Sophie McIntosh’s play Macbitchesdepicts the events that follow the announcement that a college freshman has unexpectedly been cast in the coveted role of Lady Macbeth. The recent production of McIntosh’s play by Spirit Gum Theatre begins with two of the older undergraduates arranging furniture in the apartment where they and their frenemies in the theatre department will supposedly celebrate the casting announcement—but in fact will subject the novice Hailey (Katie Pelikan) to a series of mind and drinking games. Fireball and Svedka are their witches’ brew; red Solo cups are their cauldrons.
At the outset, as the young women set the stage with the apartment’s furniture, it isn’t clear whether the audience is witnessing the characters in their first moments. That blurring of the real world and the realm of the play continues throughout the eighty-five-minute performance as audience members often feel more like eavesdroppers at a real-life thespian gripe fest than theatregoers, so convincing were the portrayals of Hailey (Pelikan), Rachel (Elise Kimpel), Lexi (Ireland Barile), Cam (Hunter Harrell), and Piper (Ally Shelton).
The frenemies ply Hailey with so much Fireball and Svedka, I convinced myself—and wrongly so—that she has not simply passed out on the couch but in fact has died of alcohol poisoning. What would follow, I told myself, is an argument among Rachel, Lexi, Cam, and Piper regarding what to do next: Should they leave Hailey on the couch and phone 911, or should they sneak Hailey’s body back to her dorm?
What actually unfolds is much darker, and the showdown isn’t between the ringleader, Rachel, and Hailey but between Rachel and Lexi. The audience watches aghast as “[w]hat’s done cannot be undone” (Shakespeare 5.1). It’s not the ending we expect, which is another of the play’s merits. As the lights dim, we feel surprised but not misled and find ourselves meditating on the intersections of life and art, both the beauty and the horror.
Last week, I published a blog post featuring playable four-letter words with three vowels. Knowing those words, and others with multiple vowels, proves useful when you’re faced with a rack of mostly, or all, vowels. Here’s a list of the remaining playable four-letter words with three vowels, beginning with the letters in the second half of the alphabet:
naoi: ancient temples (pl. of naos)
obia: form of sorcery practiced in the Caribbean (also obeah)
odea: concert halls (pl. of odeum)
ogee: an S-shaped molding
ohia: a Polynesian tree with bright flowers (also lehua)
olea: corrosive solutions (pl. of oleum)
olio: a miscellaneous collection
ouzo: a Turkish anise-flavored liquor
raia: a non-Muslim Turk (also rayah)
roue: a lecherous old man
toea: a currency in Papua, New Guinea
unai: a two-toed sloth (pl. unai; an ai is a three-toed sloth)
Rather than listing the answers to the questions on Monday’s quiz, I have followed each question below with a note regarding where to find the answer. By finding the answers yourself, you will learn more than you would from simply reading them in a list.
Write a brief but vivid description—a minimum of one complete sentence—of the page that you were assigned to read for today. See the page of Art Spiegelman’s memoir Maus posted in the Blackboard readings folder and featured in the October 13 class notes.
The blog post devoted to the sample student analysis that we studied includes several points about the content and form of the essay. Compose a sentence that specifies one of those points that was not addressed in class. See the October 2 class notes, specifically the five bullet points under the heading “Content” and the six bullet points under the heading “Form.”
What is the topic of the most recent Scrabble blog post? Note that Scrabble is the subject, not the topic. The topic is something more specific about the game. See the October 3 class notes.
Your quiz also included a bonus opportunity. Possible answers for that bonus are found in the class notes for October 3.
Scrabble Journal Exercise
In the game pictured above, the first team played “ZIT” with “Z” on a triple-letter square for thirty-two points. Using a blank for an “E,” the second team followed with “ZEROS,” with the “S” on a double-letter square for twenty-six points. The first team then played “SOLVED,” building from the “S” in “ZEROES.”
