Family offering inspiration to a young individual.

Family offering inspiration to a young individual.
Project description
Compare/contrast the way that two poets (e.e. Cummings and Countee Cullen) show how family can offer inspiration to a young individual. Examine the authors’ use of tone, figurative language (simile, metaphor, symbolism, etc.), and diction to analyze what these writers show us about the roles a parent’s life experience can play in inspiring a young person. What types of experience do these writers seem to value when it comes time for that parent to offer advice? How important are social conventions (such as education, work experience, or religious affiliation) when the time comes for a parent to give advice to his/her child? How likely is it that a child will willingly accept the advice being offered in each work? Evaluate each work and explain what would make the advice contained therein successful or useful.
Two poems chosen to write about: e.e. Cummings “in Just” and Countee Cullen “Incident”
LENGTH: Between 1100 words and 1500 words, not including the Works Cited page.
SOURCES: You will use 1-2 primary sources in your essay; these are the literary works that you are analyzing, and they will each need an entry on your Works Cited page. In addition to the 1-2 primary sources you must use for this essay, a minimum of 2 secondary sources is required, and no more than 3 may be used. Secondary sources are those which comment on or provide context for the literature about which you are writing.
Use direct quotes, paraphrases, and summaries to support your analysis and evaluation, and document each of these sources appropriately. Follow MLA guidelines from 2009 for citing sources in the text of the essay and on the Works Cited page. Plagiarism of any kind will result in a zero for the assignment, so use the Turnitin tool in the Rough draft Dropbox as a way to check your essay for plagiarism. Use NoodleBib (available on the VSCC Library website under “Resources”) to help you create your Works Cited page.
FORMAT: The essay should be typed in a 12-point Times New Roman, Verdana, Maiandra GD, or Georgia font, double-spaced throughout, with 1” margins on all sides. There should be an appropriate header (your name, my name, class name, and date) and title on the first page of your essay, but you should not have a title page. Format page numbers according to MLA guidelines. Please be sure to follow the most current and standard MLA guidelines for in-text citations and Works Cited page. (See Bedford Handbook, eighth edition, pp. 569-88 for an example of correct essay formatting.)
ESSAY SUBMISSION: Check your course calendar for the due date, and submit your essay to the final draft dropbox by that time. Plagiarism detection: Plagiarism is a serious offense and will not be tolerated. It is your responsibility to understand MLA documentation rules and to follow them when documenting sources in your essay. If you need help, seek it through the Language Center or Smarthinking tutoring services. I will use Turnitin.com for plagiarism detection for the final essay assignment. When you submit a copy of your final essay to the Dropbox in My Volstate Online, it will automatically be checked for plagiarism. You must save your file in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf format before uploading it to the Dropbox. No other file formats will be accepted, and failure to do so will result in a zero for the assignment.
I will use the following criteria to calculate your grade on these essays. The essay should:
1) have a focused thesis, which appears in the introduction paragraph or shortly thereafter;
2) indicate that you have critically and accurately interpreted the texts based on the assignment topic which you have chosen;
3) thoroughly discuss the topic and give an indication of your knowledge of the texts;
4) be logically organized and offer smooth transitions between each idea;
5) correctly incorporate and cite primary and secondary sources in the text of the essay and on the Works Cited page;
6) be virtually free of errors in language and grammar; and
7) be formatted correctly according to appropriate academic manuscript guidelines (MLA).

This essay should consider discussions we’ve had in class in relation to the reading assignments, but you should also demonstrate the use of your own critical thinking skills in applying the concepts you have studied related to these writing topics.
Finally, be sure you do not rely too heavily on plot summary or direct quotes in your essay. Many, many times students re-tell the story or summarize the author’s ideas rather than examining and analyzing a particular aspect of the literary text. Since this essay is a literary analysis, your goal is to analyze and interpret the text to find greater meaning, examining the work to determine its relevance to social and cultural issues of the time period in which it was written and/or to our current society and culture. (See Bedford Handbook pp. 589-620 for information on writing about literature.)
TOPICS: Choose one of the following topics for your analysis, and narrow the focus appropriately.
1. Choose two of the short stories that we have studied so far this semester, and compare/contrast the conflicts that the main characters in these two stories experience. Explain what causes this conflict, what types (internal or external) of conflicts they experience, and how they deal with it. How do the conflicts these characters face in their experiences become a method for self-examination, if at all? What do these characters learn, if anything, from their experiences? What effect does that learning experience have on the characters? How do they come out of these experiences less innocent and more aware of the reality of the world around them? Possible focal points: rites of passage, issues of morality, family influences, social or class issues, gender issues. Optional: Use Joseph Campbell’s theory about the hero’s journey as a basis for your examination of these characters’ experiences.

