Hey I just have some issues with my essay.
. My main concern is your introduction; it is repetitive and a bit vague. Introductions are one of the most difficult parts of writing a paper. I highly recommend looking into the introduction powerpoint in the additional resources file. With your thesis, the reversal strategy would be particularly strong; people understand war is a part of slaughterhouse five but don’t think of the bell jar as war related, by reading the two novels together we better understand xyz. I think what you also need to make really clear in this introduction is why these two novels are connected; what is the exact interpretation other than “both talk about war”? From your thesis creation assignment, I think your argument was more clearly rooted in how both novels portray war as a factor in mental health disassociation in particular. Make these elements more clear and strengthen the introduction; the job of your introduction is to serve your thesis statement, not to present background information. Keep in mind your readers; anyone reading an academic paper on the subject should be familiar enough to have read the books, so summary is needed for context only. Without this strong guiding thesis, your paragraphs are unorganized and are not grounded in the argument. Each paragraph is mostly a summary of the novel with no quotations or analysis. There are also MAJOR factual issues and very vague statements that are confusing to the reader; you provide no relationship to these concepts to the thesis. Remember the KUP Method and the importance of always going back to the thesis. Another very important issue is the lack of quotations in your paper. You MUST include quotations in the paper. You also provide in text citations with no quotations or direct reference to materials, which is confusing to a reader. You should be consistently directly quoting both the novels AND the academic sources. Without these elements, there is no way to tell exactly what you’re talking about or convey your level of both understanding and analysis. This is crucial to writing a strong academic paper, as the direct quotations are your evidence to support your argument. Your paper should be about 15-25% quotations.