With “SOLVED,” the only letter that the first team played on a bonus square was the “E”* on a triple-letter, giving that “E” a value of three points. How many points total did the first team earn for “SOLVED”? Would they have benefited from playing elsewhere on the board? If so, why? The first team earn a total of twelve points for “SOLVED.” They would have benefited from playing elsewhere on the board because playing “SOLVED” below “ZEROS” set up the second team to score a triple-word play with “MOC” and simultaneously form two additional words, “EM” and “DO” for a total of twenty-seven points, more than double the first team’s score for the previous play.
In the game pictured above, the first team earned twelve points for the first play, “TOY,” which appears as “OY” on the board. (Remember to make sure that all letters played remain on the squares where they are played.) The second team followed with “LOAN” for six. Then, using the “L” in “Loan” and the “T” in “TOY,” the first team played “NEUTRAL” and “AT.”
With “NEUTRAL,” the only letter that the first team played on a bonus square was “U” on a double-letter square, giving it two points. How many points total did the first team earn for “NEUTRAL”? Would they have benefited from playing elsewhere on the board? If so, why? The first team earned a total of ten points for “NEUTRAL” and “AT.” They would have benefited from playing elsewhere on the board because playing “N-E-U-T-R-A” in front of the “L” in loan set up the second team to score a triple word under the “N.” It also placed the vowel “E” under a triple-letter score, where the opponent would be able to play a high-value consonant. Although the first team may have played “NOW” and/or “ZEN” themselves, they set up their opponents to play on the squares where those words were played.
In the game above, the play is limited almost exclusively to the right quadrants. What words could the teams play horizontally below the “Q,” horizontally above or below the “Y,” and elsewhere to advance the game to the left quadrants?
Here are a few of the ways that the players might advance the game into the left quadrants:
Because no more than two letters can be played below the “Q,” the words that either team could play there are limited to “QAT,” “QUA,” and “QI.” A Team could play both below and above the “Q” by spelling “AQUA,” but that play would not be prudent because it would set up the opponents to play on the triple-word square. Playing “QAT” would be preferable because of the large number of words that end with “T.”
A team could play “T-A-T-T-O” above the “Y” and in front of the “O” to spell “TATTOO” and “OY.” A team could also play “I-D-E-A” below the “Y” and in front of the blank (“L”) to spell “IDEAL” and “YA.”
“NEW” offers more opportunities for advancing the board into the left quadrants. Spelling an a-ending word, such as “ALPHA” or “AREA” vertically with the final “A” in front of the “N” would form both the vertical word and “ANEW.”
“A-A,” “B-A,” “L-A,” M-A,” “P-A,” “R-A,” “W-A,” or “Y-A” could be played in front of the “H” to spell “AAH,” “BAH,” “LAH,” “MAH,” “PAH,” “RAH,” “WAH,” or “YAH” horizontally, along with “AB” vertically.
In the first game pictured above, playing down from the “J” would advance the game into the lower left quadrant, but playing only as much as the single letter “O” below it would set up the opponents to score a triple-word play.
Spelling a word that ends with “K-E-Y” would enable the first game to advance into the lower left quadrant, but “MONKEY” isn’t a possibility because both “M”s and both blanks have already been played. Ditto for “HICKEY,” “HOCKEY,” and “HOKEY” because both “H”s have been played. “JOCKEY” isn’t an option either because the “J” has been played. Three possibilities are “POKEY,” “SMOKEY,” and “TURNKEY.”
The last two rows of the board offer additional opportunities to advance into the left quadrant. Using the “U” or the “T” in “GUT” as one of the last letters in a horizontal word would advance the game into the left side of the second-to-last or last row of the board.
This morning in class you will compose a short reflective essay that documents the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your analysis. In your reflection, you will include at least one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or from the chapter, essay, or article excerpt that serves as the subject of your analysis.
Questions to Consider in Your Reflection
When you began transferring the words from your handwritten draft onto the screen of your laptop or tablet, what did you observe about the process?
