Explore how Stephen King uses Sports for literary purposes in “Apt Pupil”, “Rita Hayworth”, and “Shawshank Redemption”.
“Literary purposes” include describing setting, creating atmosphere, developing plot (setting forces or people in opposition, building suspense, and resolving conflict), portraying character (moral, personality, and physical traits), and communicating theme (making a meaningful statement about human life in the world). For example, the cat that Dussander captures communicates the theme that giving into temptation has consequences; the comparison of Dussander to a vulture portrays the predatory aspect of his personality.
Your topic may appear literally in the text (for example, Dussander captures a literal cat), or it may appear figuratively (for example, Dussander is compared to a vulture). Both literal and figurative appearances of your topic may serve literary purposes.
If you find only a few passages on your topic in the novellas, you may wish to talk about all these passages; you will likely end up showing that your topic is used for several different literary purposes. However, if your topic appears frequently, you may want to select only the passages in which your topic is used for a single purpose, such as portraying character.
Draw on at least four peer-reviewed articles or book chapters in your essay. Not much has been written about these novellas; when you look for sources, look for material about your topic instead of about the novellas. Relate what you find in peer-reviewed articles in the field you select — law enforcement, sports, food, fashion, media, education (to name some examples) — to what you find in the novellas.
Include at least one quotation in each body paragraph. Do not use quotations to summarize. Do not quote a passage unless you plan to follow it with an interpretation of it.
Introduce each quotation with your own words in the same sentence. Do not let a quotation stand alone as its own sentence.
Include a parenthetical reference at the end of any sentence that contains a quotation or a paraphrase from a source.
Append a Works Cited page in MLA format to the end of your essay. Include the two novellas and all of your secondary sources on this page. Do not include any sources you do not quote or paraphrase in your essay.
