English 2235 / Spring 2008

Essay #2 Options

Option #1:

Write essay 2 as I assigned it before spring break. Click here for the assignment sheet. It is due on Monday, April 7, 2008.

Option #2:

Revise essay 1 and turn in your original final draft AND your revised final draft on Monday, April 7, 2008.

By "revision," I mean substantive changes. Revision is not fixing all the "little stuff," like correcting quotations, identifying titles, spelling names correctly, improving sentences, etc. -- this is "editing" and/or "proofreading" -- and I definitely want you to do this, but just don't stop there. Revision deals with larger issues, such as:

• ADDING information, textual evidence, and explanations to make your main ideas stronger, clearer, etc.

• CUTTING whatever is tangential, misleading, unnecessary, etc.

• REARRANGING information or paragraphs to new spots in the structure, putting similar points closer to each other, combining paragraphs, breaking one paragraph into two paragraphs, etc.

• REWRITING ideas, information, or explanations -- stuff you've already written -- to make it clearer, stronger, more precise, etc.

If you only go through and fix the "little things" and then consider that a final draft, you'll find that your grade won't go up much, if at all. With this extra time to do a second final draft, the standards go up.

Also, you do not have to address all my suggestions/questions, but you should address many of them, or use them to make different revisions, etc. And, ADDING more analysis sometimes only means adding 1-3 more sentences to a paragraph -- but it could also involve a more substantive revision of the paragraph as a whole

Finally, the first final draft of essay 1, I think, was 2-4 pages. I'm probably going to allow 3-5 pages for the second final draft of essay 1, if needed.

Here are some notes I took when reading Essay 1, and a lot of it was covered in a handout I suggested you read before submitting your work:

• Format your paper in MLA style -- we went over this in class!
• Play titles are underlined or italicized, but not both.
• All quotes should be accurate -- you had your books in front of you while writing, so you could and should have double-checked them all.
• Not every essay you write has to be five paragraphs!
• NEVER end a paragraph with a quote. What is self-explanatory to you may NOT be self-explanatory to your readers. And even if it is, it is YOUR job to show and explain how all sources fit into your essay.
• You should NEVER screw up simple facts, like the spelling of characters' names, or any facts, really, from the text -- again, you had your book in front of you!
• In general, the more work I have to do to figure out your essay, the lower your grade -- keep in mind the unusual writer-reader dynamic in the academy: the professor probably knows his/her stuff, and most likely knows the text fairly well, so it is YOUR JOB to "prove" to the professor that you also know your stuff.

When thinking about "ANALYSIS," I made the following notes:

• The general tendency is to say the most obvious thing, or two, and then stop there. For example:
  • Berniece is grieving, trying to find an excuse for Crawley's death, needing to blame someone, etc.
  • Blanche is also stalled, grieving, not working [much], not dating, not really an active mother, etc.
• These are good observations, almost factual reporting, and can be used to "compare" the two widows . . . BUT . . . "So what?" "How is all of this important?" "What are the significant differences?" "What does all this say about each woman?" "What does it say about each woman's role or growth in each play?"

Any questions?