STEP #1:
Choose ONE of the following topics:
ugliness (possible ideas: varying cultural standards of beauty/ugliness; the relationship between ugliness/monstrosity and morality; the effect of beauty standards on gender roles)
mothers (possible ideas: what ideals are attached to the idea of motherhood, what effect certain mothering styles have on children, how mothers are depicted compared to fathers)
violence (possible ideas: who commits acts of violence and why; when/why violence is seen as right or wrong)
food (possible ideas: rules governing what and how people eat; cannibalism; forbidden food; stealing food; food practices as a marker of civilized behaviour; the pleasures of eating)
You are not required to address all (or any) of the “possible ideas” in the parentheses – these are just prompts to start your thinking process. As you develop your ideas, try not to broaden out these topics: if you’re focusing on food, for instance, don’t expand that category to include emotional or metaphorical nourishment, and if you’re focusing on violence, stick to instances of physical violence (if you broaden these categories, they tend to lose their meaning).
STEP #2:
Choose TWO texts by two different authors from the FIRST NINE (9) UNITS of the course (this means you can choose The Tale of Peter Rabbit and/or Peter Pan if you wish, even though we’re covering them after the due date; if you choose Alice you may focus just on Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass, or you may examine both, but in either case, Alice counts as only one of your two texts). You may use the fairy tales (traditional and/or revisionist) as ONE of your two texts, so long as the other text is not a fairy tale (The Princess and the Goblin counts as its own text here, rather than as a fairy tale – by “fairy tales” I mean the contents of Units 1 and 2). If you are using the fairy tales, it is up to you to decide how many tales to incorporate into your essay. You may choose to focus your argument solely on a single tale (in one or more versions), or you may want to make an argument about the fairy-tale genre as a whole, in which case you would use multiple tales to prove your point.
STEP #3:
Consider your topic in relation to the two books you have chosen and ask yourself: “So what?” The topics guide your attention to a concrete aspect of the story (an element of character, plot, or setting); it’s your job to analyze why that topic is meaningful. Often, answering the “So what?” question will mean linking the topic to a more abstract issue such as gender roles, social class, the nature of goodness and evil, the discovery of identity, child-adult relations, or some other issue that allows you to analyze the significance of the topic you have chosen. Do not attempt to cover ALL these ideas – find a specific issue that allows you to develop a strong, focused argument. (See the Essay Tips document for more details about what a good argument is like – you can find it in the “Units 1 and 2” area.)
STEP #4:
Develop a specific, controversial thesis comparing the two texts you have chosen. Your thesis may focus on a common idea shared by the two texts OR it may focus on a fundamental contrast of ideology. Develop supporting arguments that allow you to compare the two texts side by side in each part of the essay. Do not devote the first half of the essay to one text and the second half to the other – go back and forth between the two texts, comparing them directly. Remember that your purpose is not to demonstrate how similar/different the two texts are in terms of plot or setting; rather, it is to compare the underlying ideas within them, assessing whether they agree or disagree with one another in what they are saying about an issue.
STEP #5:
Examine your texts carefully for details and quotations that you can use in your essay. People often underestimate how much textual evidence to include in an English essay; a strong essay will be one that pays close attention to apparently small details that readers familiar with the texts may not have noticed. Your quotations should not simply remind your reader of major plot elements, but should instead call your reader’s attention to the specifics of imagery and word choice. Be sure to introduce each quotation, briefly indicating its context, and comment on how it supports your thesis. You cannot do well on an English essay without including ample textual evidence, including direct quotations from the texts you’re analyzing.
A NOTE ON CHOOSING TEXTS:
You should keep in mind that the simpler the text you’re using, the more challenging it is to come up with a controversial argument and support it with textual evidence. Since the fairy tales come right at the beginning of the course, it is tempting to use them in the essay, and you’re allowed to do that, since it is possible (though challenging) to write a successful essay using the fairy tales as one of the texts. However, I want to include a word of caution here, as picking the fairy tales as one of your two texts can actually add to the difficulty of this assignment. That difficulty becomes even greater if you choose as your second text another “collection” of texts such as Lear’s limericks, or another very short text such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Even if you want to start working on the essay well in advance, it’s still worthwhile to consider using one or two of the full-length novels; with these longer, more complex texts, it can be easier to find elements that can be interpreted in more than one way, and then to fill up a 2000-word paper with plenty of textual evidence supporting your interpretation.
Remember – the body of your essay (the paragraphs between the introduction and conclusion) should be fairly densely packed with quotations and textual evidence. Don’t “jump away” from the texts for long digressions about current events, real-world parallels, etc. – focus on interpreting the texts in detail, and choose texts that will give you plenty to work with.
A NOTE ON THE WORD COUNT:
For the essays on this course, you can consider the word count to be an approximation – you can go above or below that number by 10%. In this case, your essay should fall somewhere between 1800 and 2200 words.
