Below are the detailed intructions from my professor please make sure you follow them down to the smallest detail. I’ve also attached a sample essay and the stories that need to be read in order to create the essay
Essay 2: Reasoning in Kurt Vonnegut’s Short Fiction
For your second essay, you’ll perform a rhetorical analysis of one of the ASSIGNED short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
“Harrison Bergeron”
“Welcome to the Monkey House”
“The Euphio Question,”
Focus especially on his use of ethos, pathos, and logos to convey his argumentative opinion about a particular subject and explaining how he presents his opinions (and possibly his opposition’s) and why he believes what he does.
TRIGGER WARNING: The short story “Welcome to the Monkey House” contains a scene of sexual assault. Proceed with caution. If you are concerned about exposure to such disturbing content, please do NOT read this story. You can avoid it entirely without any consequence on your essay, discussion post, or quiz grades.
YOUR TASK: You should observe and explain how he uses (and possibly misuses) logical and emotional appeals, as well as his “author persona.” Then you will judge whether he is successful in his effort, explaining why he was or was not successful. The point is for you to focus on the author’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos in the novel—no matter how weak or strong— to persuade his readers to believe as he does, judging his effort as a means of understanding what is and what is not quality argumentation.
NOTE: ALWAYS ASSUME YOUR READER HAS READ THE WORK OR WORKS YOU ARE ANALYZING IN YOUR ESSAY. NO NEED TO SUMMARIZE THE TEXTS FOR YOUR AUDIENCE. THEY HAVE READ THEM, BUT THEY NEED YOU TO TEACH THE WORK TO THEM.
Possible subjects maybe include:
Vonnegut’s argument against religion
His argument for or against society’s use of technology
His argument for or against personal freedom, etc.
BUT you are welcome to pick another argument to investigate, with instructor approval, as long as you focus on one of the five ASSIGNED short stories.
Your essay should feature the following:
Construct a precise thesis statement that articulates your judgmental response to Vonnegut’s reasoning in the short story. Make strong claims about what you believe to be the purpose and the overall effect(s) of the writer’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos, and then defend your assertions over the course of your essay. This sentence will be the FIRST sentence of your CONCLUSION paragraph. Yes, I know that sounds weird, but trust me.
Your essay should feature a clear and consistent focus throughout, with coherent and unified body paragraphs, with three of them likely centered on ethos, pathos, and logos, with other points being covered in additional paragraphs. In other words, every paragraph should be constructed to support your main idea—your thesis—without any dissention among your body paragraphs. If the paragraph doesn’t support your thesis in some clear way, get rid of it, or modify your thesis accordingly. You will have at least FIVE body paragraphs, plus an introduction and conclusion.
Organize/sequence your paragraphs in a deliberate and effective method that best leads your readers through your argument/analysis. When one is writing about a single narrative text, this organization pattern is usually emphatic/progressive or chronological/sequential. For this essays, progressive (your paragraphs getting stronger as we go through the essay) would be best.
Provide specific and relevant textual evidence in support of each of your topic sentence assertions in every paragraph. Keep in mind that every body paragraph must feature some evidence from the text. Approximately 10-15% of your essay should be “direct quotations,” with the rest of your supporting evidence being a combination of paraphrase and summary.
Don’t assume your readers will interpret your evidence/support how you want them to, so add the appropriate level of contextual explanation in your quotation and paraphrase lead-ins and analytical commentary afterwards that clearly connects any provided evidence to your topic sentences and thus to your thesis statement. In other words, don’t just throw in a quotation and think that’s enough. Instead, blend your quotations into your essay by providing a lead-in that connects your quote to the ideas you’ve been discussing in the paragraph. And the after the quote, explain WHY/HOW the quotation proves your point to be valid.
Use the MLA Format for all textual citations, including any and all paraphrase, summary, and direct quotations. In addition, you will provide a complete and accurate Works Cited page for this essay, which does not count towards the minimum page requirement.
Page Length: 4 full pages minimum and 6 pages maximum, plus a Works Cited page
Word Count: 1,300 words, minimum
