Assignment: THE NAMESAKE ESSAY
This essay is a culmination of our many hours of reading, writing about and discussing Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, The Namesake. The essay you produce should be both evaluative and argumentative: "argumentative" means your essay will persuade its reader of a specific thesis-driven argument, and "evaluative" means this argument also ultimately assesses the value of Butler's novel and its purpose for its readers.
ESSAY PROMPT:
Unlike the other major writing assignments, this will be a "take-home" essay. Respond by submitting a completed essay via the Assignments section of Canvas. Instead of having an in-class essay that you are seeing for the first time and responding to in the same class period on Wednesday, we'll use that time as a workshop session for you to work on the essay: responding to the quote, gathering thoughts and formulating the argument you want to make.
On Wednesday morning, you will be given a key passage from the novel through which you'll need to make a claim about both the quote's significance and how that relates to the overall message or importance of the book. The prompt is as follows:
Using your interpretation of the given quote as a main focus and piece of supporting evidence, you'll need to create an arguable thesis to prove with the help of at least two other quotes. A strong essay will critically analyze Lahiri's novel with this carefully-selected, textual evidence in order to prove a lucid, insightful argument about one specific character or the novel as a whole.
EXPECTATIONS:
• You must thoughtfully integrate The Namesake into your essay. Quotes should be introduced, integrated into your writing, cited parenthetically, and analyzed or explained fully before moving on. You must provide enough evidence to show your deep engagement with the novel and reflection on the argument you want to make. Outside texts are welcome as long as they are scholarly or peer- reviewed.
• Your essay should be a cohesive, coherent whole paper. This means including identifiable introductions, body paragraphs and conclusions that together meet the minimum page requirements.
• Analyze and interpret the text rather than relying on summary to fill your essay. You should consider your audience someone who has read the book but has not considered its wider significance or implications. This means you don't need to spend time on too much summary, and your focus should be contextualizing as necessary to argue your own unique, original take on the novel's importance.
• I advise that you begin with plenty of brainstorming, listing or any other free writing to generate plenty of material and collect all your thoughts. You might work on creating a shitty first draft, then organizing ideas coherently as you go. Refine and demonstrate careful editing in the revision stages to make your paper appropriately academic.
• Consider the feedback from the Critical Autobiography, the Kindred Essay and your responses to that feedback. Transfer lessons learned from previous writings, and keep these in mind, especially during your revision process.
• Follow the formatting conventions that are listed in the syllabus, and refer to Purdue OWL for MLA standards.
TIPS TO CONSIDER FOR DRAFTING:
• You should review your notes from class discussions and your annotations. Review the phrases or excerpts that stood out to you towards responding to the prompt.
• Refer back to and reread Chapter 3 on "How to Make Arguments About Literature." This chapter provides many excellent points about what a strong argument entails and must consider.
Comes from the last chapter of The Namesake.
The excerpt below
And then another book, never read, long forgotten, catches his eye. The jacket is missing, the title on the spine practically faded. Its a thick clothbound volume topped with decades-old dust. The ivory pages are heavy, slightly sour, silken to the touch. The spine cracks faintly when he opens it to the title page. The Short Stones of Nikolai Gogol. "For Gogol Ganguli," it says on the front endpaper in his father's tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. "The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name" is written within quotation marks. Underneath the inscription, which he
has never before seen, is his birthday, and the year, 1982. (Lahiri 288).
The themes, context and content relevant to this excerpt involve much of what transpires throughout the novel. Write an essay that uses this quote to interpret one of the characters or the story as a whole. Be sure to mention at least two other textual moments or quote to support your points and thesis.
Questions to consider (you need not answer them, but they are here to get you started):
How does this quote help you say something comprehensive about one of the motifs we have discussed in our seminars? How does this moment shed light on identities, issues or relationships of the characters? How are the motifs you've been watching present in this passage, either literally or symbolically?