| For this second essay, I want you to choose one of the stories listed and identify a theme within that story, some message you feel the writer is trying to convey. How does the writer go about developing this theme? Is that argument still relevant today? Since creative writers are very specific in their word choice and order, you will want to take a look at their word choice and use of language strategies so that you can discuss how these elements influence the reading of the poem you’ve chosen to analyze. You will also need to take a look at the characters used in the story and the purposes they serve in helping to develop the overall theme you see. You need to make sure to cover these categories in your essay for this assignment: Literary Criticism: The literary criticisms (found on pages 1332-1355) can be used to go deeper into the analysis of a piece of writing. I want you to limit yourselves to these criticisms: Feminist Criticism, Marxist Criticism, or Psychoanalytic Criticism. You need to choose only one, and bring in examples from the story to help illustrate your points about how this lens can be used to find meaning within that story. It should be clear to me, the reader, which lens you are using. Character Analysis: You will want to take a look at one or more of the characters in the story and connect them to the overall theme you are writing about. How is this character developed? How do they help to develop the theme? Style, Tone, and Language Analysis: Take a look at the language used by the writer. Make note of creative word choices or sentence structure. Does this add to the understanding of the writing? You may want to take a look at the tone the author uses. How does the tone affect the reading of the story and the delivery of the theme? What other language strategies does the writer use? Are these strategies effective in helping to develop the theme? In what ways? You will need to bring in a minimum of five sources to help you explore a theme of your chosen story. Again, like the first essay, these sources must be reputable and academic. If you try to use sources like bartleby.com, owlcation.com, supersummary.com, enotes.com, etc., you will lose significant points on this assignment. For this essay, you are limited to writing about one of the following stories: “The Lottery” starting on pg. 336 of textbook |
