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ENG 1001-06 Home Page Essay 3

ESSAY 3: LITERARY ANALYSIS

In preparing to write this essay, you will read a short story, "Jury of Her Peers," by Susan Glaspell.

Your writing tasks for Essay 3 are as follows:

In essence, you are writing a persuasive essay.  Your position (interpretation of the story) should be summed up in a one-sentence thesis statement in your introduction.  The rest of your essay (your analysis) provides your reader with the evidence for your position (your interpretation of the story).

For this essay, assume that your reader is familiar with the basic plot of the story. Because of this familiarity, you will not need to summarize the plot of the story for your reader.  Rather, you will refer to what happens in the story, as well as the characters and other elements, as they are relevant to your analysis and interpretation. In other words, though your reader has read the same story you have, he or she needs your analysis and interpretation to understand and be convinced of your perspective on the story.

1. Offer a Valid Interpretation
To interpret a short story means to infer and set forth one of the meanings (themes) of the story. Intelligent readers may differ in their interpretations of a story, as most works of literature communicate more than one theme. However, an interpretation is valid only if you can support it with an analysis of the story itself.

2. Support Your Interpretation with Careful Analysis
To support your interpretation, then, you will need to analyze the story―to examine and explain to your reader the elements that contribute to the theme you've chosen, such as setting, character, plot, and symbolism.  Doing so also may involve such activities as classification, compare/contrast analysis, cause/effect analysis, or any type of explanation that shows how the elements you are discussing support your interpretation.  As part of your analysis, it will be especially important that you provide specific references to and quotations from the story as additional evidence for your interpretation.

3. Integration/Documentation of Quotes and Paraphrases, Works Cited Page
Though most of the ideas in your analysis and interpretation will be your own and from the story itself, you will be required to supplement your own observations with ideas from reputable literary critics or other experts on the story. Specifically, you must include quoted and paraphrased material from two secondary sources (in this case, journal articles, about the story). You will not do your own research for this essay; instead, you will choose from a list of secondary sources provided to you. I'll make these sources available after we've discussed the story in class.

Also note the following source requirements:

• You must include at least one quotation and at least two paraphrases from your secondary sources. You may include more secondary source material if you wish, but remember that your main focus should be your own observations about the story.

• As indicated above, you also should include quotations and paraphrases from the short story itself, your primary source, to help illustrate your observations.

• No more than 15% of your essay may consist of quotations (about six quoted lines per page), including quotes from the story itself. Exceeding this number of quoted lines will mean that you're not developing your own ideas fully and will lower your grade.

Your quotes and paraphrases should be worked into your essay so that they are readable and fit grammatically into your sentences. Each quote and paraphrase also must be documented correctly with parenthetic citations in MLA format. Your Works Cited page should list the short story and your secondary sources using the correct MLA format, as well.

Not providing documentation is a form of plagiarism, which will most likely result in a failing grade for your essay. We'll spend time in class discussing documentation and going over how to document the material from these essays. To stress the importance of this issue of documentation, here is the "Academic Integrity" policy from our course outline.

Other Considerations
Be sure to include an effective introduction and conclusion and to employ correct and effective sentence structure, style, grammar, and mechanics. For this essay, you should use a formal style: avoid first-person pronouns, second-person pronouns, and slang.

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