Paper Assignments for EH 220

Professor John Tatter
Academic Year 2007-2008

The three papers assigned for EH 220 correspond to three major focuses of the course. Paper one is designed to emphasize that each of us will have a different response to a text based in part on our individual experiences, background, and value system. Paper two is designed to emphasize that the structure of a text can provide a means of interpretation. Paper three is designed to emphasize the similarities and differences between lived experience and literature. Taken together, these papers are practical exercises in making connections between literature and life, and they form the backbone of the course.

Please find a description of your first paper assignment below. Please follow the links to a sample paper for your first paper, to a description of and a sample of your second paper, and to a description of and a sample of your third paper by clicking on the highlighted phrases.

Paper One

This first paper could be called the "what, how, and why essay" because it answers those three questions about your personal and individual response to a work of literature from our anthology. Notice that the topic of this paper is not an analysis of a work of literature but, instead, an analysis of one reader's response to that work of literature. Since you are that one reader, you are an expert on the topic, and you should use first-person pronouns to help explain your response.

Your essay should have three parts. The first part, which will consist of a sentence or two in the first paragraph, is the "what" part. Choose a specific response to the work, and one that you can explain clearly using evidence. For example, you might say, "I disliked the main character of the story," or "I was fascinated by the controlling metaphor of the poem." You might even say, "I was frustrated because I didn't understand what the playwright was trying to say to the reader."

The second part, which will consist of a few paragraphs, is the "how" part of the essay. In this section, you must gather and organize evidence from the text to explain how the author evoked your response. If you disliked the main character of a story, then in this section of the essay you will cite specific examples of the character's value system or use of language or whatever else that could help explain your dislike. If you liked the controlling metaphor of a poem, then in this section of the essay you will explain how that metaphor appears throughout the poem. If you were frustrated with a playwright's message, in this section of your essay you will cite specific passages in the play that were unclear to you.

The third part, which will consist of another few paragraphs, is the "why" part of the essay. In this section, you must gather and organize evidence about yourself to explain why you responded the way you did. No two readers are alike. Each of us brings something different to the works of literature we read. What in your background, your experience, your education, and your value system helped shape your response? Did the character you disliked resemble someone you knew in high school? If you were frustrated with the author's message, could that be because you have been taught that writers always put hidden messages in their works or that literature is like a riddle to be solved? If you liked a particular metaphor, can you account for how that metaphor has appeared in your life experiences?

This essay may not be easy to write. Part three, the "why" part, involves an activity that you may not have had to practice much in your previous literature courses. Part three asks you to examine yourself and to account for the part you play in your response to a text. Part three asks you to dig below the surface of your response. Just saying that you enjoyed a poem because you like nature images, or saying that you were irritated with a character in a short story because he was an immoral person--these statements are not enough. They are the beginning of what you must do in part three. Why do you like nature images? What are your moral standards and where did you get them?

As with all college-level essays, begin your assignment early enough that you have a chance to think, plan, and generate material before you begin writing. Revise your essay at least once, paying attention to matters of paragraph structure and the development and clarity of your ideas. Then be sure to proofread your essay before you print it. Remember--spellcheck will not catch everything that you might want to correct before submitting an essay. Remember, too, that even if you cite only one poem, you must attach a "work cited" page to the end of your essay.

Sample "What, How, Why" Paper

Note: this essay's greatest strength is its use of details from the writer's life experiences. Its greatest weakness is its lack of enough details from the text. The essay is about 4 pages long, double-spaced, using 12-point type.

A Personal Response to Oedipus the King

While reading the play Oedipus the King, my response to the work became more and more clear as the play continued. When I finished the play, my reaction to the work and to two particular characters was startling and very different from my response while I was still reading. My initial response was to the text, and it was mostly an intellectual one. I felt cheated by the play because the challenge of solving the mystery of the plot was spoiled for me by the obvious clues laid out in the work. My second response was not as intellectual; instead, it came more from a feeling that the play evoked in me. I felt a strong disappointment in the drastic actions that Oedipus and Jocasta took at the end of the play. My two different responses to Oedipus the King, one intellectual and one not, now seem to feed off and to amplify each other as if they were one collective response.

