This morning’s class will focus on a review of the sample student essay and annotated bibliography “The King of Storytelling,” an exercise that will serve as a guide for you as you develop and revise your own essay and bibliography.
After your Scrabble debriefing at the beginning of class, I will give each of you a writing prompt that asks you to focus on one section of the sample assignment.
If your prompt directs you to examine the final essay, you will begin your writing by addressing one or more of these elements:
The introduction: Does the writer address the purpose for compiling it? Does the writer clarify what drives the research, what interests the writer in the subject, and what questions the writer seeks to answer?
The body: Does the writer address all five of the sources and quote at least two of them.
If your prompt directs you to examine the first three annotations or the last two, you will begin your writing by addressing one or more of these elements:
One of the summaries: Does it provide a clear objective overview of the article, book, or interview?
One of the commentaries: Does the writer identify the purpose that source might serve in a larger project? (Does the writer demonstrate how the source serves as a point of comparison or contrast to another source? Does the writer indicate how it supports or challenges an idea presented in another source? Does the writer identify it as secondary source that sheds light on the meaning of a primary source?)
After you have each completed your individual review, choose a passage from one of them to serve as the starting point for our class discussion. Then use the evaluation criteria on the assignment sheet to determine a letter grade for “The King of Storytelling.”
Time permitting, after our discussion of “The King of Storytelling,” we will preview an exercise for Wednesday’s class.
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.
Tomorrow morning, before you continue work on your final essay and annotated bibliography, we will revisit Stephen King‘s “Strawberry Spring” and discuss the answers to your collaborative exercise on the story.
For that exercise, I asked you to determine whether you could identify any details that indicate why the narrator may have murdered any of his victims. Although there is no indication that the narrator knew Gale Cermann, Adelle Parkins, or Marsha Curran, he did know Ann Bray, which he reveals after he tells the readers that she was editor of the school newspaper: “In the hot, fierce bubblings of my freshman youth I had submitted a column idea to the paper and asked for a date–turned down on both counts” (275).
I also asked you to try to identify the two literary allusions in King’s story. The first appears on page 269, the second on 272. We will examine them in detail at the beginning of tomorrow’s class.
Next Up
At the beginning of tomorrow’s class, we will continue our discussion of “Strawberry Spring.” Afterward, you will have the remainder of the period to devote to your final essay and annotated bibliography. Details TBA.
Today in class we will read the second half of Stephen King‘s short story “Strawberry Spring,” which was published in Ubris magazine in 1968 and included in King’s first short story collection, Night Shift (1978).
For the collaborative exercise that you will complete after we read the story, I will ask you to determine whether you can identify any details that indicate why the narrator may have murdered any of his victims. Although there is no indication that the narrator knew Gale Cerman, Adelle Parkins, or Marsha Curran, he did know Ann Bray. I will also ask you to try to identify the two literary allusions in King’s story.
We will address those points near the end of class today, and I will expand on them in tomorrow’s blog. Also in class today, we will discuss King’s story as another possible subject for research and how you might develop a final essay and annotated bibliography on “Strawberry Spring”–or one on your chosen subject–into a larger project for an upper-level course.
Next Up
We will review “Strawberry Spring” at the beginning of Wednesday’s class, and you will have the remainder of the period to continue work on your final essay and annotated bibliography.
Yesterday in class we examined Donald Barthelme’s “The School” as a potential subject for your final essay and annotated bibliography. If you choose to write about his short story, your bibliographic entry for your primary source would follow this model:
Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.
Donald Barthelme’s postmodern short story “The School” recounts a series of classroom lessons that end with the deaths of plants and animals–deaths that serve as a prelude to the unexplained death of a Korean orphan, followed by a surge in deaths of classmates and family members. First published in The New Yorker magazine in 1974, “The School” was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1975.
“The School”‘s unreliable narrator, it’s shift in fictional mode, and its dark humor combine to create an ideal introduction to postmodern fiction. Researchers interested in exploring how literary scholars have interpreted Barthelme’s story may draw on the details of the narrative to examine how their own analyses of Bartheleme’s postmodernism align with or diverge from their own. They may also look to the story’s particulars as hallmarks of the author’s style in particular or postmodernism in general.
Donald Barthelme taught creative writing at Boston University, SUNY Buffalo, and the City College of New York, where he served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974 to 1975. He was the author of four novels and a dozen short story collections, including Sixty Stories, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will receive your final essay and annotated bibliography assignment, you will conduct a short interview with a classmate, and you will compose your first annotation. Details TBA.
