Unit One-Major Writing Assignment
The Summary/Response Essay
Overview of the Assignment
In this assignment you will choose one of three short stories, and after taking notes on the story in your Journal, write a two-part essay that includes
1) A one-page summary of the story, and
2) A response to the story
Story List (Write only about one)
"Eveline," by James Joyce, pp. 201-205
"The Red Convertible," by Louise Erdrich, pp. 241-247
"Hills Like White Elephants," by Ernest Hemingway, pp.688-692
I choose "Eveline," by James Joyce,
Background
The Richland Writing Program Guidelines and Objectives document includes the Summary/Response paper, partly because this assignment is common across the curriculum in college. In courses such as psychology, sociology, and government, students are often asked to read one or more articles, summarize them, and then respond from their own point of view. In sophomore literature courses, the plot summary often precedes analysis of a literary text.
Assignment Purpose
The three skills this assignment focuses on, summary, inference, and interpretation, are all important reading skills and are basic skills in each of the assignments you will write this semester in this class. Developing these skills is the purpose of the assignment.
Assignment Description
The assignment has two parts, each with a heading. In a one-page "Plot Summary" section, summarize what happens in the story, leaving out opinion, evaluation, and any use of first person or reference to yourself. In writing your plot summary, you have only one page (about 300 words) to proportionately cover the entire story, so there will be no room for detail, dialogue or description-or any quotations from the story. Focus on who did what, when, where and why. Remember also that a plot summary is not a list or bulleted account of an event. Write it as a continuous, flowing narrative, a miniature of the story itself. Use appropriate transitions to help your reader follow the sequence of events, like "Ten years later," or "After the Queen died...."
In your plot summary, refer to what happens in the story, tying the narrative together with reasonable inferences you make when you read the story. In In Tandem, David and Dianne Spears identify inference as a vital part of all reading:
To make an inference means to read between the lines of a text to draw meaning from
what the writer does not directly say but surely intends to suggest. Therefore, making
inferences means going beyond and underneath the surface meaning to extract a deeper level of understanding. The inference process thus reinforces the thinking process, allowing you to gain insights into the subject and to extend your understanding of that subject.
The necessity of reader inference comes from the nature of fiction. The author of a short story doesn't spell everything out for the reader. To do so would be considered clumsy in fiction, in which the art is often in what is left unsaid.
Part Two shifts focus to you as interpreter of the story. Part One focuses on what happens and what the author wants us to see, while Part Two focuses on the meaning the reader ascribes to the story. The key interpretive question is "What does the story mean to me?" Each reader has to answer this question for him or herself. Much depends on what the reader brings to the story-on the values, life experiences and readings specific to the reader. In a particular story, a sad ending to one reader can bring tears, to another laughter-especially if the reader sees the ending coming well before the end of the story. Part Two can include connections between the story and things outside the story, and any interpretive framework the reader wants to set up, from analysis of story elements, to evaluation, to moral or ethical criticism.
If the goal of Part One of the paper is to be objective (to describe the story as it is), Part Two requires the reader to be subjective, describing his or her unique take on the story.
Interpretation is most effective when the student writer owns his or her interpretation, showing the reader how it was conceived or discovered. In your own Part Two, aim for a balance between the story and yourself. Part Two should be about 500 words, or a page and a half.
Suggested Writing Process
- To prepare to write, read the story more than once, taking notes in your Journal.
- For Part One, the Plot Summary, you may find it helpful to make a list of events as they happen in the story.
- Add inferences that help tie the story together and reveal the author's intentions.
- Next turn your list into prose, reading your own writing aloud to insure that it flows.
- Write Part Two by outlining your ideas or by free writing (writing in timed sessions without stopping). Use your own favorite way of getting ideas on paper-"brainstorming," my students call it. In this stage, you don't have to put your thoughts in final order. Some call this the "discovery draft." You don't have to start with a thesis (main idea) but be sure to include one. The key is to get something down on paper, something to work with.
- Next read your entire paper in this draft stage. (Many students skip this, and failing to read your own paper hurts the final product). Read as objectively as you can. Are you clearly stating your ideas? Have you explained and supported your view of the story in Part Two?
- My recommendation for revision is to make a list of questions in the margin of your draft. These are the questions a reader would ask-and questions you can easily anticipate. Make sure you address each of these questions in your revision.
- Continue to read your draft and revise as necessary. There is no certain number of times a draft should be revised. My favorite quote on the revision process is worth thinking about: "In our view, a "C" paper is often an "A" paper turned in too early."-Ramage and Bean from Writing Arguments.
- The last stage is proofreading. This step should also be done aloud. Check for errors in grammar, usage, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
Grading Criteria
- Understands the assignment and purpose of each of the two parts.
- Summary is accurate and covers the story proportionately.
- Avoids subjectivity in Part One.
- Inferences in Part One are implicit in the story-likely assumptions based on what's given.
- Part Two expresses the student writer's unique response to the story.
- Prose is clear, concise, and correct.
- Overall the paper is well-written and reader friendly.
Due Dates are presented in the "Announcements" on the first page of Blackboard.
Resources for this Assignment
Note: Resources are supplemental to the textbook, not a replacement for the assigned reading.
https://www.pearsonhighered.com/samplechapter/0205734367_ch10.pdf. This chapter on inference has especially useful information in the first few pages, including an example of how we use inferences to read literature. A good example is from the Stephen Crane short story, "The Open Boat."
Chapter Five in the textbook, In Tandem, begins with a section on "Making Inferences and Seeing Connections." I have made a copy of this book available in the English Corner. (See information on the Corner in the Course Syllabus.
Below is the story.
"Eveline," by James Joyce, pp. 201-205
Eveline
SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:
"He is in Melbourne now."
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"
"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married -- she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages -- seven shillings -- and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work -- a hard life -- but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
"I know these sailor chaps," he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:
"Damned Italians! coming over here!"
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being -- that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:
"Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!"
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.
She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
"Come!"
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
"Come!"
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
"Eveline! Evvy!"
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.