The play's plot, in a nutshell, develops like this. After solving the riddle of the Sphynx, who had kept Thebes under a curse of some kind, Oedipus is invited to become king of the city. He marries Jocasta, the widow of the previous king, and they have two children. When the play begins, Thebes is again under some sort of curse, and Oedipus tries to find out its cause so that he can rescue the city. He is told that the cause of the curse is that the murderer of the previous king is still in the city and has gone unpunished. In the process of searching for the murderer, Oedipus discovers that it is he, himself, who is responsible and that he is actually the son of Jocasta and her previous husband. Horrified by his sins of incest and murder, Oedipus claws out his eyes. Jocasta commits suicide because she is so disgraced.

My disappointment in the lack of mystery in the plot of the play was evoked by the continual clues appearing throughout the play. For example, in Oedipus's first speech to the people of Thebes, he condemns the murderer of the previous king, stating that "he will suffer no unbearable punishment, nothing worse than exile" (261-62). This is the first of a multitude of clues about the outcome of the play. Perhaps the most obvious of the clues is in a speech by the blind prophet Tiresias who knows the answer to the mystery but who is reluctant to reveal it. His words, "So you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption of your life" (469-73), were so obvious to me that I lost any chance to figure out the mystery of the play on my own.

As the play neared its end and Oedipus was about to discover the truth about his past, I began to hope that he and Jocasta would somehow dodge their fate and thereby add an interesting twist to a plot that had become pretty boring to me. However, instead of being pleasantly surprised at the ending of the play, I was shocked by the drastic actions of the two characters I had had so much hope for. Oedipus was indeed both the son and husband of Jocasta and the son and murderer of her previous husband. Both Oedipus and Jocasta reacted violently to the revelation of his crimes--he gouged out his eyes and she committed suicide. I was appalled bly the fact that two characters who had seemed noble, wise, and powerful and who were the symbols of good in the play would end up so pitiful.

Throughout the play, Oedipus was treated with the respect of a god; he was called "king of the land, our greatest power" (16) by the people of Thebes. Jocasta was treated with similar respect. When Oedipus accused Creon, Jocasta's brother, of plotting against him and spreading rumors, it was Jocasta who was called upon to settle the dispute of the two most powerful men in the city (770-775). The play's emphasis on the greatness and innocense of Oedipus and Jocasta led me to admire both of them. I was shocked and a little hurt that Sophocles allowed two individuals who had so much going their way to fall so quickly and so hard.

I was really emotionally affected by the downfall of Oedipus and Jocasta. Usually, I'm not very upset reading about a tragic character and his eventual fall, but in this play my response surprised me. Jocasta's suicide really bothered me, and I saw Oedipus's self-banishment as almost a suicide. Suicide has been a very difficult subject for me to understand. The sources of my difficulty and probably the sources of my response to Oedipus and Jocasta are experiences I had with two classmates in the years before I came to college.

In sixth grade I had a friend who seemed to have everything collapse in on him at one time. He and his mother had been abused by his father for several years, and his mother had finally divorced his father. My friend and his mother were left with no money and no place to live. The only thing they had for sure was each other. I developed an admiration for him because he seemed to have conquered his sufferings and survived a difficult time in his life. But just as things were looking looking up for my friend and his mother, he committed suicide, not only taking his own life but also breaking his mother's heart. When I read in the play how Jocasta had killed herself and how Oedipus had gouged his eyes out, I had the same feeling that I had had when I heard of my friend's death. I admired Oedipus and Jocasta like I had admired my friend, but I guess all of them were unable to handle their fate.

Another part of my response to the end of the play comes from my belief in the preciousness of life. I am shocked and hurt that Oedipus and Jocasta chose to harm themselves, and I believe that some of the source of my shock comes from an experience I had during my senior year of high school. On the day that John Carrol High School moved from Highland Avenue to Lakeshore Drive an awful event occurred. We held our last pep rally at the old football field, and when it was over, the cheerleaders boarded a bus to go to the new school. As the bus was leaving, one of the cheerleaders stuck her head out the window. Her head hit a telephone pole, and she was instantly dead. I can remember the sight and especially the sound of her death. The girl I had talked to just a few minutes before was gone. She had been the most popular girl in school, and someone who seemed to have more life than life itself. I admired my friend for her attitude towards life just as I admired the nobility of Oedipus and Jocasta. But because I saw my friend die, I cannot understand why anyone would choose death over life.

