For today’s class, you read and annotated “Wait Means Never,” an analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written for English 1103 in a previous semester.
Today in class, you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an assessment of “Wait Means Never” that addresses both the content and the form of the analysis. You will also examine a second student analysis–one that I will distribute in class–which focuses on a passage in Tara Westover’s memoir Educated (2018).
As you assess the student analyses, pay close attention to both the assignment guidelines and the grade criteria. Ask yourselves whether each essay includes all of the following elements:
- A title that offers a window into your analysis
- An introduction that presents a summary of the text
- A thesis statement, or main claim, that presents your take on the text based on your close study of it
- Textual evidence that supports your claims
- A minimum of two relevant quotations from the text, introduced with signal phrases and followed by parenthetical citations
- A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
- A work cited entry
- A minimum of 600 words
Keep in mind that A and B essays must include all of the elements listed above.
In addition to reading and annotating “Wait Means Never” for today, you examined the page of Art Spiegelman‘s graphic memoir Maus posted in the readings folder on Blackboard, and noted in your journal what elements of the page you might address if you were writing an analysis of it. Time permitting, after we discuss your assessments of “Wait Means Never” and “Princess of the Rock,” we will examine my analysis, “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.”
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose a short reflective essay focusing on the process of planning, drafting, and revising your analysis. If you are still in the process of completing your essay on Wednesday (since you have until Friday morning’s hard deadline to post it), your reflection will address your work in progress.
Before class, review the sections of the textbook, Writing Analytically, that have guided you in the writing of your analysis:
- “Focus on Individual Words and Sentences” (48-49).
- “How Long?: Paragraphs, Readers, and Writers” (308).
- “‘Interesting,’ ‘Revealing,’ ‘Strange’” (24).
- “Seems to Be About X, But Could Also Be (Or is ‘Really’) About Y’” (104-7).
- “What a Good Analytical Thesis Is and Does” (242-42).
- “Words Matter” (49-50).
After you have reviewed those sections of Writing Analytically, choose a phrase, clause, or sentence relevant to your writing process and draft in your journal a short passage that connects that quotation to your writing. That passage will serve as part of your reflection. Detailed instructions for composing your reflection and including your chosen quotation will be included on the assignment handout that I distribute on Wednesday. Remember to bring your textbook to class.
Jane Lucas 