Assignment
Making an Argument or Comparison of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot or This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz or Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Instructions
This paper should be at least 1500 words long, but you may want to write more. All submissions should be in .doc or .docx format. Please read the instructions carefully. I am using safe-assign, which will detect any plagiarism.
Guidelines (suggested format)
1. Choose one or two of The Waste Land or This is How You Lose Her or Citizen. This is / these are your primary text(s).
2. Choose a topic that interests you, related to this primary text(s). This may be something specific, a more general theme, an approach.
Examples of specific topic: The myth of the Fisher King, sex, illustrations, poetic form.
Examples of a theme: Regeneration, The city, Dominican-U.S. identity, race.
Examples of an approach: Feminist, Historicist, Formalist...
3. Consider online archives of literary criticism, like www.jstor.org or projectmuse. Find something interesting that someone has said about your topic. This is your secondary text. If you don't have a topic yet, choose one from what other critics have talked about.
4. Establish a proposition or thesis related to your topic. You will be constructing an argument, so it's very important to be able to clearly articulate your point.
5. Defend your proposition, using BOTH textual evidence from your primary text AND the secondary text that you found in step 3. OR you can use your secondary text as a counterargument, if you prefer. In this case, you argue against it.
6. Cite every quotation. Cite The Waste Land by line number. Cite Diaz and Rankine by page number. Cite secondary texts by author, title and page number or webpage.
7. Include a conclusion, which explains what you have gained through your reading. This responds to the all-important "so what?" question.