This morning, after I collect your final Check, Please! worksheets, I will return your drafts, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising your analyses on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue your revision work before you submit the assignment to Blackboard and publish it as a WordPress blog entry. The due date is next Wednesday, October 4 (before class). The hard deadline is 10:30 a.m. on Friday, October 6. Directions for submitting your analyses are included on your assignment sheet and on the Blackboard submission site.
Parenthetical Citations
In your analysis, you will include parenthetical citations for quotations and paraphrases. Since you are writing a textual analysis, I recommend quoting rather than paraphrasing because the writer’s particular word choices are vital to the text’s overall effect. If your subject is one of the unpaginated texts (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” or “The Falling Man”), your parenthetical citations will include the abbreviation par. for paragraph, followed by the paragraph number. If your subject is one of the paginated texts (“Back Story” or “The School”), your parenthetical citations will include the page number by itself. Including the author’s last name as well would be redundant because you have established in your introduction that your essay focuses solely on a work by him or her.
Here are some examples of how to use parenthetical citations in your analysis:
- The nonsense words “meimslsxp” and “lgpdmurct” underscore his utter lack of comprehension in French class (par. 2).
- The line “‘like Aaron’s rod, with flowers'” is a biblical allusion to Numbers 17.8 (par. 9).
- He notes that in contrast to the Falling Man, the others who jumped appeared “confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain” (par. 1).
- He employs the “One Mississippi . . . Two Mississippi . . .” count to mark the seconds leading up to Joe Theismann’s career-ending injury (15).
- With the words, “is death that which gives meaning to life?,” the story shifts from realism to surrealism (10).
Work Cited Entry
At the end of your analysis, you will include an MLA-style work cited entry. Refer to the models below.
Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.
Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.
Keller, Helen. “The Day that Language Came into My Life.” The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009, pp. 15-23.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little Brown, 2000. pp. 166-73.
As you continue to revise your analysis, consider visiting the Writing Center. If you do so, you will earn five bonus points for the assignment.
To schedule an appointment, visit https://highpoint.mywconline.com, email the Writing Center’s director, Professor Justin Cook, at jcook3@highpoint.edu, or scan the QR code below. To earn bonus points for your analysis, consult with a Writing Center tutor no later than Thursday, October 5.
I recommend taking a copy of the text that serves as the subject of your analysis (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” “The Falling Man,” “Back Story,” or “The School”) to your Writing Center appointment.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips.
Jane Lucas 