2. Compare/contrast the way that two poets show how family can offer inspiration to a young individual. Examine the authors’ use of tone, figurative language (simile, metaphor, symbolism, etc.), and diction to analyze what these writers show us about the roles a parent’s life experience can play in inspiring a young person. What types of experience do these writers seem to value when it comes time for that parent to offer advice? How important are social conventions (such as education, work experience, or religious affiliation) when the time comes for a parent to give advice to his/her child? How likely is it that a child will willingly accept the advice being offered in each work? Evaluate each work and explain what would make the advice contained therein successful or useful.

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3. Zora Neale Hurston writes, “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes…I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it” (785). Compare/contrast the way that Zora Neale Hurston and one other author write about the African-American experience. What does it mean to be “colored,” and is it a positive or negative experience? Why? Does the experience change depending on the social or historical context in which the author is writing? Describe the “voice” that is being established in each work. Give specific examples, and explain the main point (theme) that each writer is trying to communicate with his/her piece. Optional: Connect each work to the Harlem Renaissance movement and analyze the relevance of each work to that movement.

4. Compare and/or contrast the symbols of individualism used in two (2) different works we have read in the course. How does each writer’s choice of symbols influence the reader’s interpretation of the work as a whole? Consider the type of associations the symbol will create in the mind of the reader, how those symbols express the writers’ attitude towards a subject (like growing up, family, heroes, etc.), and/or how the symbols might illustrate some type of conflict (internal or external). Possible focus: the self and how the symbols illustrate positive images of the individual (self-confidence, self-awareness, self-transformation) or negative images of the individual (self-consciousness, self-transformation, self-interest).

5. Choose two works from the same genre (fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction) and compare and/or contrast the two works based on several well-chosen, appropriate literary elements. Evaluate which of the two works seems to be the more successful, more effective, or more interesting piece. Use the “Exploring Fiction,” “Exploring Poetry,” or “Exploring Nonfiction” questions to help you analyze each piece and to determine which work best fulfills the expectations for that type of writing. Prioritize your criteria for evaluating and choose 2-3 elements of that type of literature for your comparison. Consider the discussions we have had in our course as a jumping-off place for your topic. Formulate your thesis to show which work best displays the qualities of the type of literature you are examining, and support your evaluation by comparing the two works in the body of your essay.

6. (THIS TOPIC MUST BE APPROVED BY ME BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING) Select any of the poets we have read and read another (one and only one) poem by this writer; then, write an essay that compares/contrasts an aspect of the theme we’ve been exploring this semester (the individual within society). In developing your discussion, you will need to consider the way in which the author uses elements of poetry, such as figurative language, tone, symbolism, etc., to extend his/her theme. For example, if you are reading another poem by Langston Hughes, how does this poem differ from the other we have read? If the second poem is similar in theme, you might ask yourself why Hughes would choose to write another poem that extends a similar theme to the first. Support your comparative analysis with appropriate research.
7. Examine and analyze the theme of “rebellion” in 1-2 of the works we have read this semester. What form of rebellion do the characters in the story take, and why? Against what do they rebel? Analyze the internal and/or external conflicts that the characters experience, as well as the resolution to the conflict(s). If you are comparing, then who achieves total rebellion, or whose is more successful, and why? Examine the ways this rebellion represents a societal or systemic need for change. You may also want to analyze the writer’s or writers’ use of at least one literary element in order to analyze his/her method of communicating the theme and to evaluate the effectiveness of the message. Optional: Analyze the works as feminist or Marxist critiques of gender expectations or class structures.