Assignment:
For this assignment, students will produce a 6- to 8-page interpretive essay that focuses
on thematic development in ONE of the short stories provided below. By “thematic
development,” we mean the ways in which authors develop key insights about the
complex worlds and societies that characters inhabit and experience. This, of course, is
accomplished through literary representation, and as literary representation, we must
examine the effective, if not strategic, use of various literary devices operating in these
texts.
Stated differently, when analyzing thematic development, we must also consider the
intersection of various literary devices essential to thematic development in fiction, which
may include the following: plot development, narration and point of view,
characterization, setting, symbolism, and figurative language. Undoubtedly, we can
consider theme to be one of several literary devices employed by authors of fiction.
However, as stated in lecture, it would seem that when taking stock of the use of
intersecting literary devices, we almost always arrive to a discussion about theme. Thus,
we would do well to examine the complex ways in which various literary devices work in
combination to produce what we call in literary studies “thematic development.”
Furthermore, we would be remiss to overlook the importance of contextual analysis for
this assignment. In other words, we cannot simply reduce the short stories to formal
analysis. Doing so would constitute nothing less than the worst kind of a-historical and
de-contextual analysis (plus it would make for a rather boring essay). Instead, we must
put both types of analyses to work, that is, we must pursue both textual and contextual
analyses for this assignment. Therefore, students will need to historically situate the
selected text, which implies thinking about the social, cultural, and/or political contexts
from and to which the text emerge and speak.
* the short story I chose is Chickamauga
