Yesterday in class, for the interview and bibliography exercise, you selected a phrase or sentence from your interview and introduced it with a signal phrase or clause. You also drafted a bibliographic entry, including a three-paragraph annotation (with a paragraph of summary, a second of commentary, and a third that identified your subject as a freshman at High Point University, majoring in . . . ).
Although you are not required to type your complete interview, I encourage you to do so. If you decide to include in your annotated bibliography or your final essay a phrase or sentence other than the one you included on your worksheet, having a document file of your complete interview will enable you to easily copy and paste.
Transcripts of my own interviews with students are included below as models for your own.
Interview with Jesse Brewer
Jane Lucas: Jesse, what experience did you have with playing Scrabble before you encountered the game in English 1103?
Jesse Brewer: So, whenever I would go up to my grandmother and grandfather’s house in Pennsylvania, we would play Scrabble pretty consistently there. We had a lot of fun playing Scrabble at my grandmother’s house whenever I was a young child.
Lucas: Has Scrabble changed your perspective on reading and/or writing? If so, how?
Brewer: While I wouldn’t necessarily say it has changed my perspective on reading or writing, it has most certainly introduced me to new words which allows me to read or write more capably in everyday situations.
Lucas: Will you continue to play Scrabble after the conclusion of the semester?
Brewer: Yes, my grandmother is still going to want to play it every summer.
Interview with Ava Salvant
Jane Lucas: Ava, what experience did you have with playing Scrabble before you played it in English 1103?
Ava Salvant: I didn’t have any experience with Scrabble beforehand. I didn’t know how to play it at all.
Lucas: Has Scrabble changed your perspective on reading and/or writing? If so, how?
Salvant: Probably it has influenced my ability to write. Not always when you sit down to write do you know the exact words you want to say. You kind of have to go with the flow. You have to put as many words as you can down on the board in Scrabble or on the paper when writing.
Lucas: Will you continue to play Scrabble after the end of the semester?
Salvant: I might come back to it a few times to refresh or just use as a pastime.
Note that no quotations appear in the transcripts of the interviews because I am not quoting the interviews; I am presenting the interviews themselves, which is why there are no works cited entries either.
Bonus Assignment
As practice in creating a file of an interview transcript, type the interview that you conducted with your classmate yesterday.
Directions
Review my interview with student Ava Salvant posted in the sample papers folder on Blackboard.
Using that file as a model, type your interview and save it as a Microsoft Word file or PDF.
Print a copy of your interview, and submit it at the beginning of class on Friday, November 7. You are not required to post a copy online; you will turn in only a paper copy.
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources on a subject that includes a summary of each source. Some bibliographies include additional information, such as commentary on the source and the authors’ credentials, which is the type of bibliography that you will compose along with your final essay for the course.
Key Features
Your final essay, an introductory essay of three or more paragraphs, presents the subject of your bibliography and addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What interests you in the subject, and what question, or questions, do you seek to answer about it? Also, it considers what larger project might develop from your final essay and annotated bibliography, and lastly, what would serve as its theoretical framework? In other words, through what academic lens would you examine your subject?
A complete MLA-style bibliography entry for each source.
A one-paragraph summary of each source, followed by a shorter second paragraph that addresses the purpose that the source might serve in a larger project. Would it serve as a point of comparison or contrast to another source? Would it support or challenge an idea presented in another source? Is it a secondary source that sheds light on the meaning of a primary source? The last question pertains primarily to bibliographies that focus on one of the writers studied in the course. Lastly, a brief third that names the author and includes his or her credentials.
Preliminary Work—What to Complete in Class Today
Personal Interview
Your final essay and annotated bibliography will focus on one of the authors we have studied or one of the elements of the course, including (1) blogging in the classroom, (2) limiting screen time, (3) writing longhand, and (4) playing Scrabble. As a starting point, you will conduct a short personal interview that will serve as one of the sources for your project. If you decide that you do not want to use the interview that you conduct today, you are welcome to include another one in your project. Keep in mind, however, that the interview you include in your project must be conducted with a student currently enrolled in section eight or eighteen, and the subject of the interview must be the subject of your project.