Work Cited

Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. Robert Fagles. The Bedford Introduction to: Literature. 4th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: St. Martins, 1996. 1120-1161.

Paper Two

This second paper concentrates on one aspect of the text itself--the assignment asks you to analyze how setting contributes to the theme of gender, race, or class in a short story. Please limit yourself to a discussion of setting, but remember that setting involves both time and place. When does the story happen--what time of day and what time of year? Where does the story happen--are there contrasts within the setting that can help shed light on the actions or the value systems of the characters?

Before you begin writing your paper, make some lists of details about setting. Where exactly does the story take place? What are the characteristics of the interior or exterior of the house that the main character lives in? What is the neighborhood like? When exactly does the story take place? Do events happen on a particular day of the year? Does the story happen during the day or at night? Does it happen in winter, spring, summer, or fall? Could the weather be significant?

Once you have this material together, look for patterns that can help you organize your essay. If you see contrasts--between day and night, for example, or between the upstairs and downstairs of a house--then you might consider organizing the body of your essay in two main chunks. If you find time as significant as place in your story, you might consider organizing the body of your essay in two main chunks. Notice that I have not suggested that you begin with a three-main-point format. Let your material dictate the structure of your essay. Life rarely falls neatly into a five-paragraph essay, and literature rarely does either unless someone conveniently either disregards textual material or inserts material that doesn't belong. If you find yourself writing a five-paragraph essay, stop. Create a new plan and begin again.

Your essay should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning should introduce the material to come in the middle of the essay. You should have a clear thesis expressed in a thesis statement somewhere in the first couple of paragraphs. That statement should indicate what the purpose and focus of the paper will be and how it is organized. Do not, however, make statements like "In this paper I will explain how night and day symbolize good and evil in such-and-such a story." Instead, say something like "Night and day provide a clear contrast through which we can judge the characters in this story." In other words, don't talk about yourself or your paper. Talk about the text.

The middle of your essay presents the evidence you will use to draw your conclusions at the end. Gather enough evidence, and organize it well. Think of yourself as a trial lawyer. Would you ask the judge or jury how many pieces of evidence you need? Would you present evidence in the order you found it? Or would you make sure that you made your case as completely and clearly as possible?

Finally, in your conclusion, draw your conclusions from the evidence in the middle of the essay. Do not repeat your introduction (introductions have very different purposes than conclusions). Do not summarize the material, either. Instead, make a case for your interpretation of the short story. Make sense of the facts. If you find that you have already drawn conclusions earlier, in the middle of the paper, then revise your draft so that your conclusions come at the end.

As always, remember to document your source when you quote directly or paraphrase or summarize a passage. Likewise, attach a "work cited" page to the essay.

If you would like some support as you write this essay, you may make an appointment with one of the tutors in the Writing Center. The tutors can provide help at any stage of the writing process--planning, drafting, revising, and editing.

Sample Paper on Setting in a Short Story

Note: Although this essay concentrates on three aspects of setting, the writer (a student in the spring 1998 section of EH 200) avoids the five-paragraph format. This essay is four double-spaced pages long, and its paragraphs often take up nearly a page. In other words, the writer is not in a hurry to finish, but instead tries to provide as much information from the story as is necessary to make his point.

Elements of Setting in Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

Setting exists in every form of fiction, representing elements of time, place, and social context throughout the work. These elements can create particular moods, character qualities, or features of theme. Throughout Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," differing amounts and types of the setting are revealed as the plot develops. This story deals with a young woman's emotional state as she discovers her own independence in her husband's death, then her "tragic" discovery that he is actually alive. The constituents of setting reveal certain characteristics about the main character, Louise Mallard, and are functionally important to the story structure. The entire action takes place in the springtime of a year in the 1890s, in the timeframe of about an hour, in a house belonging to the Mallards. All of these aspects of setting become extremely relevant and significant as the meaning of the story unfolds.

