Research Methods
Name______________
Working with Sources Exercise II: Paraphrasing and Summarizing
Remember: paraphrasing is when you write down in your own words all the ideas of the part
of the source you want to use; summarizing is where you write down in your own words the
main ideas of the source.
Work with the following paragraph (written about Trifles, from Noe 248):
The farm women allude to the desolate environment of the Wright homestead to show
that Minnie strangled her husband out of the desperation people feel when they are
isolated from human contact; their feeling of sisterhood with Minnie motivates them to
conceal the evidence of her crime. Hence, in Trifles, Glaspell uses the lonely Iowa
farmhouse metaphorically to illustrate the psychological isolation that drove Minnie
Wright to murder the man who denied her the relationships with others she needed to
function as a fully human person.
Work Cited
Noe, Marcia. "Region as Metaphor in the Plays of Susan Glaspell." Western Illinois Regional
Studies (Spring, 1981): 77-85. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Marie
Lazzari. Vol. 55. Detroit: Gale, 1994. 247-50.
1.
Pretend you’re writing a paper about the role of setting in Trifles. Paraphrase the last
sentence of the above paragraph by Noe. Remember that you need to cite your source;
you might also provide a phrase or clause to introduce the source.
2.
Pretend you’re writing a paper about the role of setting in Trifles. Summarize the
paragraph above (what Noe says about the Wright homestead and its role in the murder
of Minnie Wright’s husband). Remember that you need to cite your source; you might
also provide a phrase or clause to introduce the source.