Questions to ask your interviewee include the following:
What experience, if any, did you have with the subject (the reading or the aspect of the course) before you encountered it in English 1103?
Has it changed your perspective on reading and/or writing? If so, how?
Will you continue to pursue the subject (read more work by the author, continue the classroom practice or activity) after the conclusion of the semester?
After you conduct your interview, compose on the worksheet provided a sentence in which you introduce a quotation from the interview with a signal phrase, such as, According to . . . , or [insert first and last name] notes or observes or points out that . . . .” Your quotation will not be followed by a parenthetical citation because it is a form of oral communication (without page or paragraph numbers). See the sample on your worksheet.
Follow your quotation with an annotated bibliography entry in this format:
Annotated Bibliography
Last Name, First Name. Interview. Conducted by Your First Name Your Last Name. Day Month Year.
Your bibliographic entry will be followed by three paragraphs. See today’s worksheet for details.
Final Essay and Annotated Bibliography Assignment
Begin by conducting a short personal interview and composing an annotated bibliographic entry for the interview. For more information, see today’s worksheet and the paragraphs under the header PRELIMINARY WORK—What to Complete in Class Today.
Compose an annotated bibliographic entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research. See the list of texts that follows.
Use the HPU Libraries site, and Google Scholar to locate a minimum of three additional reliable and relevant print sources (articles, essays, and/or books) devoted to the same subject. Compose your summary, commentary, and credentials paragraphs in complete sentences, introduce quotations with signal phrases, and include parenthetical citations where needed. Your bibliography must include five sources, four of which must be print. (Your personal interview is a nonprint source.) If you wish to include an additional non-print source, such as a video, you may include that as a sixth source. Also, if you choose to use both articles on limiting screen time that were distributed in class (Allison Aubrey’s and Maryanne Wolf’s), you will need to include an additional print source.
After you have composed your annotated bibliography entries, write an introductory essay that (1) presents the subject of your bibliography, and (2) addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What question do you seek to answer about your subject? Also, (3) What larger project might develop from your bibliography? Would it be a project for a course in psychology, science, education, or another discipline? What would serve as its theoretical framework? In other words, through what academic lens would you examine your subject? Address all five of your sources in your essay and quote at least two of them.
Though your introductory essay will precede your annotated bibliography, you will compose it last because you will need to reread and summarize your sources before you will know how to address them in your essay.
Directions for Researching, Drafting, Revising, and Submitting
Devote today’s class primarily to conducting a personal interview and composing an annotated bibliography entry for the interview. You will have two additional Wednesdays to work in class on your final essay and annotated bibliography before you post your revision to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog.
Before class on the due date: Post a copy of your revision to Blackboard and to your blog. In your blog post, omit the first-page information included in your file submitted to Blackboard (your name, professor’s name, course and section, and date). Add to your blog post an image that documents some part of your writing process away from the screen, such as the summary of your source in your journal, today’s worksheet, or a page of your draft. Also, add an embedded link to a relevant website. Even though your work for this assignment will take place primarily in front of the screen, your writing process still involves putting pen to paper, and photographic documentation of that on your blog is a requirement of the assignment.
Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” https://janelucasdotcom. files.wordpress.com/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf.
King, Stephen. “Strawberry Spring.” Nigh Shift. Anchor, 2011. pp. 268-82.
An A final essay and annotated bibliography includes these components:
An introductory essay of three or more paragraphs that (1) presents the subject of your bibliography, and (2) addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What question do you seek to answer about one of the subjects that you’ve studied in the course or about one aspect of the course? Also, (3) what larger project might develop from your bibliography? Would it be a project for a course in science, psychology, education, or another discipline? What would serve as its theoretical framework? In other words, through what academic lens would you examine your subject?
A complete works cited/bibliographic entry for a minimum of *five reliable and relevant sources, four of which are print. Alphabetize the list by the writers’ last names.
