidence to support your claims.
