1102 Essay 2 Assignment 1 of 2
English 1102, Sections 105 and 111
Essay #2 Assignment
In the past few weeks, we have read Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughter House Five, watched
Adam McKay’s film, Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and discussed them both
with respect to John Morreall’s theories of comedy and tragedy. In putting these two texts into
dialogue with Morreall, we have discovered surprising connections between these stories,
particularly with respect to the way they comedically depict tragic events in the human
experience:
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Parents and children: a distant father, his abandoned son—and the search for identity
Facing one’s worst fears, even one’s own death, and thereby gaining new life
Insanity and cognitive dissonance arising from the inability to control events
Attempting to explain, understand, or interpret a world that defies explanation
Finding new ways to understand our world when old worldviews fail us
As we continue to work on enhancing vocabulary and skill in writing clear, descriptive
sentences, your second essay will require you to apply the critical thinking skills we’ve
practiced, and to continue the practice of choosing clear, descriptive words, and crafting
sentences and paragraphs that clearly communicate precisely what you mean to say.
Thus, Essay #2’s requirements are two-fold:
1) Content: choose a topic from the list above, and discuss it with respect to both Slaughter
House Five and Talledega Nights. Remember: make observations from both texts, interpret the
significance of those observations, and unify your analysis with a thesis (the part of the essay
that comes from YOU—an insight about the human experience that you discover as you think
about your observations).
2) Skills Enhancement: you must write this essay entirely in Active Voice, which will require
you to consider your sentence structures and word choices very deliberately. This requirement
will help you write Essay #2 concisely, using descriptive, clear nouns and verbs, and thus
enhancing the quality of your writing.
In order to succeed in this assignment, you must do very close proofreading before you submit
your essay; moreover, you will have to stretch your vocabulary in order to find precise, evocative
nouns, verbs, and adjectives that will make your writing much more active, and therefore, more
effective.
1102 Essay 2 Assignment 2 of 2
Go over the list of common errors that we discussed at the beginning of the semester, refer to
errors you made in Essay #1, and eliminate them in Essay #2. Please take the time and effort,
therefore, to find errors in punctuation, grammar, logic, and style before I do!
Your essay #2 must adhere to the following guidelines:
• 2-1/2 to 3 pages in length, precise MLA formatting, (headers that match the size and typeface
of your 12-point body paragraphs, in-text citations, Works Cited page formatted and
indented precisely according to MLA requirement).
• Completely eliminate passive constructions. Find active, descriptive verbs and more direct
sentence constructions.
• Submit your paper on the due date I’ve posted on your class’s online syllabus.
Good luck! (By the way, I wrote this entire essay assignment in active voice...did you notice?)