This morning, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School” as a potential subject for your final essay and annotated bibliography.
If you choose to research Barthelme’s story, questions to consider include these:
What is postmodern fiction, and what characteristics of it does “The School” exhibit?
How have literary scholars interpreted “The School”?
After we study “The School,” you will read one of your classmate’s analyses, and compose a blog response to it.
Directions
Go to the class blog page,and click on the link for the blog of the of classmate whose name precedes yours on the roster. If you are first on the list, go to the blog of the student whose name is last on the list.
If the student’s blog is not accessible, email the student and ask him or her to email you a copy of the analysis, or choose another student’s analysis for your response.
Read the classmate’s analysis and compose a response (75 words, minimum) that addresses one or more of these elements: the title, the thesis, the support for the writer’s claims, the conclusion, the image documenting part of the writing process away from the screen, the embedded link to a relevant website.
Does the blog post include an image that documents part of the blogger’s writing process away from the screen? ___ (yes or no)
Does the post include a relevant embedded link? ___ (yes or no)
After you have composed your response, type it as a comment for the blogger. You should see a leave comment/reply option at the top or bottom of the post. If you do not see that option, click on the title of the blog post, and scroll down. You should then see leave comment/reply.If you do not think that you will have time to type and post your handwritten comment before the end of class, take a picture of your handwritten response. That will enable you to submit your worksheet at the end of class and post your comment afterward.
Submit your handwritten response at the end of class today. You will submit your paper copy of your comment because the blogger may not choose to make your comment visible. You will receive credit for the assignment only if you submit your worksheet at the end of class today.
If you complete the assignment before the end of class, devote the remainder of the period to one of the following: (1) reading and commenting on other classmates’ analyses, (2) reviewing your reading handouts and determining which one might serve as the starting point for your final essay and annotated bibliography.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will receive your final essay and annotated bibliography assignment, you will conduct a short interview with a classmate, and you will compose your first annotation. Details TBA.
The words of the epitaph above conclude Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind,” published in 1820. In that poem, the speaker meditates on the seemingly contradictory nature of the wind as both “[d]estroyer and preserver” (line 14). The poem ends on a positive note with the promise of spring, which will not arrive until March 20. That is why the word spring is enclosed in quotation marks in the title of this post. It isn’t spring yet, but it isn’t “far behind” (line 70), and its nearness brings us hope.
As you continue your un-springlike spring break, I invite you to examine this blog post and the others that I will publish in the coming days. These are by no means required reading during your brief respite from the semester, but they are here for you in case you find yourself returning to thoughts of your analysis in progress and wanting to study samples to aid your own writing process. If you don’t read these posts this week, read them before class on Monday, March 3.
An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a piece of writing that suggests its theme.
The speaker of a poem is the voice that serves as the narrator. Just as the narrative voice of a work of fiction varies from the author’s, the speaker in a poem is not the poet but rather a persona created by the poet.
A note on mechanics: Ordinarily, seasons and elements are not capitalized, but Shelley capitalizes “Wind,” “Winter,” and “Spring” (lines 69-70) because he personifies them.
Sample Keller Analysis
With pen or pencil in hand, read your copy of the student analysis of “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Write notes in the margin and on the text itself, and afterward compose a brief journal entry that addresses both the content and the form of the essay. (Remember that you are not required to complete this exercise until you return to campus after spring break.)
Tomorrow I will publish a follow-up post with notes on the analysis.
Yesterday in class, before you began planning and drafting your analyses, we examined the beginning of Tom Junod‘s essay “The Falling Man,” published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. If you choose that excerpt for the subject of your analysis, one element you might address is the unusually long first paragraph. Consider where Junod might have divided the paragraph and why he may have chosen not to divide it.
Junod might have started a second paragraph with the words “[i]n all the other pictures,” because there he shifts the focus from the Falling Man to the photographs of other people who jumped from the Twin Towers. An opportunity for a third paragraph comes with the words “[t]he man in the picture, by contrast,” where Junod turns his attention back to the Falling Man. And he might have begun a fourth paragraph with “[s]ome people who look at the picture,” because there he shifts to viewers’ perceptions of the Falling Man.