When Louise Mallard first hears that her husband was killed in a railroad accident, "she wept at once," and "went away to her room alone" (12). As she mourns, looking out of her window on the second floor of her home, a sudden change of heart begins to come over her. She notices "the delicious breath of rain," " a peddler . . . crying his wares," "notes of a distant song," "countless sparrows . . . twittering," and "patches of blue sky," "all aquiver with the new spring life" (13). As she stares at the sky, she begins to think about her newfound independence from her husband, uttering the words "free, free, free!" (13). What makes her develop such a sudden change in attitude? Could it be that she sees rebirth in the world through her window? Spring has always been a time for revival and renewal, as flowers bloom, animals awaken from winter hibernation, and sudden spring showers cleanse the earth and air. The "breath of rain" seems to cleanse Louise as well, as she views this as a way to start her life afresh. In this story, the time of year somewhat symbolizes her own internal springtime, further developing the rationale behind her character. If this story took place in a different time of year, it would not be as coherent. There would be no explanation for Louise's sudden attitude reversal from mourning to enlightened anticipation of the future.

The Mallards' house, the area where the entire action of the story takes place, is extremely significant in understanding the subtleties of the plot and characters. The house is two stories tall, with two main rooms shown in detail: the front parlor, which is downstairs, and Louise's bedroom, upstairs. The two floors are significantly different, both in the mood and in the emotions brought out in each one. It is in the parlor that Louise first hears of her husband's death and later ultimately discovers that he lives. Yet she achieves true enlightenment and understanding upstairs, in her bedroom. The particular level of the house that Louise is in conveys certain emotions and reveals two different aspects of her character. Downstairs she is the good wife, mourning the loss of her husband at first and later swooning from what the doctors believe to be "joy that kills" (14). Downstairs she must act like the typical late-nineteenth-century woman, completely devoted to her husband and family. Her husband has the key to the front door and the downstairs area, and, apparently, is the one that holds the power over that part of the house. Upstairs, however, Louise looks forward to her new life without her husband, her "monstrous joy" (13). In her upstairs room, she is free. She is the sole owner of the key to the door, and the room is somewhat of a sanctuary to her. Upstairs she is allowed to think as she pleases without having to worry about the thoughts of other people.

These two floors of the house are vital in understanding the internal conflicts that Louise undergoes throughout the story. Once she learns of her husband's death, Louise goes "away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her" (12). She needs to get away from the downstairs part of the house as soon as she can. At that moment, Louise needs time alone, and soon she begins to gaze out of her bedroom window, which reveals the rebirth of spring that surrounds her. It is here that she receives enlightenment about her upcoming freedom, fully taking in her newfound "elixir of life" (13). As the effects of the springtime begin to settle upon her, the calmness and security of the room assure her as well. She sinks into "a comforable, roomy armchair" and thinks about the life ahead of her, having no one to hold her back (13). Apparently she feels repressed by her marriage, but perhaps she has not realized it until now: the narrator says that the lines on Louise's face indicate "repression and even a certain strength" (13). Once she is upstairs, however, the inevitable upcoming freedom overwhelms her and takes her over. Josephine, her sisister, attempts to get her to leave the room, but Louise refuses, still basking in the amazement of her freedom. However, when she finally does go downstairs, she is greeted with the shock of her husband's arrival, and soon dies (14). The difference between the floors of the house, therefore, can be seen to represent the different aspects of Louise's personality, shown in her attitudes toward her own life. When her husband arrives, Louise apparently finds no reason to live her meaningless, repressed life any longer, as she sees that she will never get her freedom.

Another essential part of setting is social context, the beliefs and actions of society that surrounds and molds the plot and characters. In the 1890s, the proper woman had certain regulations and factors that she always had to obey. The first duty of a wife in these conservative times was to her husband and family. In this story, Chopin shows her own unhappiness with this particular role of women in society. This theme of feminine assertiveness is evident in many of Kate Chopin's works, as she suggests that women should have the right to live for themselves and not always for others. Nevertheless, in this time frame, women did not have the liberties that they now possess. Society viewed it as scandalous for a woman to divorce her husband, and because of this restriction, Louise Mallard is trapped. She cannot leave Brently, although she feels held back by him, because society would not support her as a divorced woman. Social context thus becomes very important in determining the meaning of the plot of the story and its implications. It does not seem that Brently is cruel at all towards his wife, as she remembers him as having "kind, tender hands" and a "face that had never looked save with love upon her" (13). Perhaps her excitement at his death is because she does not love him as much as when she married him. "And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she did not. What did it matter!" Louise thinks to herself (13). Or perhaps she just feels that she cannot live for herself when her husband is around, and that she will always be bound to serve him. Whatever her true reasons, the social aspects of the situation may be the most evident and the most essential part of the setting in this short story.