What aspect of the writing seemed the most challenging? Choosing your topic? Deciding which text would serve as your subject? Determining your thesis? Identifying details to support your claims? Organizing the body of the essay? Composing the conclusion? Why did that aspect of the writing seem the most challenging?
Did the subject of your analysis change? If so, what was your original subject, and what did you change it to?
What do you consider the strongest element of your analysis?
At what point in the process did you decide on a title? Did you change the title during the writing process? If so, what was the original title?
What image that documents part of your writing process away from the screen did you include in your blog post? Why did you choose that particular image?
What relevant website did you include an embedded link to in your blog post? Why did you choose that site?
In your reflective essay, introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation. Also include a work cited entry for the text that you quote, Writing Analytically or the essay, chapter, or essay excerpt that serves as the subject of your analysis.
Sample Works Cited Entries
Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFileSelect, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/ A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.
Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” https://janelucasdotcom. files.wordpress.com/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf.
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009, pp. 15-23.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Focus on Individual Words and Phrases.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 48.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “The Person Question: When and When Not to Use I.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 415-17.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Seems to Be About X, But Could Also Be (Or is ‘Really’) About Y.’” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 104-7.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “What a Good Analytical Thesis Is and Does.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 241-42.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little Brown, 2000. pp. 166-73.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Focus on Individual Words and Sentences.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. p. 48.
As you continue to revise your analysis, review these sections of Writing Analytically: “Focus on Individual Words and Phrases” (48), “What a Good Analytical Thesis Is and Does” (241-42), and “The Person Question: When and When Not to Use ‘I'” (415-17).
Individual Words and Sentences
Even though the subject of my model analysis, “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” is the page of a graphic novel, focusing on the individual sentence, “I did much business with Cohn!” and within it, the word “with” (83), provided me with one of the points about connection that supports my thesis that the page “simultaneously conveys connection and separation” (par. 1).
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986. p. 83.
Writing of those words, I assert that “Spiegelman underscores the link with Vladek’s line of narration at the bottom of the smaller panel: ‘I did much business with Cohn!’ (83). The word ‘with’ appears directly above the rope, punctuating the connection between both Nahum Cohn and his friend Mr. Zyberberg and Mr. Zylberberg’s son-in-law, Vladek (par. 3).
A Good Analytical Thesis
The authors of Writing Analytically observe that an effective thesis results from closely examining a subject and “arriv[ing] at some point about its meaning and significance that would not have been immediately obvious to your readers” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 241). With that in mind, note that the thesis of my model analysis does not present an idea that’s stated explicitly on the page. On its surface, the page depicts Mr. Zylberberg’s account of Nazi soldiers hanging Jewish merchants. After repeatedly studying the words and panels on the page, I discovered patterns of both connection and separation: “both the grieveing survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis” (par. 1).
First Person and Academic Writing
Although first person is appropriate in some academic prose, as the authors of Writing Analytically note, when you eliminate it, “what you lose in personal conviction, you gain in concision and directness” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 415). Read the two versions of my thesis below, and note the “concision and directness” of the latter.
First-Person Thesis
In my opinion, that haunting panel and the smaller ones that frame it illustrate the complexity of Spiegelman’s seemingly simple composition. I believe his rendering of the panels of the living in conjunction with the fragmented panels of the hanged merchants simultaneously conveys connection and separation. I think it shows the grieving survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis.
Third-Person Thesis
That haunting panel and the smaller ones that frame it illustrate the complexity of Spiegelman’s seemingly simple composition. His rendering of the panels of the living in conjunction with the fragmented panels of the hanged merchants simultaneously conveys connection and separation: both the grieving survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis.
The first-person thesis is less concise and direct because it states that the ideas are the writer’s rather than simply stating the ideas. The result is a thesis that is needlessly longer, by eight words, and that divides the reader’s attention between the writer and the subject.
Notably, 82% of the students who earned midterm grades in the A range earned bonus points for meeting with a Writing Center tutor to review their literacy narrative, and 80% of the students who earned As completed at least one of the three bonus assignments.
