As a guide for your own revision work, this morning we will examine “Wait Means Never,” the student analysis of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which I distributed on Monday. Though we will consider the essay as a whole, we will focus primarily on the opening paragraph.
After we examine “Wait Means Never,” I will return your drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the class period to begin revising your analyses on your laptops. Because next week is fall break, you will have two additional weeks to continue your revision work before you submit the assignment to Blackboard and publish it as a WordPress blog entry. The due date is Wednesday, October 15 (before class). The hard deadline is Friday, October 17 (before class). Directions for submitting your analysis are included on your assignment sheet and on the Blackboard submission site.
Analysis Draft Notes
I have attached to your analysis draft a handout of notes for you to review–along with my handwritten annotations–before you begin your revision work. An additional copy is included below.
- The opening paragraph of your essay should be a summary that leads to your thesis statement. Remember that summaries are objective by nature. If you comment in any way on the quality of your subject (the text you are writing about), you turn from summary to commentary or analysis. That should not occur until you present your thesis statement, which will follow the summary.
- Summaries are written in third person. No singular or plural first- or second-person pronouns should appear in your summary. In other words, you should not use the words “I,” “me,” “you,” “we,” or “us.”
- MLA style requires the use of present tense in writing about literature and other works that are sources of study. Write Sedaris meditates on, not Sedaris meditated on. For more on writing in present tense, see the MLA Style Center’s notes on present tense.
- Once you begin your analysis, you may use first person, but MLA’s editors and your textbook’s authors recommend that you use first-person sparingly if you use it at all. If you find it difficult to write in third person, compose your analysis in its entirety in first-person, then afterward try recasting it in third person. For more on the person question (to write I or not), see Writing Analytically (415-16) and the MLA Style Center’s notes on using I.
- In your drafts, some of you presented ideas that you heard in class as if they were your own, which is a form of plagiarism. If you mention an idea that I presented in class, you should introduce the idea with a signal phrase, such as this: As Dr. Jane Lucas has observed, the narrator Edgar’s apparent detachment may stem from his grief. The signal phrase is in past tense because it refers to a statement from a previous class, but Edgar’s verb is present tense (stem, not stemmed) because of the present-tense MLA rule. Again, see the MLA Style Center’s notes on present tense.
- If you paraphrase a statement of mine from class, include the following work cited entry at the end of your revision. You will need to consult your class notes to identify the correct date.
Lucas, Jane. English 1103: Academic Research and Writing. 22 September 2025, High Point University.
- If you quote or paraphrase an idea from our class notes, the same rule applies. The work cited entry for a blog post appears below.
Lucas, Jane. “ENG 1103: Donald Bartheleme’s ‘The School.’” Jane Lucas, 17 Sept. 20205, https://janelucas.com/2025/09/17/eng-1103-donald-barthelmes-the-school-2/.
- Do not use the phrase in conclusion or any variation on it at the beginning of the final paragraph of your essay. While that transitional phrase can be useful in a speech (because the audience cannot see that the end is near), there is no reason to write those words when readers can see for themselves that only one paragraph remains. For more, see Harvard University Writing Center’s notes on conclusions.
The Writing Center
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, register online here, 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 16.
Writing Center Consultations for Literacy Narratives
- Section 18 (9:15): 10 of 18 students, 55.5%
- Section 8 (10:40): 8 of 19 students, 42%
If you are one of the students who did not take advantage of the Writing Center when you were composing your literacy narrative, do not miss the opportunity to receive that guidance–and those bonus points–for your analysis, and later for your final essay and annotated bibliography.
Model Analysis
After fall break, we will examine “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” my model analysis of a page of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus. Before class on Monday, October 13, read the page of Maus, which is posted in the readings folder on Blackboard. As you read the page, make note in your journal of the elements of the page you would address if you were writing an analysis of it.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
Jane Lucas 