A one-paragraph summary of each source followed by a shorter paragraph of commentary, and a third that names the author and includes his or her credentials.
An A final essay and annotated bibliography complies with the requirements above and is also cohesive and relatively free of surface errors.
A B final essay and annotated bibliography effectively meets all of the requirements above but may be flawed by minor issues of organization and/or surface errors.
A C final essay and annotated bibliography meets most but not all of the requirements above and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors.
A D final essay and annotated bibliography meets only a few of the requirements above and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors.
An F final essay and annotated bibliography fails to meet the requirements above and may also be flawed by substantial issues of organization and/or surface errors.
At the beginning of class tomorrow, I will collect your blog response assignments. If you were absent when I distributed copies or you have misplaced yours, refer to the directions below.
Directions
Go to the class blog page, and click on the link for the blog of the 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, 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)
Bonus Assignment
Consider how the images and embedded links included on your blog enhance your posts; the pictures offer readers a glimpse of the writing process that isn’t evident from the typed words on the screen, and the embedded links provide readers with valuable additional information about your subject. View your classmates’ posts of their analyses, and carefully examine the images and the pages they have linked to their posts.
Directions
Determine which of the images and which of the embedded links are most effective. Consider what draws your attention to the picture. Does it include anything in addition to the required element (a portion of the blogger’s handwritten prose)? If so, what is that additonal element? To determine your choice for the most effective embedded link, ask yourself what further information it offers about the subject of the analysis–the essay, article excerpt, chapter, or chapter excerpt–or the author of the text. You are welcome to choose among the posts of analyses by students in both sections eight and eighteen.
Compose a comment of two complete sentences or more that includes (1) the titles of the analyses enclosed in quotation marks, (2) the first and last names of the students, and (3) a brief explanation of the image’s and embedded link’s effectiveness.
Post your comment as a reply to this blog entry no later than 9 a.m. Monday, October 27. (To post your comment, click on the title, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will then see the image of an airmail envelope with a leave comment option.)
I will approve your responses (make your comments visible) after the 9 a.m. deadline on Monday. Commenters will earn a bonus assignment credit in the course work/short assignments category.
This morning in the first half of class, you will deliver your group presentations, and in the second half, you will compose reflections. Directions for your reflections are included below.
Directions
Compose a short piece of writing (two paragraphs, minimum) that reflects on your individual preparation and delivery of your portion of the presentation and your group’s presentation overall. Elements to address include the following:
The roles of your reading and writing: How did the processes of rereading the text and writing and rewriting your remarks contribute to the effectiveness of your delivery?
The introduction of your group members and opening remarks
The examination of points in the article or textbook
The conclusion
Poise, eye contact, and avoidance of filler words
After you complete your reflection on your group’s presentation, compose an additional paragraph that addresses a presentation by one of the other groups. Choose the one that stands out the most to you. What element or elements of that presentation made it particularly effective (or not) and why?
As you continue to prepare for your presentation, be mindful of the valuable roles that reading and writing play in the process. Although the final product is your group’s three-to-four-minute oral presentation, your work began with reading and writing: reading the article or textbook sections that serve as your subject, and writing the plan that you composed in class yesterday.
Have you read more than once the article or textbook sections that serve as your subject? If not, turn back to the text itself at least two more times before Wednesday. Chances are, on a second or third reading, you will notice details you didn’t notice before, ones that you may want to add to your presentation.
In addition to recording key words on your notecard, write out your portion of the presentation in your journal. Though you will not be permitted to have your journal in hand during your presentation, the act of writing down your remarks and rewriting them will help you commit them to memory.
As you practice delivering your presentation, be sure to limit the time that you look down at your notecard and your copy of the reading. Your ability to limit those glances will be greater if you spend ample time rereading the text and writing and reviewing your remarks in your journal.
Next Up
In class tomorrow, you will deliver your group presentations. Afterward, in the second half of class, you will compose a short essay that reflects on both your own presentation and one by another group.
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)
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.
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.
Jane Lucas 