In "The Story of an Hour" as well as in all other works of fiction, setting does more than portray when and where the action of the story occurs. Setting also provides something of a template for the story to take part in, giving it boundaries and distinctive characteristics about the situation. Setting preys upon reader stereotypes and preconceptions about the certain time frame or location in which the story takes place in order to bring out more meaning. In this work, Chopin develops the story based on the reader's knowledge and understanding of a woman's place in late nineteenth-century America. But the specific setting--the time of year and the structure of the Mallard house--also gives clues to help readers understand Louise and attempt to determine the cause of her death. Louise may die of heart disease, as the doctors say at the end of the story, but setting indicates that the disease was not "joy that kills" (14).

Work Cited

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Compact Bedford Introduction to: Literature. 4th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: St. Martins, 1997. 12-15.

Paper Three

This third paper brings together a number of emphases in the class by requiring you to see a text in the context of other texts and of your lived experience in your service activity. The focus of your essay is to compare your lived experience, or those of the people you spent time with in your service activity, to the experiences of characters in a story, play, or poem and to the experiences of one or more characters in Shipler's book on the working poor in America. Your purpose should be to show how authors take life and turn it into literature by shaping it with the elements of plot, characterization, setting, tone, and/or point of view. This will be a longer and more complex paper than the first two, and you should begin earlier than you did on the first two. This paper will also be based on the journal you have kept in response to your service activity.

Sample Paper Relating the Service Experience to the Literature

Note: The writer of this paper used a first-person approach when discussing her service experience, but she switched to an objective approach when discussing the literature. In addition, she does not assume that her reader will be able to remember details from the literature or tap into her memory about her experiences. In fact, she does not write as if her paper is intended for her teacher. She provides a clear context in which any reader can understand the details that make up her point. This paper was written during a term when Shipler's book was not part of the reading and writing assignments: your paper will have additional content, complexity, and length.

Mirrors

I couldn't understand. What did a service project have to do with a literature course? Yet our class was required to have fifteen hours of community service. Our professor told us that our third paper would have to relate our service experiences with the readings we were going to do in class. So I, along with a fellow classmate, started visiting an Adult Day Care (ADC) at McCoy Methodist Church. During class, along with our reading assignments, we would discuss our experiences with our service projects. I could not relate well to my classmates during these discussions, because their experiences were so different than mine. Not only could I not relate well to my classmates during service discussions, but I couldn't foresee how my experiences at ADC could relate to our readings. Our class readings were about provocative, challenging material. The only truly challenging part of my service experiences was getting conversation flowing during craft time. However, towards the end of my weekly visits to ADC, I had an experience that I will not forget. I had a moment of uncertainty, a strong feeling of repulsion, and a glimpse of myself that I had never seen before. That night I had a similar reaction to one of our assignments called "How to Watch Your Brother Die," a poem by Michael Lassell. It was about a man who went to his gay brother's deathbed, met his brother's lover, and learned how to love somebody no matter what the differences between them. The people in both ADC and the poem are far different from me. ADC consists mostly of black, elderly adults. I am a young white adult. Lassell's poem is about a married man dealing with his gay brother's lifestyle. I am a single, heterosexual female who has had little contact with the homosexual community. The differences in my life experiences and those of the Adult Day Care clients and the dying brother in Lassell's "How to Watch Your Brother Die" revealed never before seen parts of my character by challenging me to confront things different from myself.

