This morning in class, you will compose a reflective essay for your analysis. Directions are included below, and you will receive an additional copy in class.

Directions

Compose a reflective essay that documents the process of planning, drafting, and revising your analysis. Questions to consider in your reflection include the following:

• 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? Deciding whether Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” or one or more of Brian Aldiss’s supertoys stories would serve as your subject? Choosing a prompt? 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 focus of your analysis change? If so, what was your original focus, and what did you change it to?
• Did any of the sample analyses (“One Mississippi,” “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” “Bots in Shining Armor”) prove helpful to you? If so, which one? How was it helpful?
• 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 image?
• What relevant website did you include an embedded link to in your blog post? Why did you choose that site?

Include a quotation that complies with the requirements outlined in the preparation guidelines in the October 13 class notes. You are not permitted to refer to that blog post or any other online resources while you compose your reflection in class. As part of your reflection planning, you should have taken notes on all the necessary information in that post.

Follow your quotation with an MLA-style parenthetical citation.

Double-space your essay and write in dark ink, preferably black. You are welcome to use both sides of the page.

At the end of the essay, include the header work cited, followed by a work cited entry for the story you quote.

Staple your assignment handout on top of your reflection, and submit it at the end of class.

Upcoming Class Readings

In the second half of today’s class, you will receive copies of the articles pictured above: “Blogs vs. Term Papers” by Matt Richtel and “Why Writing by Hand is Better for Memory and Learning” by Charlotte Hu, which you should read and annotate for next Monday, October 19. If you are absent from class or misplace your copies, download and print them from Blackboard.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

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).

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.

Works Cited

Lucas, Jane. “‘The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.’” Jane Lucas, 13 Oct. 20205, https://janelucas.com/2025/09/17/eng-1103-the-strange-fruit-of-sosnowiec/.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986. p. 83.

Midterm Statistics

• A 30%
• B 57%
• C or lower 13%

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.

Today in class, after the Scrabble debriefing and the discussion of last Friday’s quiz, we will closley examine the page of Art Spiegelman’s Maus featured above.

Afterward, we will study an analysis of the page that I wrote as a model for my students in a previous semester, and you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an assignment that asks you to consider these questions:

• Where in the essay does the writer present an instance of the connection that she addresses in her thesis? Offer one example in your answer.
• Where in the essay does the writer present an instance of the separation that she addresses in her thesis?
• Effective strategies for concluding analyses include (1) offering an insight about the text or an additional quotation from it, (2) revisiting the thesis without stating it verbatim, and (3) pointing to the broader implications of the analysis. Reread the conclusion of “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec” and compose a paragraph that identifies the strategy or strategies listed above that the writer employs.

Friday’s Quiz

The first question asked you to list one punctuation rule that you learned or were reminded of in class. Some of you simply listed a term rather than a rule. Merely writing “comma splices” does not demonstrate that you know what a comma splice, or fused sentence, is or how to avoid or eliminate one. Here is one way to demonstrate your understanding of the term in your answer:

• A writer creates a comma splice, or a fused sentence, when he or she places a comma, rather than a period or semicolon, between two independent clauses (complete sentences).

The second question asked you to list one style rule that you learned or were reminded of in class. Again, some of you simply listed a term rather than a rule. Merely writing “MLA style” does not demonstrate that you know the rules of MLA style. Here are some ways to demonstrate your understanding of the term in your answer:

• In MLA style, numbers that can be expressed in one or two words are written as words, not figures.
• In MLA style, titles of short works, such as essays, are enclosed in quotation marks, and titles of long works, such a book-length texts and feature films, are italicized (or underlined in longhand).
• Thoughts are not enclosed in quotation marks; they are italicized.

The third question asked you to identify Michael Lewis, who is the author of The Blind Side, which you read an excerpt from on Monday.

Michael Lewis’s name appears on your copy of the excerpt from The Blind Side. It should also appear in the first sentence of the summary of the excerpt that you wrote in your journal, as well as in your journal notes on my September 16 blog post. We write to remember. Write notes in your journal on every reading and every blog post to retain what we have covered in class.

The fourth question asked you to identify the most versatile consonant. Some of you answered s, but the most common consonant is not the same as the most versatile. M is the most versatile In the first position in two-letter words, it pairs with every vowel: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, and also my. In the second position, it pairs with every vowel except i: am, em, om, um.

The fifth question asked you to explain why that letter is the most versatile consonant. M is the most versatile one because in the first position in two-letter words, it pairs with every vowel: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, and also my. In the second position, it pairs with every vowel except i: am, em, om, um.

The sixth question asked you to identify the topic of Friday’s blog post. Some of you answered “Scrabble.” Others answered “Wordplay Day.” Scrabble is the subject of the post; Wordplay Day is the occasion for it. The topic of a Scrabble post is always something more specific. Last Friday’s topic was two-letter words beginning with the letters q-z.

Lastly, you had the opportunity to earn bonus points by listing words that you had learned from last Friday’s Scrabble blog and any of the other previous Scrabble posts. Many of you earned points by listing playable names from the August 23 playable names blog post and/or the two-letter words blog posts published on August 22 and 30, and September 7, 13, and 30.

Next Up

On Wednesday, after I collect your fifth and final Check, Please! worksheets, you will begin planning and drafting your textual analyses. Review all of the texts that we have studied in class, reread your journal notes on them, and determine which one appeals to you most as a subject for analysis. As your writing progreses, you may decide to focus on a different text, but making a preliminary selection before Wednesday’s class will likely lead to a more productive planning and drafting period.