The first paragraph is over four-hundred words long, a length I advise you to avoid in your own paragraphs. Generally, one-hundred to one-hundred-and-fifty words is a suitable length. As a rule, you should begin a new paragraph whenyou present a new idea or point. If you have an extended idea that spans multiple paragraphs, each new point within that idea should have its own paragraph. But the first paragraph of “The Falling Man” is an exception. For Junod, choosing not to divide the first paragraph creates an unbroken movement that parallels the unbroken downward flight of his subject, the Falling Man. Outside of the photograph, “he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.” With “disappears,” the last word of the paragraph,” the Falling Man disappears from the page, and Tom Junod turns to the photographer, whom we learn later in the essay is Richard Drew.
Unless you subscribe to Esquire, the magazine’s paywall will deny you access to the full text of “The Falling Man”; but if you’re interested in reading it in full, you can access it through the HPU Library site by following these steps:
The second half of this blog post features my version of the third Check, Please! assignment, which you submitted at the beginning of class on Wednesday. In preparation for submitting your worksheet for lesson four, review this post as well as the assignment notes that I posted on January 23.
Sample Assignment
In the third lesson of the Check, Please!, Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, continues his instruction on the second step in four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source. Lesson three, “Further Investigation” covers these topics: (1) Just add Wikipedia for names and organizations, (2) Google Scholar searches for verifying expertise, (3) Google News searches for information about organizations and individuals, (4) the nature of state media and how to identify it, and (5) the difference between bias and agenda.
One of the most instructive parts of lesson three focuses on two news stories about MH17, Malyasia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger flight scheduled to land in Kuala Lumpur that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. While the second story, a television news segment, appears to present detailed investigative reporting challenging the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board and Dutch-led joint investigation team–the conclusion that Russia was to blame–a quick just-add-Wikipedia check reveals that RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled international TV network, a government propaganda tool rather than a source of fair and balanced news. The first video, the one produced by Business Insider, a financial and business news site, delivers accurate coverage of MH17.
Another notable segment of “Further Investigation” addresses the important distinction between “bias” and “agenda.” There, Caulfield observes that “[p]ersonal bias has real impacts. But bias isn’t agenda, and it’s agenda that should be your primary concern for quick checks,” adding that “[b]ias is about how people see things; agenda is about what a news or research organization is set up to do.”
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 tips.
Tomorrow in class, you will begin planning and drafting an analysis, your second major writing assignment for the course. Your subject may be any one of the following texts that we have studied.
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
“The Day Language Came into My Life” by Helen Keller
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Back Story” by Michael Lewis
As I noted in yesterday’s post, you should review your assigned readings, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. I asked you to consider this question: Which text are you most interested in examining in closer detail to determine what makes it an effective piece of writing? Your answer to that question is likely the best subject for you. That said, in the process of planning and drafting, your answer may change. Sometimes the writing process involves discovering that a subject you weren’t interested in–or were less interested in than others–deserves a closer look.
Rather than trying to begin the writing process with a thesis (or main claim, or controlling idea), jot down the words, phrases, and sentences from the text that have lingered in your mind the most. Ask yourself these questions:
What do some of these words, phrases, and sentences have in common?
How are they different?
What patterns can you identify among them?
After repeated readings, do any of them seem to take on additional meanings?
Answering those questions will lead you to identify patterns that will give you the framework for your analysis.
Elements to address in your analysis include these:
Scene
Summary
Figurative language
Sensory details
Structure
Theme
To determine one of the themes of your subject, think about the ideas that the writer conveys throughout the text. Humor in the face of adversity and antagonism (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”), language as illumination and liberation (“The Day Language Came into My Life”), social injustice and the urgency of nonviolent protest (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”), fear and the unseen (“Back Story”) are among the themes to consider.
Keep in mind that themes are abstractions that writers convey through concrete details. If you address a theme in your subject, be sure to refer to concrete details that convey that theme.
As you continue to work on your analysis, read these sections of Writing Analytically:
“Focus on Individual Words and Sentences” (49-50)
“Find the Analytical Potential: Locate an Area of Uncertainty” (120-21)
“Six Rules of Thumb for Responding to Assignments more Analytically” (121-23)
Next Up
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, you will submit your third Check, Please! worksheet, and you will have the rest of the class period to begin planning and drafting your analyses.
