Part One – Prompt:
Write an analysis essay of Little Fires Everywhere:
What is the theme that you want to explore? There may be more than one theme in the book, but I want you to focus on one.
What approach to the analysis do you want to take to explore that theme? You will need to research the different types of analysis and choose one of the following that you want to explore:
Feminist and/or Gender Criticism
Marxist Criticism
Postcolonial Criticism
Historical Criticism
Psychological Analysis
Biographical Analysis
You must use a specific approach, and it must be made clear both in the thesis and throughout the essay.
What literary terms (symbolism, metaphor, imagery, etc.) are used in the essay and how? You must use at least two. Explain.
How does the book connect to American culture? Explain.
What does the book say about the human experience overall? Explain.
Part Two: Essay Structure
Make a claim and support the claim through reasons and evidence from both primary and secondary sources.
Clearly state your claim in the thesis and make it obvious what you will be discussing and how in the essay. Your thesis for this essay can be two sentences since we are tackling more here than usual.
Unless you are doing a biographical analysis of the book, it does not matter what the author thought at the time of writing the work. All that matters is what YOU think the story means. Therefore, you need to avoid phrases like, “Ng uses fire as a symbol of…” Instead, focus on what you think and feel based on your reading of the work.
Provide well-developed paragraphs that focus largely on analysis. You will need examples from the book as support, but be careful that you do not slip into summary. Often, one or two brief examples and then well-thought-out analyses are sufficient for a fully developed body paragraph.
Each body paragraph should start with a topic sentence that sets up what aspect of the book you are analyzing in that paragraph based on my questions above and is not merely a plot point in the book.
Plot point topic sentence: Upon hearing the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard locked herself in her room.
This is what happens in the story and doesn’t set up analysis.
Analysis topic sentence: The room Mrs. Mallard retreats to upon hearing of her husband’s death symbolizes the life she is leaving behind, and the open window represents the life she is moving towards.
This topic sentence allows you to analyze the elements of the story, in this case using symbolism.
Structure your response in the following way: It must consist of an introductory paragraph (five-seven sentences) that concludes with a thesis statement, then five or more well-developed body paragraphs (six-ten sentences each), and a conclusion paragraph (five-seven sentences) that wraps up your analysis.
Part Three: Essay Requirements
1. The essay must be 1500-2000 words. Include the word count at the end of the essay.
2. In addition to the novel, which is our primary source, you must also use three-eight secondary sources to assist you in analyzing the novel.
Secondary sources are articles or books from a reputable source (if you go through our library database to find the article, you will be safe) that offer more information on the work itself or on the overall subject, theme, and/or literary term(s). You will not find many articles about your novel as literary analysis, so you will want to look for articles that are more general about your topic, and then you will employ critical thinking to connect the ideas in the article to your analysis of the novel.
Some works that do NOT count as secondary sources are as follows: book reviews and/or movie reviews; blogs and other websites in which people who are not professional writers or scholars comment on the novel; essay writing websites; Cliff Notes or any other type of summary guide; and Wikipedia or any other wiki.
3. You need to include a Works Cited page as part of your essay document, but it must start on a new page. For example, if your essay ends on page 6, then you will start the Works Cited on page 7.
Whether you summarize, paraphrase, or directly quote from a source, you have to cite where you got the information in the essay, and then you will need to do a full entry for that source(s) on the Works Cited page.
The Works Cited page needs to include the novel as well as all of the secondary sources used in the essay.
4. You will need to highlight the essay as follows:
Your thesis and topic sentences should be highlighted in light yellow. That way I can see what you think is the thesis and which sentences you feel are the topic sentences, and then I can verify that.
Your summaries of the primary and secondary sources and the citations should be highlighted in light blue. I have you do this because one of the issues you need to be careful of with your primary source is providing too much summary. Assume I have read the work; therefore, you do not need to tell me what happens; you need to tell me what it means. Now, for the secondary sources, you will need to summarize, and that is fine, but you do not want too much summary or it takes away from your own ideas. Either way, highlighting in blue gives you an easy visual to see if you are offering too much summary.
Your direct quotes from the primary and secondary sources and the citations should be highlighted in light green. Direct quotes are often necessary and can provide a real impact; however, they should be used sparingly. An essay with too many direct quotes lacks development and will be marked as such. So, again, having that information highlighted gives a visual cue if you are using too many quotes.
5. Save your finished draft as .doc or .docx before submitting it to Canvas.
The essay portion of this assignment is worth up to 130 points and will be graded based on format, structure, MLA citations, and depth of analysis.
6. In addition to submitting the essay, you must also submit all pages of all outside sources used in your essay to Canvas, and they must be marked correctly. The reason I have you submit your sources is that part of the requirements for this course is that I show you how to use sources effectively, and I can do this better if I actually have the source in front of me. So, you will need to follow the directions below.
Save the source as a Word or PDF document. Then, title the document with your last name, the last name of the author and the first two words of the article title. For example, if I used an article by Jack Smith titled “Kate Chopin Was a Rebel,” my document would be titled “Goldbar Smith Kate Chopin.pdf.”
Each time you summarize, paraphrase, or directly quote from an outside source, you must highlight that information on the original source.
Then, you must note what page that information was used in the essay.
You can either do this by printing out the article, annotating it as noted above, then scanning it into your computer, naming it as described above and then posting to Canvas.
Or, you can download the document to Word (or Adobe if you have editing capabilities in your program) and highlight the information using the “highlight” tool and make comments using “track changes” which is under the “Review” tab.
If you are using a hard copy of a source, then you will need to photocopy the page(s) that you actually reference in the response, highlight the section(s) used, put the author’s name at the top of the page (if it is not already on there) and then scan it into your computer and upload to Canvas, titling it as noted above.
Please do NOT submit a whole book or a really long document. If you are using that type of source, just print out the page(s) you reference in the essay and scan them in as directed above.
You will get 10 points for each source you submit up to 30 points (or 3 sources). Each source will be graded based on how well you follow the directions above.
Regardless of how many sources you use, you have to submit them all to Canvas. Points will be deducted for missing sources.
Please Note: These are the actual sources you used that you are posting. This is not just the Works Cited page which should already be a part of the essay. Again, I want to see the sources so that I can make sure you are citing them correctly.
You do not, however, need to include copies of the primary source.
Let me know if you have any questions as you are going through this process.
7. I will use the “Reading Project Essay Rubric” to grade your essay. It is good to review the rubric a few times before finally submitting the essay.
8. See the previous prompts for a refresher on how to do research and how to submit sources.
Special Notes:
When writing about events in the story itself, always write in the present tense.
It is okay to use direct quotes, especially when the exact words in the story help you make your point, but they should be used sparingly.
Use predominantly 3rd person POV (he, she, Sue, Jack, etc…) in your response, but 1st person POV (I, me, we, etc…) is allowed on occasion. Do not use 2nd person POV (any form of “you”).
Make sure to carefully proofread your essay for both logic and grammar issues.
The post What is the theme that you want to explore? appeared first on Course Hero.