Writing II: This Is the End

Writing II: This is the End

Essay 1: Analyzing a Text

Your first essay of the semester will be based on your analysis of a single text, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Analysis goes beyond observing or summarizing the data, but instead draws out implications not apparent in a superficial reading. Your object in this essay will be to identify a snag in the text—a moment that raises a nagging question in your mind—that has important implications for the text as a whole and for our understanding of why writers are compelled to write about disaster. The passage you choose should reveal something not obvious from a first reading of the text. You will closely analyze that passage for readers in terms of the evidence, and then you will follow through on the consequences of your analysis for the text as a whole.

Your Assignment:

Write a draft of Essay 1. Your essay should be about 5 pages long. Your draft may be a bit shorter, but it should express your argument as clearly as possible and should have a clear beginning, middle, and ending. Please use the MLA style of documentation. Your essay should be vividly written in clear, economical prose, and like all good essays, it should attempt to provide readers with a better (deeper, fuller) understanding of the text.

Your draft of Essay 1 is due on turnitin.com by 8AM on Saturday, February 8. We will schedule draft conferences on Thursday and Friday (February 13th and 14th).

Your revision of Essay 1 is due to turnitin.com by 8AM on Saturday, February 22nd.

Cover Sheet:

Each time you turn in a rough or final draft of an essay, you must provide a cover letter (one single-spaced page, addressed to your readers), in which you summarize your argument, let us know what you value about what you’ve done in this draft (using specific examples), tell us what you think you still need to work on, and (in the case of rough drafts) let us know what you would like us to help you with. A thorough cover letter should be about a page long.

These are the things I’ll be looking out for in your first essay:

Thesis, Thesis, Thesis: Your thesis should be true but arguable (not obviously or patently true, but one alternative among several), be limited enough in scope to be argued in a short composition and with available evidence, and get to the heart of the text being analyzed. It should also govern the whole essay.
Focus: The main purpose of the beginning is to focus your essay. By focus the essay, I mean making clear to readers what question or problem is at the center of your essay, in this case, what strikes you about the particular passage that you’ve chosen to concentrate on. The aim of academic argument is a better understanding of the evidence, which assumes there is something to be understood, something that needs explaining. Remember: your beginning tells your readers what you are going to do in your essay and why it’s important to do it. (This is your motive.)
Analysis: Present evidence from the text, and explain it. Merely presenting evidence is not enough to make your thinking clear. You will also need to explain to readers how you see the evidence and to think in writing about what it means. When you tell yourself and your readers how you interpret the evidence, you enact the thinking that will lead both you and your readers toward your conclusion. You make your thinking accessible.