Today’s class will be devoted primarily to reading and responding to the blog post of one of your classmates’ literacy narratives. Elements you will consider in your response included these:
the title
vivid details
scene and summary (and dialogue, if present)
the conclusion
the image documenting part of the writing process away from the screen
the link to a relevant website
Before you begin that assignment, we will examine the opening pages of “Back Story,” the first chapter of Michael Lewis‘s The Blind Side, which dramatizes the moments in the November 1985 Redskins-Giants football game leading up to the injury that ended quarterback Joe Theismann’s career:
“From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five. One Mississippi: The quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Joe Theismann, turns and hands the ball to running back John Riggins. He watches Riggins run two steps forward, turn, and flip the ball back to him. It’s what most people know as a ‘flea-flicker,’ but the Redskins call it a ‘throw-back special.’ Two Mississippi: Theismann searches for a receiver but instead sees Harry Carson coming straight at him. It’s a running down—the start of the second quarter, first and 10 at midfield, with the score tied 7–7—and the New York Giants’ linebacker has been so completely suckered by the fake that he’s deep in the Redskins’ backfield. Carson thinks he’s come to tackle Riggins but Riggins is long gone, so Carson just keeps running, toward Theismann. Three Mississippi: Carson now sees that Theismann has the ball. Theismann notices Carson coming straight at him, and so he has time to avoid him. He steps up and to the side and Carson flies right on by and out of the play. The play is now 3.5 seconds old. Until this moment it has been defined by what the quarterback can see. Now it–and he–is at the mercy of what he can’t see” (15).
What Theismann cannot see is Lawrence Taylor. A second later, as Taylor sacks Theismann, Taylor’s knee drives straight into Theismann’s lower right leg, leading to the “snap of the first bone” that Lewis mentions in the first line of the chapter. He hooks the reader by linking the beginning of the play, “the snap of the ball,” to the gruesome “snap of the first bone” that will follow (15). Lewis develops the opening paragraph using the common one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi method of marking seconds to present the events leading up to the compound fracture that ends Theisman’s career.
Lewis doesn’t dramatize the injury itself because his interest lies instead in the blind side that led to it and subsequently elevated the status and salary of the left tackle, the player who protects the quarterback’s blind side.
When you’re struggling to develop a piece of writing, reread the opening paragraph of The Blind Side. Observe how Lewis dramatizes 3.5 seconds–yes, only 3.5 seconds–with about two-hundred words.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, after you submit your worksheets for the third lesson of Check, Please!, you will begin planning and drafting your analysis, your second major writing assignment for the course. To prepare for Wednesday’s class, review your assigned readings, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. Which text are you most interested in examining in closer detail to determine what makes it an effective piece of writing? Your answer to that question is likely the best subject for you.
Yesterday before you and your group members assessed the literacy narratives that you read for class, we examined a page (pictured above) from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That page from Chapter One serves as a useful model for three narrative elements: summary, scene, and dialogue–at least two of which will figure in your literacy narrative.
The first paragraph of the passage sets the scene with summary, designating the “summertime boundaries” within which the narrator, Jean Louise, “Scout,” Finch, and her older brother, Jem, may play outdoors (12). The short one-sentence paragraph that follows continues the summary, informing readers that the summer Scout has just summarized is the one in which Dill (Charles Baker Harris) first visits Maycomb, Alabama.
With the first words of the next paragraph, “[e]arly one morning,” Scout shifts from summary to scene (12). All of the remaining paragraphs except the final one continue the scene with dialogue. Scout returns to summary with the words “Dill was from Meridian” (12).
Note that Harper Lee begins a new paragraph whenever the speaker changes. Also note that every line of dialogue does not include a dialogue tag, such as “he said” or “she said.” If a passage of dialogue includes only two speakers, none of the paragraphs require dialogue tags after the speakers’ first lines because the start of a new paragraph signals to the reader that the other person is speaking. If a dialogue includes three or more speakers–such as Scout’s conversation with Jem and Dill–occasional tags are essential.
In my notes above, I have been careful to distinguish between the author, Harper Lee, and the narrator, the fictional character Scout. When you write about an autobiographical work, such as a literacy narrative, you may use the terms writer and narrator interchangeably. When you write about a work of fiction, it’s important to separate the narrative voice from the author. Reserve the term author for published writers. When you write about a piece of student writing, refer to the student as a writer, not an author.
Sample Student Literacy Narratives
The paragraphs that follow include detailed but not comprehensive notes on the two sample narratives that you assessed in class yesterday. Look to these notes as a guide for editing your own literacy narrative.
