Read Hughes' "Salvation" and Lorde's "The Fourth of July." Both are short "coming of age" stories about young African Americans. However, the similarities end there. Hughes focuses on the relationship between a young man and his church community. Lorde focuses on a young girl experiencing her parents' reaction to societal racism. As usual, I just gave you the topic; now, you have to find the thesis. What is the point of the stories being told? Can you find a thesis that they both share? You should post (briefly) what you believe the thesis is for each of the individual essays. Then, use section 9.3 from your Argument Today reading from last week (the "Organizing and Drafting Your Narrative Argument" section.) Using one of the essays, give a brief (one or two sentence) explanation of how the essay follows this trajectory. For your convenience, here are the narrative elements from Chapter 9 Section 3:
- Set the Scene: Describe the Who, Where, What, Where
- Introduce a Complication: Disrupt the Scene
- Evaluate the Complication: The Characters React
- Resolve the Complication: The Characters Figure It Out
- Offer a Lesson or a Call to Action: Explain What the Story Means