Fun Home or Beloved (500 wds)
This is a strict due date for your next critical essay of 500 words. You can select to write about Fun Home or Beloved. The hope is that you develop the thinking from your close reading assignments, which were based on each of these texts. Remember this is a draft, though you are rewriting a close reading assignment so I am expecting a significantly polished piece of writing – as I have also been warning, this is an essay that began weeks ago and you should now be in the habit of returning to developing your close reading assignments without my needing to remind you.
We have talked about Fun Home quite extensively, and yesterday’s mini-lecture and discussion on Beloved was to a depth that if you select Beloved you should be equipped enough (at this draft) to provide a critical piece of writing. Some of you who have missed class, unfortunately, this layer or layers will be missing from your essays and it is already showing.
The challenge in this essay is for you to attempt an interesting (maybe not entirely smooth at this point) discussion within your body paragraphs, which we’ve been examining quite closely these last couple weeks. You know how to provide an introduction and you know how to develop your arguments into a conclusion, I want you to concentrate on developing body paragraphs (probably two or three paragraphs in this essay) that not only speak to each other but also extend your overall argument. The body paragraphs must have a link to each other – be careful when writing the first sentences and last sentences of these paragraphs, think about transition sentences or topic sentences.
Other information
For a definition of “thesis" see:
Gardner, Janet E. Reading and Writing About Literature: A Portable Guide. 3rd edition. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012, p. 23. ISBN: 9781457606496. [Preview with Google Books]
Here you will understand the difference between creating a topic around these characters versus inventing a thesis around these characters.
Your topic is: ____________________________________________________________
Your thesis is then: _______________________________________________________
The challenge is to first establish what you’re writing about in Fun Home or Beloved.
The Actual Writing
The three components to an essay:
Introduction (or first paragraph): Explain your topic and the approach to the topic, which renders the thesis (and the significance of this comparative character analysis).
Body (second, third, and maybe forth paragraphs): Writers often begin writing the body paragraphs versus the introduction, and since you already have a body paragraph from your close readings.
Conclusion (final paragraph or paragraphs): A conclusion is not about reflecting or summarizing what you’ve written; instead, push forward into new terrain.
Happy writing!