Please compose a two or three page essay analyzing one of the poems or stories we’veread this term. You may focus on a writer’s theme, the poem’s speaker, or one of the story’scharacters. Whatever you decide, please seek quotes from the poem’s or story’s texts to supportyour observations.First, select one of the works and read it closely. Observe ways the writer crafts the storyor poem. Perhaps the writer repeats a certain image, foreshadows events, or develops charactersrealistically.Second, create a thesis and compose an introduction in which you use present verb tense,mention the writer’s name, and state the title of the work.Third, divide your essay into at least three parts, examining one point at a time andcontinuing to use present verb tense in your discussion. Also, please carefully interweave yourquotations into your discussion.Finally, write a conclusion that reviews your main point.For example, your thesis might be that the older waiter in Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” learns to appreciate the café, for it gives people hope to fight the nothingness inlife. Then you would find scenes in the story that show this developing appreciation. Next, youwould add your comments about the old man and older waiter relationship and use quotes tosupport your opinions about the characters.Of course, you must use careful documentation following each summary or quote. Forpoetry, you place the line numbers of the verse inside the parenthesis. For stories, please includethe page numbers upon which the summaries or quotes can be found. Then, at the paper’s end,on a clean sheet of paper, create the work cited page with its one entry.
Possible topics:
The older waiter in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
Nothingness in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Dignity and compassion in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
outh, Confidence, and Employment in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
The Father/Son relationship in “Those Winter Sundays”Loneliness in “
Those Winter Sundays”The meaning of love in “
Those Winter Sundays”The power of memories as the keys to understanding in “T
hose Winter Sundays”Guilt in “The Mother”
Judging others in “The Mother”Pain and loss in “The Mother”“
The Mother” as a warning to allLiving for yourself in “The Story of an Hour”
Freedom in “The Story of an Hour”
Husbands and Wives—the power to force one’s will on the other in “The Story of an Hour”T
he joy that kills in “The Story of an Hour”