A normal day at the McCoy Methodist Church's Adult Day Care consisted of arts and crafts at 10:00 a.m., lunch at 12:00 p.m., and exercises at 1:00 p.m. More often than not, we would all end up sitting in plush easy chairs and talking. At first, conversation was easy. We would talk of the weather, upcoming holidays, and other pleasantries of that sort. After a while, I would ask clients about their children, though most couldn't remember how many they had. As Ms. Nancy said, "I know I got 'em, but I don't know anything about 'em!" Being there was easy because things were superficial. Things also seemed artificial, as though we were there because we had to be. The staff was friendly, but they seemed to look at my partner and me as another couple of Birmingham-Southern students who would be gone in a few months. After our visits were over, I never seemed satisfied. I didn't feel like I had made a difference.

Then one day I was talking to Ms Virginia Waters, my favorite--and most coherent--client. She was telling me about her birthday: she was "ninety-one years young." All of a sudden, another client named Ms. Logan began shouting for all of us to be quiet so that she could start the meeting. (I later found out that she has lapses of memory and that she often believes she is in a church committee meeting.) I looked around the room to see others' reactions. No one even noticed. The others' silence made me think. Didn't anyone else find Ms Logan's outburst strange? Besides my partner, I was the only white person in the room. I was also the youngest by about thirty years. All of a sudden I felt alienated and so very unlike the people around me. I felt very strongly that I didn't belong there. I wanted to leave right then. I had not felt this way before, and I began to ask myself "why now?" After our visit, I attempted to answer the question in my journal, but no answer was revealed to me.

After staring blankly for a while at the page in my journal, I decided to finish up that night's literature reading assignment. The poem entitled "How to Watch Your Brother Die" by Michael Lassell caught my eye as I flipped through the pages of our textbook. I began to read. The first stanza spoke of a man who goes to his brother's deathbed and meets a young man, his brother's lover. I stopped reading. Once again I got that same feeling of repulsion. Again I asked myself why I felt that way. Was it because the brother was gay? What else could it be? I do not consider myself homophobic, but I couldn't connect to the poem as I continued reading. Though our previous reading assignments' subject matter had been just as different from my life experiences as Lassell's poem, I couldn't seem to get around this difference.

When I was done with the reading assignment, which consisted of several poems, I lay in my bed and thought about my day. First, late that morning I had felt alienated because of the age and race differences between myself and the staff and clients at ADC. Second, I felt alienated from Lassell's poem because of differences in sexual preference between two of the characters and myself. I couldn't seem to cross the divide that I felt due to these differences. I decided to read the poem again, this time with an open mind. "People are people," I told myself. This time, reading the poem struck a chord in my heart. Though I hadn't had the experience of having a close relative or friend who was homosexual, I had a close friend who had died. I had found a way to relate.

By using this new thought as a tool, I could look past my prejudices, and I could see the real meaning of the poem. Pain because of the death of the loved one is the same no matter what the difference between the people who are hurting. Armed with that new thought, I went back to ADC the next week and saw dear great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers where elderly clients had once stood. I saw hard working mothers and fathers where ADC staff had once stood. By changing my thought process responding to both the poem and the Day Care Center, I saw people as people. Michael Lassell's poem made me understand what it means to see others in a different light, just as the speaker in the poem learns to see his brother and his brother's lover in a different light. By the end of the poem, the speaker actually feels he has more in common with the gay community than with members of his own family who harbor prejudice against homosexuals. In learning what the poem's speaker learned, I was able to implement that idea in my service work, which was rewarding not only for me but also for the clients I visited at ADC. In Soul of a Citizen, Paul Rogat Loeb says, "We become human only in the company of other human beings" (22). By seeing people as people and putting myself in the presence of other human beings at ADC, I learned what it meant to be human. To be human means to be selfish, to fear things that are different, and to be irrational. However, I also learned that being human means that one has the capacity to grow, learn, and change behaviors for the better. This service experience has held a mirror to my self. I disliked the image and found a way to change it. This is a lesson that I will never forget.

Works Cited

Lassell, Michael. "How to Watch Your Brother Die." Literature and Gender.: Eds. Robyn Wiegman and Elena Glasberg. New York: Longman, 1999. 271-273.
Loeb, Paul Rogat. Soul of a Citizen. New York: St Martin's, 1999.

John D. Tatter, Birmingham-Southern College, jtatter@bsc.edu