Dr. Snaith 1102 ● Spring 14 Final Essay Assignment ▪ 1 of 2
ENGL 1102 • Spring 2014 • Essay #3: Joining the Scholarly Conversation!
For your final essay, you must refer to two primary texts:
--First text: choose EITHER Toni Morrison’s Sula, OR Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughter-House Five
--Your second primary text is yourself, specifically, your experiences at
University of West Georgia this school year.
--Your secondary text is, as usual, Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Adventure.”
Discuss your experience this year in college as a hero’s journey, select an aspect of that journey
about which Campbell theorizes, and connect that aspect to either Sula or Slaughter-House Five;
you can compare/equate the two, or draw distinctions between them.
This assignment gives you the opportunity to articulate specific ways in which you have
discovered and experienced elements of the Hero’s Journey in your collegiate environment, how
those experiences affected your thinking, and what decisions you have made as a result of your
emerging critical thinking skills.
Even though the nature of this assignment allows you to write in first person, I expect you to
articulate all your points in academic language—eliminate empty, qualifying phrases such as "in
my opinion," "I believe that," "I personally think"; make each sentence strong and assertive.
Even though you'll be writing from your own perspective, you can nevertheless do so with a
minimum of sentences that begin with "I."
Stretch your vocabulary; write with precise language and sophisticated, varied, and interesting
sentences, as well as unified, coherent paragraphs...demonstrate to me that you've corrected
errors in grammar and mechanics that I've called to your attention in previous essays; in other
words, prove to me in this final paper that you've achieved at least a C-level mastery of collegelevel writing.
Because this essay is worth 30% of your semester grade, I'll expect a high level of precision and
attention to detail based on all the input I've given you on your writing throughout this semester.
Requirements: 3-3 ½ pages; format your essay flawlessly in MLA style with complete Works
Cited page, and thorough, well-integrated in-text citations.
I will add an additional FIVE points to your essay’s grade if you write it entirely in active
voice. If you decide to take me up on this challenge, please add “Active Voice” to your
MLA header that indicates the assignment.
Check our online syllabus for your due date—essays are due no later than the beginning of our
final class meeting.