Assignment for Paper Four

Primary Source:  You can choose from the list of options at the end of this assignment, or you can choose from the novels provided on Blackboard.

You will conduct your own research for this paper.  Your sources will most likely be from critical analyses found in the library and from digital sources.  I strongly recommend using the databases for all of your sources. Types of sources that can be acceptable in some cases include: author interviews, historical backgrounds, biographical information of the author, social/political information relative to the novel, etc.  Classic Notes, Cliff Notes, Sparknotes and other such “sources” will not be allowed for use on this assignment.  Relying on these types of sources may result in receiving no credit for this paper, or a significant reduction of its grade.

Requirements:
MLA is the required documentation style.
The minimum number of secondary sources that you will need to involve within your paper is 6. Remember that you will have to document the primary source, as well.
The minimum page count is 6 – 8 full pages, excluding the works cited page, any outline page, and the title page. This paper does not need a title page.
Keep track of your sources. Email the articles to yourself.
Secondary source involvement: Keep your quotations, paraphrases, summaries limited to what is relevant to your thesis and the purpose of the assignment.  Pasting a lot of reference work into a page does not technically count as your writing.  Also, if you include a great deal of outside resource material in several paragraphs, it can be expected that you integrate and apply all of its details to your analyses of the primary text, the piece of literature.  Make sure that your writing dominates the paper and the pages.  Half a page of resource material, for instance, will already be exceeding what could be counted as your writing for a page.
Annotated-bibliography assignment (to be announced and described in-class)
A thesis proposal is required. (Discussed in class)

Suggestions:
Avoid plot summary and indefinable topics that try to prove points about religious doctrine, the future, ethics, morals, etc., and lose the focus of the primary purpose, which is to analyze the novel for figurative meaning.  While you do want your point to be arguable, avoid offending a reader before he or she reads your work.  Do not use the literature as a platform to launch a series of off-topic opinions.  Keep your focus on the relevance and meaning of the literature itself.  Prove something about the literature so that others may see it from your perspective.
Do not plagiarize.  Doing so may result in your receiving a range of consequences including a zero or F for the paper or an F for the course.
Explain your examples from the primary and the secondary texts.  Do not let the samples do the work for you.
Let your ideas dominate the paper.  Make sure each paragraph has something unique to prove about your paper’s main thesis.
Do not wait until the last minute to write this paper.  It will show.

Format:
Your essay must be double spaced.  Your essay must be formatted in MLA format. Study online sources such as Purdue Owl for a good reference to MLA formatting and documentation methods.  Your font will be 12 pt., Times New Roman.

Any time you like, come by the office to discuss your progress on this paper and your reading of your novel.  You may also come by to look at samples of documented essays that I have in my office so that you can get a deeper understanding of how to handle secondary information, quotation, summarization, etc.

NOVEL LIST/INSTRUCTIONS
Carefully read through the list of novels and plays that follow and determine which one  you would like to read for the documented essay.  This will give you time to select your novel.  You are responsible for buying the novel from a bookstore or online.  I will not be ordering them from the CTC bookstore.  If you have another novel or play in mind that is not on this list, you will need to get it approved by me.
Novels:
1984, George Orwell
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Breakfast of Champions,  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Invisible Man,  Ralph Ellison
Native Son,  Richard Wright
The Awakening,  Kate Chopin
The Bluest Eye,  Toni Morrison
The Catcher in the Rye,  J. D. Salinger
Things Fall Apart,  Chinua Achebe
White Noise,  Don DeLillo
Sirens of Titan,  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Plays: (Only if you have not written a paper on one of these plays)
An Enemy of the People,  Henrik Ibsen
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Othello, William Shakespeare
The Zoo Story,  Edward Albee
A Doll’s House,  Henrik Ibsen