If you didn’t take advantage of those bonus point and bonus assignment opportunities in the first half of the semester, be sure to take advantage of them in the second half.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay that focuses on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your analyses. The due date for your revised analysis is Wednesday, October 15, before class, but you have until the hard deadline, Friday, October 17, before class, to post your revision to Blackboard and publish it on your WordPress blog.
If you are still revising your analysis on Wednesday, in your reflection, you will refer to your writing as ongoing.
Also, in your reflection, you will include a minimum of one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or from the essay, chapter, or article excerpt that serves as the subject of your analysis. Before Wednesday’s class, identify the passage you plan to quote, and draft a sentence with it in your journal. That preparation will ensure that you have ample time to integrate the quotation into your reflection before the end of Wednesday’s class period.
Analysis draft with collage clipping from page 83 of Art Spiegelman’s Maus 1.
This morning in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine my model analysis, “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” included below. As you read it, note how I turn from summary to thesis in the first paragraph. Also note how the paragraphs that follow offer support for the thesis with concrete details from the comic’s panels.
Since concluding paragraphs can be particularly difficult to write without repeating the introduction, today’s group work will include a close look at strategies for conclusions.
The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec
In his graphic memoir Maus, Art Spiegelman devotes a page to his father Vladek’s account of the hangings of four Jewish merchants in Sosnowiec, Poland. Vladek and his wife, Anja, learn from Anja’s father, Mr. Zylberberg, that the Nazis have arrested his friend Nahum Cohn and his son. With his head bowed in sorrow, Mr. Zylberberg says to Anja and Vladek, “The Germans intend to make an example of them!” (83). That image of Mr. Zylberberg speaking with Vladek and Anja overlies the larger panel that dominates the page, one that depicts the horror that Mr. Zylberberg anticipates: the murder of his friend Nahum Cohn, Cohn’s son, and two other Jewish merchants. That haunting panel and the smaller ones that frame it illustrate the complexity of Spiegelman’s seemingly simple composition. His rendering of the panels of the living in conjunction with the fragmented panels of the hanged merchants simultaneously conveys connection and separation: both the grieving survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis.
The placement of the overlying panel not only hides part of the horror behind it, but it also connects Vladek’s father-in-law to one of the victims. Mr. Zylberberg’s head and torso appear directly above the suspended legs and feet of one of the hanged men, creating an image that merges the two.
Spiegelman further emphasizes the mourners’ identification with the hanged men by extending two of the nooses’ ropes upward to the smaller panel above them, linking the living to the dead. Additionally, Spiegelman underscores the link with Vladek’s line of narration at the bottom of the smaller panel: “I did much business with Cohn!” (83). The word “with” appears directly above the rope, punctuating the connection between both Nahum Cohn and his friend Mr. Zylberberg and Zylberberg’s son-in-law, Vladek.
While the panels of the hangings yoke the living to the dead, Spiegelman’s presentation of the hanged men in fragments also objectifies them. The final panels on the page depict only their shoes and part of their pant legs suspended above the onlookers, images that may evoke in some readers thoughts of the last remnants of the Jews who stepped barefoot into the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Whether the hanged men’s shoes call to mind those mountains of leather left behind by the Jews, the separation of their lower legs and feet from the rest of their bodies turns them into something less than human—not people, but mere parts. Thus, Spiegelman creates a picture of the hangings that illustrates both the mourners’ identification with the victims and the Nazis’ perception of the Jews as less than human.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus 1. Pantheon, 1986, p. 83.
Spiegelman’s transformation of the Nazi propaganda portrayals of Jews as rats remains an astounding achievement thirty-five years after the publication of the first volume of Maus. But seeing the hanged merchants in Modrzejowska Street in the midst of the George Floyd murder trial in Minneapolis and less than three months after the January 6 Capitol riot reminds readers that the panels of Spiegelman’s memoir have grown more prescient. The nooses evoke images of Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, the January 6 chants to hang the Vice President, and a T-shirt glimpsed in the Capitol crowd, one with a Nazi eagle below the acronym “6MWE” (Six Million Wasn’t Enough), a reference to the numbers of Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust. Our heads are bowed in sorrow with Mr. Zylberberg’s. The strange fruit of our past, both distant and recent, should seem far stranger.
