course material

1. In this first essay, you will be selecting a short story from the assigned
readi
In this first essay, you will be selecting a short story from the assigned reading, or your
textbook, to analyze. The thesis, or main point, for the essay will be based on your careful
analysis of the story. In other words, you’re going to make a claim about some part of the
story’s meaning on a deeper level. For example, your claim could be what you think the
theme (the author’s main point) of the story is or how the author addresses an important
idea in the work. In order to support your claim, you can discuss how the author uses
literary devices (such as characterization, setting, symbolism, or irony) in order to express
the theme or an important idea in the work.Formatting requirements: Use standard MLA
document formatting requirements. Google “OWL Purdue MLA documentation style” and
click on the first link for a sample and detailed information.Length: 800 to 1,000 words, not
including the Works Cited pageDue Date: End of Week Six (see syllabus for exact
date).Submission Directives: An electronic copy of your paper must be submitted through
Blackboard in the Fiction Essay Drop Box (found in LU 6) before 11:55 pm on the paper’s
due date.Assignment Objectives: Your goal is to analyze or apply a critical strategy to a
work and to develop and support a specific thesis. Your essay should be unified, developed,
organized, and coherent, and should use sophisticated sentence style while meeting the
demands of standard English.Grading Guidelines: Be sure to read the designated rubric
carefully so that you have a clear idea of what criteria I will be using as I grade your
essay.Must Haves: In any good paper, you must have a clearly identifiable claim or thesis
(usually found at the end of the first paragraph) and provide concrete, specific examples in
the form of textual evidence as support. A good thesis statement is composed of the
following elements:TOPIC + CLAIM + POINTS OF SUPPORTThe topic would be the short
story, the claim is whatever specific conclusion you’ve come to about what the author is
trying to communication within the story, and the points of support are what you’ll discuss
to support your claim. For example, if you’re using the formalist approach, the points of
support would be the literary devices used by the author that you will analyze and discuss.
You can also think of it this way: TOPIC + 2-3 LITERARY ELEMENTS + ANALYSISExample:
In his work “Letters from an American Farmer,” Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur uses
characterization, setting, and symbolism to express how a nurturing environment is
essential to becoming a successful American.The topic would be the author’s work, the
literary elements are the devices you’ve chosen to discuss in order to support your claim,

2. and the claim is whatever specific conclusion—based on careful analysis—that you’ve come
to about the work. In order to support your claim, you’ll have to discuss how the author
uses these literary devices, pulling directly from the work for textual support. In an essay
with the thesis above, I would have to have three body paragraphs (the first about the use of
characterization, the second about setting, and the third about symbolism) that all support
my claim (or analysis) that Crevecoeur is expressing that the key component to becoming a
successful American is a nurturing environment.For this first essay, you should NOT use
outside sources, only a quote or two from the shorty story, and your ideas and writing
should be your own. You may want to submit your essay to one of the UPSWING online
tutors (See the Student Page on the Savannah Teach website for link). For additional help,
you can also use the writing help on the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. (For the
Purdue site, type “OWL,” “Purdue,” and “Writing about Literature” into Google). Again, be
sure to follow all of the guidelines and suggestions discussed in your texts about writing a
good, college-level essay.Finally, your essay should have a title that is creative or includes
your essay’s focus. For example, one might use a title like Feminism and Exploitation in
John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums.” Your paper should have a clear introduction and
thesis statement, body paragraphs supporting your thesis, detailed evidence and argument
supporting each topic sentence, and a conclusion. Your paper should also have a Works
Cited page if you incorporated any quotes into your paper. Use the MLA style (specifically, a
selection from an anthology or selection from a collection of works). Remember that you
need to put quotation marks around any exact words that you use from the text as evidence
to support your claims.