Assignment 2: Critical Essay (15%)

Completion requirements

To do: Make a submission To do: Receive a grade

This essay of a minimum of 500 to a maximum of 700 words requires you to write about one or more of the seven stories assigned in Modules 1, 2, and 3. You may not, however, write on the same story that you used for Assignment1.

Please submit all assignments in Microsoft Word format. PDFs are not accepted.

Review the list of stories to refresh your memory:

"Royal Beatings" by Alice Munro

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

"Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan

"Paul's Case" by Willa Cather

"Death by Landscape" by Margaret Atwood

"To Room Nineteen" by Doris Lessing

Assignment 2 contributes 15% toward your final grade for the course. Submit your paper as soon as conveniently possible. Although you're not required to follow the suggested schedule in the Course Guide, it's a good idea to complete Assignment2 by the end of Module4 or roughly at the end of week5 of the course. Non-completion of an assignment will result in a mark of zero for that assignment.

Instructions

The first assignment was something of a diagnostic holiday, butfrom this point on you should be more objective and analytical. Try to avoid self-references and subjective observations about the reader. There are wonderful works of art in the course textbook and the more you focus on the texts, the more you will get out of them.

Be sure to back-up your arguments with examplesfrom the stories. Quotations and close paraphrases require a page number in parenthesis and a citation in a Works Cited list using MLA style. You aren't required to do any research for this essay but, as always, secondary material is welcome.

Your essay should have three parts: an introductory paragraph, a body containing fully developed paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. Following is a general guide for what to include in each section of your essay.

In your introductory paragraph:

Provide the complete title of the story you've chosen and the author's complete name.

Identify clearly your essay topic.

Include a strong thesis statement on your topic.

In your analysis in the body of your essay:

Make effective use of topic sentences to identify the main ideas of your analysis.

Support your comments with evidence (paraphrase and direct quotations) from your chosen story.

Explain the significance of each piece of evidence you present.

In your concluding paragraph:

Summarize how your analysis supports your thesis.

Restate your thesis in different words.

Writing Help

If you have questions about academic writing, MLA citations, or Works Cited lists, the following resources may help:

TRU Library's MLA Citation Style Guide

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) MLA Formatting and Style Guide

Open Learning students can get writing support online or in person on TRU's Kamloops campus at the Writing Centre. Peer tutors give feedback on your writing (including organization, sentence structure, grammar, or punctuation); answer questions about MLA style or citations; and offer strategies for effective revision.

Also check the resources listed in the Writing Resources and Reading Resources course areas.

Critical Essay Topics

Choose justoneof the following topics:

There are different types of irony. The most obvious one in short stories is when a character or a narrator says one thing but deliberately means another. Analyze the use of irony in "Rules of the Game" (Tan).

How does the physical setting in either "The Yellow Wallpaper" (Gilman) or "Death by Landscape" (Atwood) mirror the protagonist's inner conflicts?

Although children are thought of as resilient beings, they are susceptible to never recovering from youthful trauma. Evaluate the damaging power of the past on a child in one of the seven stories.

There is clinical metal illness, and then there are more subtle types of aberrant behaviour. Analyze the mental heath of the protagonist in "Paul's Case" (Cather) or "To Room Nineteen" (Lessing).

Some stories end quite conclusively, with all loose ends tied-up, but others resist a sense of closure. For example, does "Death by Landscape" (Atwood) end happily?

This is the end of Assignment 2.Refer to the following submission procedures.