Assignment: Literary Analysis Draft
Link to Video Transcript
You will write a two and a half page draft (excluding the title and references page) of your Week Five Literary Analysis. The draft should contain a working thesis (which you wrote in the Week One assignment), an introduction, at least three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Be sure to include some paraphrases and quotations of the reference material in your Week Two Annotated Bibliography. You should use your research to help you develop and support the thesis.
• Copy and paste the writing prompt you chose to explore in Week One at the beginning of your draft (this will help your instructor see if you focused well on the prompt).
• Restate your working thesis after the copy-and-paste prompt.
• Develop your working thesis based on the feedback you have received. Again, the thesis should offer a debatable claim in response to one of the prompts on the list.
• Analyze the literary work(s) from the approved list of prompts chosen in Week One that pertained to your selected topic using the Eight Steps to Writing a Literary Analysis resource and include the three key ideas developed in the Week One Proposal.
• Focus on one or two primary text(s).
• Include references from at least two secondary sources identified on your Week Two Annotated Bibliography. More sources are not necessarily better.
• Apply your knowledge of literary elements and other concepts in your response to the prompt. Reference the List of Literary Techniques.
• Avoid any use of the first person.
• Do not summarize the plot.
Prompt#6: Tone is a literary element that poets and authors use to affect a certain mood, emotion, setting, and/or message. Choose a story, drama, or poem in which you observe a unique tone. Analyze the tone in detail, illustrating specific qualities of it by offering several textual examples of each quality. Why is this tone important in understanding the conflict and theme of the text? How does it contribute to both?
The poem: Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
Sherman Alexie (2009)
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is blessed among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,"
I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he's dead. I'm sorry-
How did I forget?" "It's okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table-
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years-
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
Working Thesis: The tone is the authors voice towards the reader. Authors use tone in different variations, when writing poems and stories. Tone is used to affect certain moods, emotions, or settings. In the poem: Greif Calls Us to the Things of This World (Alexia, S. 2009) the tone changes to express different emotions.