in a 4-6 page essay, please complete the following steps:
First, select three episodes in A Journal of the Plague Year that you believe best represent both how Defoe wished to communicate this history and what he wanted his readers to understand about the Great Plague of London in 1665. You should select passages that most concisely and effectively represent both Defoe’s main message AND the unconventional methods that he employed when narrating it. For each one, write a thick paragraph or so that explains each episode and its importance, and then follow that up with your argument for why these three episodes, and not others, best represent what Defoe was trying to achieve with the Journal. Great essays will show that you have developed a sophisticated and independent comprehension of the text. You won’t want to select passages that I’ve discussed at length in podcast videos, for example.
Then, be like H. F. and choose three events or details (let’s also call them “episodes”) from the past year and a half that you believe best represent the reality of the COVID epidemic. You need to narrate these episodes in your essay, and then you need to make an argument for why these elements, and not others, best represent what COVID actually was to someone in the future who didn’t live through what we have. As in Defoe’s Journal, you should consider using a mix of personal anecdotes and official reports/events/statistics, but ultimately the choice is up to you. After you spend a thick paragraph explaining each of your “episodes” and their importance, make sure you offer your argument for why these three, taken together, best encapsulate the reality of COVID.
Finally, conclude your essay with a discussion of what you think the experience of taking this class and writing this essay has ultimately taught you. This is a purposely open-ended (and challenging!) prompt, so you can and should take this in any direction that feels right to you. I could imagine a number of themes that you might want to explore in this final concluding section, such as the relation of official and personal history, the relevance of the past to the present, the intersections of public and private trauma, the value of writing and storytelling, the value of facts and fictions, and so on. But these are only hunches based on what I have been thinking about these past weeks. What has this project taught you?
use this link to add text evidence : https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm
