• Have a proper heading: Your name, AP English 12-hour, teacher’s name, due date. THIS IS NOT A HEADER. Upper left corner of paper. This shows up ONLY on page 1.
• Have a header in the UPPER RIGHT HAND corner of page (last name and page number) Don’t know how to do this? Ask! YOU WILL NEED TO INSERT A
HEADER. IT WILL SHOW UP ON EVERY PAGE.
• Formatting between paragraphs should NOT be different that the spacing in your paper. I will help you with this!
• 12 point font, double-spaced, 1” margins, readable font (Times New Roman or
Calibri are standard) Minimum is 10 point font with .5 margins.
• Title should be simple and point to thesis directly or indirectly
• Your paper will have several paragraphs and should be about 3-4 pages long.
NO MORE THAN 5-6.
• Include author and title in the introduction; book titles are in italics.
• Final paper is due Monday, March 3 at the BEGINNING of the hour! This is a
MAJOR SUMMATIVE! Late papers will have a penalty. You will fail this class without this paper!

• Read your rubric!!!!!!!!!!!!
• You need an intro with thesis at end of intro.
• I would look at sample papers for thesis help. Your thesis should be complex and include the overall meaning of the book as a whole!
• You need great topic sentences that announce what you will prove in each paragraph and section of your paper (not a basic sentence that summarizes the plot)
• You need great transitions from idea to idea.
• You need to proofread! Watch your quotations!!!!!!!!
• Write in PRESENT TENSE!!!!!!
• This is NOT a rhetorical analysis!!!!! No need to mention technique in this paper!
• Read the sample papers on the assign drive!!!!!

What will you say that sets your paper apart from the rest of the papers on this book? I have to read
50 papers. Make it interesting and easy to read!
Yes, there are obvious things everyone will write about, but how can you make your paper interesting without making it sound like bullsh!#
You must cover the scope of your novel and I would do it chronologically!

This paper is sort of like a cause and effect paper
“And, after all, our surroundings influence our lives and characters as much as fate, destiny or any supernatural agency.” Pauline Hopkins, Contending
Forces
Choose a novel or play in which cultural, physical, or geographical surroundings shape psychological or moral traits in a character. Then write a wellorganized essay in which you analyze how surroundings affect this character and illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.

Choose a novel or play in which cultural, physical, or
geographical surroundings shape psychological or moral traits in a character.
1. Choose ONE of the three above; you don’t need to choose all of them.
2. Focus on psychological or moral traits.
3. Use this language in your thesis and throughout your paper.
4. What happens to the main character in this surrounding.
This can easily become just summary. You don’t need to include all the details, only those that are important to shaping the character.

Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how surroundings affect this character and illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.
1. How does the surrounding affect this character?
What does the main character do because of his or her surroundings? (Evidence)
2. How do these events and actions reveal and show the overall meaning of the novel? (so what?)
3. Use language from the prompt as you analyze the effect.

Thesis Statements:
Should include important language from the prompt! This is your CLAIM!
Examples from Invisible Man (This is from an assignment that analyzed a chapter or two about the this novel, but you can adapt the format to suit the scope of your paper).
Theme statement: Through unexpected events can come a rebirth of a personality.
• Basic: Through what happens to the Invisible Man, Ellison illustrates the idea that unexpected events can result in a rebirth of a personality.
• Plausible: Through the betrayal of Bledsoe and the unfortunate events at the paint factory, Ellison illustrates the idea that unexpected events can result in a rebirth of a personality that leads to changes in one’s mindset and sets them on a new path.
• Better: Through Bledsoe’s betrayal of the Narrator and the unfortunate events at the paint factory, Ellison suggests that unexpected events can result in changes to one’s personality and new perspectives about life.
First part of sentence shows what parts of the selection I will focus on while the second part offers the overall meaning of the novel!

Example Thesis Statements: Read and Emulate
• By subjecting Amir to cultural and circumstantial pressures, Hosseini characterizes Amir as a desperate individual chasing love and uses this character to ultimately reveal the theme that if one overvalues the idea of love and pursues it blindly, one may end up compromising what they already have.
• In this book, Bronte shows the hardships of a woman in that time era to portray the theme of finding happiness in oneself without lowering one’s morals or giving into the world’s ways.
• Similarly, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane’s physical surroundings at Lowood,
Thornfield and Moor House help in shaping her moral traits, enhancing the deeper meaning that it can be difficult to stay true to oneself when one’s surroundings can have a profound impact on personal beliefs.
• In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster truly emerges as a monster due to the harsh treatment he receives from the people around him, enhancing the ideas that people are not born villains but can become one due to the environment they are surrounded by.
• In Charlotte Bronte’s book Jane Eyre, Bronte positions the main character, Jane, under challenging and life-altering circumstances to portray to readers that importance of maintaining a set of values, and sticking to those values to show your true identity.
• By placing Jane in these settings, Bronte illustrates the importance of establishing beliefs and maintaining them even while facing difficulties so one can stay true to themselves.

• Should be concrete.
• Should support the prompt. Don’t spend time summarizing the text.
• Any evidence you give should be specific and well chosen. Your grade depends on good evidence.
• You should give enough evidence to answer the prompt. Don’t be lazy and give one quote per paragraph. Find a balance between too little and too much.
• Don’t use too many LONG quotes. For a paper this size, I would shoot for NO MORE than 2 long quotes!

• Punctuate correctly!
• When integrating the quote, no matter how you use it, the sentence must be grammatically correct. It must be parallel.
• You have to set the quote up. Don’t just leave it stranded!
• Use evidence that is concrete and shows me what you are trying to prove.

Quoting a Sentence or Sentences:
Gene begins to reveal his internal war with
Finny when he says , “ What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this?
” (5) .
1.
Notice the quote is set up
2.
Notice the comma BEFORE the quote
3.
Notice the sentence is COMPLETE after the comma
4.
Notice the first word of the quote is CAPITALIZED!
5.
Notice the page number in the ( )? Notice the punctuation?
6.
Do this!!!!

Quoting a Fragment:
Jack is not able to kill the piglet during their first attempt at hunting for food
because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into the living flesh; because of the unbearable blood ”
(31) .
1. Again, notice how my words lead into the quote.
2. The quotation is PART of a grammatically correct sentence.
3. This is a good way to shorten longer quotes; only the important part of the quote is included!

Ron said , “ Dad yelled , ‘ No way !
’ ”
Golding writes , “ Jack seized the conch.
‘ Ralph’s right of course. There isn’t a snakething. But if there was a snake we’d hunt it and kill it .’ ” (36) .
Just like Leper in A Separate Peace , my brother
Shaun said , “ ‘ You always were a savage underneath .
’ ”

(Using ellipses)
According to Gene, the faculty at Devon treated the boys differently during the summer session because “ we reminded them of what peace was like … of lives which were not bound up with destruction ” (10) .
Use ellipses when words are omitted from the quotation. Don’t change the context of the quotation. Keep it grammatically correct

(Using brackets)
It is evident that Finny believes in the war before his fall from the tree because he tells
Gene, “ I’m wearing this [ his pink shirt ] as an emblem. We haven’t got a flag, we can’t float
Old Glory proudly out the window. So I’m going to wear this, as an emblem ” (11) .
Use brackets when you are inserting your own words into a quote in order to make the meaning of the quote more clear and to make it grammatically correct.

Not Integrated: Avoid this! This is what
MOST people are doing. It’s easy to fix!
Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, and
Ralph becomes disillusioned with the glory of being chief. “ He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet ” (76) .

In the same way that Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, Ralph begins to feel a sense of disillusionment toward the glory of being chief.
Golding’s narrator begins to allude to Ralph’s waning enjoyment of being the leader on the island when he states, “ He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet ” (76) .

For several reasons , “ all of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot
Lines against an enemy they thought they saw across the frontier …” (123) .
“ Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy ” (202), declares Golding’s narrator at the end of his novel.

Long quotations should be set off from the text.
Usually "set off" text is preceded by a colon:
George Orwell had a difficult time acting as a police officer in Lower
Burma.
As demonstrated in the following excerpt from “Shooting an
Elephant,” he was frustrated by his conflicting need to maintain law and order while remaining faithful to the idea that the Burmese had the right to be free :
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically--and secretly, of course--I was all for the
Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British .
(Orwell 30)
1. Notice the long quote is over 3 typed lines
2. Notice the long quote is indented 10 spaces (2 tabs) over
3. Notice there are NO quotation marks around the long quote
4. Notice the period comes BEFORE the ( )
5. Notice there is no punctuation AFTER the ( )