Great Works 2850
Essay 1
Hoffman
Essay 1: Close-reading
Due March 10 (Hand in a paper copy at the start of class AND email it to me as an attachment right
before class)
You will have an opportunity to revise. If you chose to take the opportunity, your grades will be
averaged. Due-date for revision TBD.
Write a persuasive argument in response to one of the following prompts:
1. In Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” we gain insight into Wordsworth’s
psychological experience over the course of three time periods: his past
experience at the River Wye, some time in “towns and cities” that came after,
and then the return to the area. Why does Wordsworth write this poem from
several timeframes? What is he saying about himself? What is he saying
about memory and time and change? What is he saying about nature and its
relation to memory, time, and his sense of self?
2. Rousseau starts Book One of his Confessions as follows: “I am resolved on an
undertaking that has no model and will have no imitator. I want to show my
fellow-men a man in all the truth of nature; and this man is to be myself.”
What does he mean by this claim? In what ways does he show himself to be
unique? In what ways does he show the opposite throughout the text? What
does it mean to Rousseau to be unique and exceptional? What is Rousseau
saying about honesty, individualism, and introspection in his Confessions?
With this essay, I want you to develop your close-reading skills. The goal is to
develop an argument about a text and prove it through analysis.
Developing an argument:
Read over the questions above and chose which text you’d like to write about. After
reading the text over again (ideally several times) with the prompt in mind,
formulate an argument. The argument should be saying something that goes beyond
a simple statement of fact. The argument should be a representation of your unique
opinion on the matter. You don’t need to answer each question in the prompt
directly, but they will serve as helpful ways into the text and your argument. There
should be an introductory paragraph that leads into your argument, which should
be summed up clearly in a thesis statement.
Using/Analyzing Quotes:
Literary analysis depends on quotes from literature as the primary evidence, and on
deep, probing analysis of those quotes. These moves (quotes as evidence and
probing analysis) are the centerpieces of the literary analysis genre.
Common mistakes writers can make with quotes are 1) using them more for the
purposes of summarizing the text than analyzing it, 2) restating what the quote says
Great Works 2850
Essay 1
Hoffman
without really analyzing it, and 3) jumping straight from the quote to claims about
it, effectively skipping the analysis step.
For a strong literary analysis, you want to prove your argument by using quotes in
order to show something about what the author does with language and why they
do it.
Some examples:
1. The main character is not a good guy. “He is a horrible person who beats his wife.”
(What does this do and what does it not do?)
2. The main character then expresses his desire for freedom: “By Jove, I really need
to get out of here. It’s killing me to stay cooped up inside this place. I have no
freedom and no hope.” Here he is saying he is stifled, and can’t achieve anything
where he is. Then he says, “I broke free” which tells us that he finally did manage to
escape.
(What does this do and what does it not do?)
3. The poet writes, “The trees were weeping, / The rain was crying.” The poet was
obviously writing from a place of extreme sadness.
(What does this do and what does it not do?)
4. The poet is bestowing to nature the emotions he himself feels when he writes,
“The trees were weeping, / The rain was crying.” This is called pathetic fallacy: a
term that describes the attribution of human feelings to nature. At this point in the
poem, the poet hasn’t yet described his feelings, but this attribution of human
sadness to the poet’s surroundings seems to be the earliest hint that he is distressed.
(Much better, right? Why?)
5. In describing his youth, the author recalls conversations he had with friends. In
these conversations, which we get snippets of, the author appears to have used big
words and lofty language which differs from the much more simple, straightforward way he writes now. It seems that the author puts lofty language and big
words in the mouth of his younger self to illustrate what he explicitly stated earlier
in the text: “I was unsure of myself and my intellect.” The author, as a youth, was
showing off and trying to sound smart, but as an adult he came to have the
confidence to speak more clearly and simply, knowing that his ideas and insights
would speak for themselves.
(Much better, right? Why?)