TOPIC: Harlem plays a key role in The Weary Blues and Hughes characterizes it in highly distinctive ways. Generate a thesis and a critical essay that lays out Hughes’s multi-dimensional vision or representation of Harlem. To begin with, what kinds of locales does he focus on in The Weary Blues? What do they say about how he sees Harlem? In what ways is Harlem for him a place of freedom? In what ways is it a place of unfreedom? What social realities–such as race, class and culture–define Harlem for Hughes? Crucially, what imagery (patterns of images) does he use to define Harlem? Select 6 poems and use them as support. Note: Do not produce an essay with six different approaches. Instead synthesize Hughes’s views into a single, multi-dimensional interpretive claim that gets at the complexity of Hughes’s representation of Harlem. Please use the poems: The Weary Blues, Cross, Harlem night club, Dream variations, Our Land, and Lament for Dark Peoples
write a well-developed, 8-10 page, double-spaced, critical essay along the lines I have indicated in my writing workshops and in the handouts. Technical requirements: 12 point font, Times New Roman. No more than one-inch margins all the way around. Any indented quotations need to be single-spaced. As I said in the syllabus, avoid spacing tricks!
Do not do summary or descriptive essay; do write a thesis-driven critical essay.
Each essay topic below consists of a number of closely related questions. These are not “prompts” or “get- you-started-questions” that you rapidly read and discard; rather they are guidelines to generating a detailed thesis and an overall interpretation. That is, the essay questions are constructed as a kind of “machine” to help you produce a good thesis and a good essay. Each question must be answered in detail in the thesis and developed in the main body. In other words, any adequate discussion must take these questions into account (you may want to bring in other insights, but these should form the foundation of your essay).
All good writing comes from rewriting so give yourself a fair shot at doing well by rewriting your rough draft before handing it in!
Requirements
–A detailed, multi-sentence thesis that mounts a specific argument (do not rely on generalizations or description). See my handout on thesis writing for more detail.
–Supporting and developing your argument: each claim requires explanation and support (most often textual evidence and analysis of textual quotations or references). More on this in the handout and in the seminar on essay writing.
–Style: avoid an overly terse, condensed or a touchy-feely journal writing style. The best critical writing possesses poise, clarity, is finely detailed, and carefully and explicitly develops its case in a methodical, step-by-step fashion. Spelling out in detail what you mean—avoiding “missing steps”—are hallmarks of good critical writing.