Work Cited
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay that focuses on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your analyses. The due date for your revised analysis is Wednesday, October 15, before class, but you have until the hard deadline, Friday, October 17, before class, to post your revision to Blackboard and publish it on your WordPress blog.
If you are still revising your analysis on Wednesday, in your reflection, you will refer to your writing as ongoing.
Also, in your reflection, you will include a minimum of one relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or from the essay, chapter, or article excerpt that serves as the subject of your analysis. Before Wednesday’s class, identify the passage you plan to quote, and draft a sentence with it in your journal. That preparation will ensure that you have ample time to integrate the quotation into your reflection before the end of Wednesday’s class period.
Knowing words with multiple vowels proves useful when you’re faced with a rack of mostly, or all, vowels. Here’s a list of the first twenty-two playable four-letter words with three vowels:
aeon: a long period of time (also eon)
agee: to one side (also ajee)
agio: a surcharge applied when exchanging currency
ague: a sickness associated with malaria
ajee: to one side (also agee)
akee: a tropical tree
alae: wings (pl. of ala)
alee: on the side shielded from wind
amia: a freshwater fish
amoa: a kind of small buffalo
awee: a little while
eaux: waters (pl. of eau)
eide: distinctive appearances of things (pl. of eidos)
emeu: an emu
etui: an ornamental case
euro: an Australian marsupial, also known as wallaroo, for being like the kangaroo and the wallaby; also a unified currency of much of Europe
ilea: the terminal portions of small intestines (pl. of ileum)
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 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.
At the beginning of yesterday’s class–before you began your revision work–we examined “Wait Means Never,” the sample student analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Today’s blog post presents more detailed notes on the essay’s content and form. As you continue to revise, return to these notes for reminders of what to avoid in your own analysis.
Content
Rather than beginning with a summary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the writer comments on the letter by observing its relevance. Instead the writer should state what the letter is, an epistolary essay King wrote in 1962 while he was jailed in Alabama for leading nonviolent protests.
The writer ends the first paragraph with a thesis, but the statement is primarily description. Essentially, the writer states that King uses stylistic devices to deliver his message to a wider audience, but a thesis or main claim in a textual analysis should offer an assertion about how the writer’s use of those devices achieve a particular effect. The recommended revision that we examined in class–the one on the handout that I distributed–is included below, under the Revision heading.
The writer observes that King repeats “the word ‘wait’ throughout the letter” (par. 2), but King does not introduce that word until his eleventh paragraph. The writer could revise his thesis to focus specifically on King’s eleventh paragraph because that portion of the letter is the source of his claims and textual support.
In the body paragraphs, the writer effectively details King’s diction and sentence structure, but a couple of inaccuaracies undercut the prose. Neither “from bad to worse” (par. 3) nor “at the end of the letter” (par. 5) is accurate.
After ending the final body paragraph with ”’wait'” (par. 5), the writer turns to a conclusion that reads more like the ending of a history report than a textual analysis. Simply revising the opening of the last paragraph to begin, “[t]he words of Dr. Martin Luther King . . .” would maintain the focus of the analysis, the words themselves. The writer could still address the letter’s role in history by noting how the words have endured as a rallying cry for peaceful nonviolent protest. Consider how else the writer might give the analysis closure.
Form
The document lacks a running header.
Because the writer is referring to “wait” and “never” as words in his title, both should be enclosed in quotation marks.
In the first line, the writer defines King’s letter as a “speech of literature” (par. 1). Although King was an orator, his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is not one of his speeches. As the title indicates, it’s a letter. Labeling the letter “literature” is unnecessary because the analysis that unfolds will reveal the literary quality of the prose. If the writer wants to address the letter’s status as a work of literature, in the conclusion, he might note that many students first encounter King’s letter in the pages of their high school and college anthologies.
