Hello, I need my literary analysis rewritten. I will attach my original paper and new assignment information. If you have any questions, please reach out. Also I am including my instructor feedback.
• First, I want you to reread this story. I want you to take notes. I want you to write a character list and the significance of each character.
• I expect some very poignant summary (approximately 20% of the essay should be summary) that compliments a detailed and well-developed analysis of the characters, the setting, imagery, or metaphors.
Summary example for “Gravel”
The short story “Gravel” by Alice Munro illustrates a family divided after a mother takes leave of her marriage for an actor named Neal, which seemingly results in a pregnancy. The mother, along with her two children, depart from a secure suburban lifestyle with a stable father and husband to a trailer next to a gravel pit only a few miles away with Neal. Neal is presented as a carefree, artistic, and egocentric know-it-all. While the transition benefits the mother and has seemly no effect on the younger of the two children, the oldest child Caro displays contention for the move and Neal. The interactions between Neal and Caro result in the accidental death of Caro and tremendous guilt that haunts the remaining characters, especially the youngest child, who narrates the story.
I also want you to focus on the order of importance in how you provide information in the essay. Create an outline and start from there.
For example:
1. Analyze Caro’s relationship with Blitzee and how that leads to her death (consider how Neal infiltrates his opinions towards Blitzee and how that creates certain reactions and feelings in Caro). Blitzee is Caro’s one ally. She pulls some stunts with Blitzee – why? Think about this – also regarding the drowning. Think also about the wolf and Blitzee.
2. Examine a kept woman who has been boxed by a marginalized society where her only living purpose is to be a mother and housewife and suddenly a piece of life is offered up to her.
Think about this: She has lived a sheltered life, and suddenly she is surrounded by actors, people following their dreams, living these artistic and focused lives. They are inspiring and unrestricted.
3. Examine the contrasts between the wealth and stability of the father (and neighborhood and house) vs Neal.
Think about this: Neal is not a likable character. He is a grown man with a Peter Pan complex. There is nothing redeemable about Neal. Even when he meets up with the adult narrator, his agenda is to absolve himself of the guilt of Caro’s death.
Guilt is a huge theme in this story.
4. Examine Caro’s frustration that the much younger narrator did not have the same resistant reaction to their mother leaving their father. What did this do to their relationship?
5. Examine the moments Caro drowned – what happened? The narrator is now in counseling because of that moment – the moment they decided to sit and do nothing.
AND WHY? Why does Caro jump into the water? What is she trying to prove?
Think about this: Neal is unreliable, not a father figure, negligent, unsafe, and a know-it-all. She wants to prove him wrong.
6. Why does the narrator tell the story as an outsider looking in? We do not receive their age, gender, race or name.
Think about this: Neal and Caro are the most identified characters in the story. They take up everything.
7. Examine the gravel pit. What does it represent throughout the story? It beholds different meanings and shapes throughout.
Remember, you should have read ALL information in the class TOC and Little Seagull Handbook.
In the future, I will return the essays with highlighted marks that refer to rules listed below (as well as in the class TOC) and additional comments if needed. I expect these highlighted marks to become fewer and fewer as we work through the semester.
WRITING ESSENTIALS:
• MAKE SURE YOUR ESSAY IS IN MLA FORMAT AND FOLLOWS THE GUIDELINES! MLA format: includes class information, title, and page numbers with your last name at the top right. Please read all information in the class TOC.
Quotation marks for:
Titles of short or minor works
Songs
Short Stories
Essays
Short Poems
One Act Plays
Other literary works shorter than a three-act play or complete book
• Unless you are writing a narrative essay, do not use first, second, or third person.
• Semicolons join two complete sentences that share an idea: “The cat slept through the storm; the dog cowered under the bed.”
• DO NOT use contractions in academic essays.
I’ve = I have
don’t = do not
• Formal language: Because this is an academic essay, the language should be more formal and informative. Casual language (think what you would send in a text) is not appropriate. As Stephen King said, “Writing is refined thought.”
• Sentence structure rules: complete sentences require key information: a subject, a verb and a complete idea.
• DO NOT pose questions to the reader as a method to fill space or get to your argument/opinion/idea/point. Avoid redundancy and wordiness.
• Common use of commas in sentences is listed in the attached chart. Commas can be used in sentences with ‘and’ when it joins two independent clauses: “He walked all the way home, and he shut the door.”
• Commas also come after introductory words or phrases: “So, I went to the store.” “Before I went to the store, I noticed a car outside.”
• NUMBERS: age is always numeric. Numbers one through nine are spelled. Numbers 10 and above are numeric. Bigger numbers, like six million, are spelled.
• Add hyphens to modify a noun, this is called a compound adjective: “an off-campus apartment.”
• TENSE: Past tense is often how we write. But stay in that tense. Do not bounce from past to present tense unless you are bouncing back and forth in a timeline.
• ONE space between sentences – not two. “I ran inside. She was there.”
• Quotes: Periods and commas always go inside of quotation marks: “He has a cat.” When quoting from a source: “At that time we were living beside a gravel pit” (Munro, 1).
• Read aloud: When you begin your revision process, reading your work aloud helps identify problems.
• REVISE, REVISE, REVISE to avoid run-on sentences, wordiness, and avoid issues with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD LITERATURE PAPER?
When you write an extended literary essay, often one requiring research, you are essentially making an argument. You are arguing that your perspective-an interpretation, an evaluative judgment, or a critical evaluation-is a valid one.
A DEBATABLE THESIS STATEMENT
Like any argument paper you have ever written for a first-year composition course, you must have a specific, detailed thesis statement that reveals your perspective, and, like any good argument, your perspective must be one which is debatable.
Examples
You would not want to make an argument of this sort:
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play about a young man who seeks revenge.
That doesn’t say anything-it’s basically just a summary and is hardly debatable.
A better thesis would be this:
Hamlet experiences internal conflict because he is in love with his mother.
That is debatable, controversial even. The rest of a paper with this argument as its thesis will be an attempt to show, using specific examples from the text and evidence from scholars, (1) how Hamlet is in love with his mother, (2) why he’s in love with her, and (3) what implications there are for reading the play in this manner.
You also want to avoid a thesis statement like this:
Spirituality means different things to different people. King Lear, The Book of Romans, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance each view the spirit differently.
Again, that says nothing that’s not already self-evident. Why bother writing a paper about that? You’re not writing an essay to list works that have nothing in common other than a general topic like “spirituality.” You want to find certain works or authors that, while they may have several differences, do have some specific, unifying point. That point is your thesis.
A better thesis would be this:
Lear, Romans, and Zen each view the soul as the center of human personality.
Then you prove it, using examples from the texts that show that the soul is the center of personality.