“Creativity is Key”
The writer changes the font of the body of the paper to Times New Roman but does not change the font of the running header, which should also be Times New Roman.
The writer incorrectly adds an extra space between the first-page course information (in the upper left) and between the title and the first line of the essay. MLA-style manuscripts are double-spaced. Note that later, the writer also incorrectly adds space between the paragraphs.
The title should be typed in twelve-point font, which is the font size that should be used throughout the document.
The title should not appear in boldface.
In MLA style, all major words in a title, including the final one, are capitalized (“key” should be “Key).
Form, which is the focus of the previous notes, is less important than content, but easily avoidable errors of form may prevent a reader from appreciating the content of your narrative. Creating a compelling story is hard work, proofreading isn’t. If you don’t get the easy part right, readers may stop reading.
The second “sentence” of the second paragraph is a fragment because the meaning of “one being my senior year . . .” is dependent upon the clause that ends the previous sentence. See Writing Analytically, page 426-29.
The comma between “all” and “matter” is a comma splice. See Writing Analytically, 429.
“[R]eal life” should be hyphenated (as real-life) when it functions as a compound modifier. Ditto for “open minded” and “four to five.”
Errors of letter case–upper rather than lower, or vice versa–are mistakes of mechanics, which are prevalent in the second paragraph “Track, “Field,” “Defensive,” “Back,” and “Athlete” should all began with a lower-case letter.
“[F]elt like” should be “felt as if.” In comparisons, use “like” before a noun and “as if” before a clause.
“I’m a writer that” should be “I’m a writer who.” The correct relative pronoun for a person is “who,” not “that.”
The essay is not a narrative. The writer mentions his experience writing a Southern gothic story, and he briefly recounts writing about his training for track and field and international football (soccer), but the writer offers very few details. Focusing on one of those experiences and recreating one or more moments from it would transform the essay into a narrative and develop it into one that meets the six hundred-word minimum requirement.
“Giving a Speech: Worst Nightmare to Best Feeling”
In the second line of the second paragraph, “Megan” is a parenthetical element that should be set off by commas. See Writing Analytically, 441.
The parenthetical element is the next line, “Mrs. Hron’s,” is correctly set off with commas, but the word that precedes “Mrs. Hron’s” should be possessive (“teacher’s,” not “teachers”).
Several other minor punctuation errors occur in the essay, but overall it’s a strong literacy narrative that’s notable for its vivid scenes and the writer’s self-deprecating humor.
Notes on Monday’s Quiz
Rather than posting the answers to the quiz, I am asking you to review the sample student literacy narratives, my annotations on your assignments, and the class notes for January 28 and February 3 and to find the answers on your own. Doing so will enable you to retain more of the course content from the past two weeks of class.
Keep in mind that one of the reasons we write is to remember. Taking notes on all of the blog entries that I publish and on all of your other reading assignments will both engage you in learning process and enable you to demonstrate your learning in the course.
Integrating Quotations
Writing your reflective essay on your literacy narrative tomorrow will include an exercise in integrating a quotation into your writing, a practice you will engage in more frequently as the semester progresses.
In your reflection, you are required include a minimum of one relevant quotation from the textbook, Writing Analytically, which you will introduce with a signal phrase and follow with a parenthetical citation.
Examples
The authors of Writing Analytically observe that “[o]ne goal of a writer’s notebook is to teach yourself through repeated practice that you are capable of finding things to write about” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 157).
In Writing Analytically, Rosenwasser and Stephen note, “to a significant extent, writing of all kinds tells a story—the story of how we have come to understand something” (162).
In the first example above, the authors’ last names appear in the parenthetical citation because they are not named in the signal phrase. In the second example, only the page number appears in the parenthetical citation because the authors are named in the signal phrase.
At the end of your essay, you will include a work cited entry for the section of the textbook that you quote.
Sample Work Cited Entries
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “On Keeping a Writer’s Notebook.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 157-58.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Writing from Life: The Personal Essay.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 161-63.
Next Up
In class tomorrow, you will compose a short essay that reflects on the processes of planning, drafting and composing your literacy narrative. If you do not post your essay to Blackboard and WordPress before class (you have until Friday morning to do so), you should refer to your work as ongoing. Be sure to bring your copy of Writing Analytically to class.
