LITERARY ANALYSIS 3: LITERARY CONTEXT
ENGLISH COMPOSITION
Basic Requirements:
Working Draft: December 2
Revision Day: December 4
Final Draft: December 9
Format:
This assignment consists of two parts: an annotated bibliography and a final research paper. The
annotated bibliography will be appended to the end of your research paper in lieu of a more
traditional works cited page. The bibliography will consist of five sources minimum in
addition to Super Sad True Love Story. At least two of the sources you cite must
come from academic sources: journals, anthologies, or monographs. The other three
required sources should still be trustworthy sources, but they need not be published by an
academic publisher or under the auspices of an academic society. Each of your five sources
ought to be cited in standard MLA format. Underneath each of these citations ought to be a
single paragraph that answers these four questions:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Who is the author and what is his/her credentials?
What is the piece's central argument (thesis)?
What methods and evidence does the author employ to prove this central argument?
How is this piece relevant to your argument? How can you use this piece?
Ambitious students will seek out additional sources—after all, not every source is useful in the
end—but they are only required to annotate five sources.
The second part of this assignment consists of an in-depth research paper on Super Sad True
Love Story that cites at least three of the sources in your annotated bibliography. This paper
will consist of six to nine pages. All drafts for the essay portion of this assignment must
be typed, double-spaced, have standard one-inch margins, and be in 12-point
Times New Roman font. Black ink only. Paper format (including textual citations) should
follow MLA style. If you have a question regarding formatting, please see Rules for Writers or
the Owl@Purdue link on our course website. If you do not turn in a draft on time, you
will not receive a passing grade on the assignment.
Prompt:
In “OK, Glass,” Gary Shteyngart reveals that Super Sad True Love Story was written between
2006 and 2008 at the height of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.” This period also
marked the rise of Web 2.0 and social media as well as the proliferation of small, portable,
personal computing devices such as the iPhone and the iPad. Shteyngart’s political and cultural
satire imagines a dystopia where a crumbling United States has erected a police state through
social media in order to monitor and subdue dissent. While the novel is clearly a satire of the
Bush Administration, Shteyngart’s satire is omnidirectional as illustrated by the fact that in the
novel the Bipartisan Party governs the United States. In a six to nine page essay, answer these
two questions:
(1) How does Super Sad True Love Story reflect and satirize the political and/or social
developments of 2006-2008?
(2) Three years after its publication date, what use might the novel be in understanding or
critiquing our present political and social situation? To what degree is its political and
social satire still relevant?
Audience:
You are to imagine that the audience for this paper is a general, educated reader that purchases
publications such as The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books. They read the novel in
2010 and while they remember the form and plot, they don’t remember every detail. You are
writing this piece for them. It is three years after the novel’s publication and you are providing a
critical reassessment of the novel.
The audience for your annotated bibliography is me, your instructor, Professor Adam
Kaiserman. This is a helpful exercise that (1) ensures that you have done your research (it’s very
easy to tell when you haven’t from your annotations and (2) helps you to keep track of your
research.
Notes:
Begin researching as soon as possible. To be as blunt as possible: procrastination means
failure. For some, procrastination means plagiarism, which not only means failure but
suspension or expulsion from school. Don’t let this happen to you. You cannot begin your
research at the last minute. Start your research as soon as possible. You will have to narrow the
field of your research. Obviously, you cannot address all of the political, social, and media
developments that occurred between 2006 and 2008 in six to nine pages. Don’t even try.
Rather, narrow your scope to one particular aspect such as online privacy, government
surveillance, etc. More focused research will produce more focused papers. To be blunt again:
focused = triple plus good.
Anxieties:
Fill in the space below:
Steps in the Process:
Step 1: Read the novel in full, taking notes on moments that seem relevant to the above
mentioned themes. Keep note of those passages we discuss in novel.
Step 2: Develop a research timeline for yourself. Being a good researcher in a limited amount of
time means budgeting your time wisely.
Step 3: Write down your topic in the broadest sense.
Step 4: Work with the topic by asking a pointed question based on a close analysis of the text
Step 5: Revise the narrowed topic to be more specific
Step 6: Identify significant aspects of that topic to explore
Step 7: Use the library resources available to you (both databases and the books on the shelves)
to help you find out more about those significant aspects. Take copious notes as you read for
your annotations. As you finish a text, produce your annotations.
Step 8: Use the answer to these questions to refocus the topic
Step 9: Gather all the relevant information from your sources and organize it so that it becomes
more useful. I find it helpful to retype important passages before hand into a word document.
You might find it useful to take photos.
Step 10: Develop a working outline for your essay. You have a lot of information to deal with
and this will help you manage it all.
Step 11: Produce your working draft (6 pages minimum) by December 2.
Step 12: Revise your paper given your peer feed back for our revision day on December 4.
Step 13: Complete paper by December 9.