In the first sentence of the introductory paragraph and the second sentence of the second paragraph, the writer uses coordinating conjunctions that indicate contrast, but the clauses those words connect are not in contrast. See “yet remains” (par. 1) and “but irked” (par. 2). In both cases, “and” would be the accurate conjunction. That said, “yet remains” introduces an assessment of the letter–in particular, its relevance–which shouldn’t be part of the summary at the beginning of the analysis.
The writer refers to King’s voice as “the narrator’s” (par. 2), but a narrator is a person who tells a story, usually a work of fiction or a narrative poem. King should be referred to as the writer or the author.
The clauses “it can easily be acknowledged” (par. 2) and “it can be identified” (par. 5) are passive constructions that de-emphasize the subject. The sentences that contain those clauses should be revised to show the action that King performs as a writer. The second-paragraph sentence might be rewritten as this: King’s repetition of “wait” emphasizes how frequently he has heard the word and how its “piercing familiarity” (par. 11) has increased his frustration. The two sentences convey the same idea, but the revision is eleven words shorter.
Introductory Paragraph
The paragraphs below are the first paragraph of “Wait Means Never” and my revised version.
Original Introductory Paragraph
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is a speech of literature that was composed many years ago yet remains relevant. King’s words give insight into the life of an African American during the 1960s and symbolize the significance of taking action and standing up for what is right, justice for African Americans. In this particular letter, King speaks about how it’s easy for people who have never felt pain of being oppressed, discriminated against, and segregated to say the word “wait.” The letter goes further into detail about what “wait” truly means for an African American and specifically tackles the perspective of an American father who also has to explain to his children why the world is the way it is, yet that father does not quite know himself why people act in such a harsh manner. In this letter, Martin Luther King Jr. utilizes repetition, detail, vivid imagery, and sentence structure to deliver a message to not just one person, or even a hundred people, but the entire country that justice for African Americans cannot be a patient matter.
Revision
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a response to the eight white clergymen who drafted an open letter that addressed King’s involvement in the civil rights movement and urged him to seek justice in the courts rather than in the streets. In his answer to the clergymen, King asserts that a Christianity that permits racial oppression and prejudice is immoral and stands in direct opposition to the teachings of the gospel. Though King’s letter draws on his 1956 sermon “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” the hallmark of his epistolary essay is not the rhythmic cadences of his baritone voice, but instead its artful composition. With the repetition of the word “wait” and a series of dependent clauses, King encapsulates his testimony and delays the end of the letter’s longest sentence, creating a holding pattern that forces readers to experience their own wait.
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.
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.
Yesterday in class, while you were composing your midterm reflections, I distributed a sample student analysis for you to read and an exercise on the analysis for you to complete for Wednesday’s class. An additional copy of the directions for the exercise are included below.
Directions
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is his response to the eight white clergymen who had drafted an open letter that addressed King’s involvement in the civil rights movement and urged him to seek justice in the courts rather than in the streets.
Read the excerpt from King’s letter (included below), then read the student analysis “Wait Means Never.” Make notes on the text and in the margins of “Wait Means Never,” indicating any changes you would make and posing any questions you have.
Answer question two and the questions that follow with a minimum of one complete sentence. What indicates to the reader that the introductory paragraph does or does not begin with a summary?
How could the writer refine his thesis and narrow the scope of his analysis? (What specifically in the letter—rather than the letter as a whole—might serve as his focus?)
The paragraph of King’s letter that the student examines in detail, the one that is included on this handout, is not the first paragraph of the letter. What does that fact tell you about the parenthetical citations in the student’s analysis?
If you were absent of Monday, or misplaced your copy of the sample analysis and exercise, email me a request for a copy.
From “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
In class tomorrow, we will examine the sample student analysis “Wait Means Never” and the accompanying exercise. Afterward, I will return your analysis drafts with my notes, and you will have the remainder of the class period to devote to revision work.
Jane Lucas 