(1200-1500 words): An analysis of any of the major works of literature we have studied during this course. Write on the text that interests you the most. addressing critically elements of a work that you feel were or were not successful as the author intended.Comparisons to similar works or to cultural expressions that have preceded it or subsequently followed it are not only permitted but are a valuable part of the critical process. Personal experiences may also be relevant, as long as they are carefully linked to your understanding of the author’s intent and to your expectations as a reader. In short, this is not just an opinion piece, but an argument for or against the formal expressions in the work, supported by textual examples and subsequent analysis of those examples. Secondary source quotations are permitted, if cited, but they do not add to the overall word count.
Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles (You have already written a response paper in reaction to this book. Will you expand on your ideas and develop a critical assessment of the overall work)? Does the book effectively work as a companion piece to the performances (the two clips on blackboard or the PBS presentation)? How does Smith’s accomplishment compare to that of the Netflix documentary Let It Fall?
Dana Johnson’s “The Story of Biddy Mason” addresses the complicated and nuanced history of Los Angeles in narrative form. In the context of our contemporary culture, how does this narrative contribute to a fuller understanding of the effects of the past on the present? How do acts of erasure or inattention necessitate a constant re-evaluation of our history?
Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust presents its critique of Hollywood culture by focusing on the populations on the margins of Los Angeles in the late 1930s. How does the author’s criticism of Hollywood prove persuasive? Is the satire effective? Where does fail? Is the book still relevant today?
What follows is a repetition. The critical essay evaluation process is similar to the guidelines for Option Two of the Twilight response paper, so here is a review of those instructions:
1. Every essay has a thesis: the reason you are writing the essay. Be as specific as possible. The observations can be a numerous and varied. However, one essay must announce and defend one primary focus. Do so in the first paragraph.
2. In that same first paragraph, give the reader a road map: an idea of the structural organization of your paper. You are like Sherlock Holmes explaining how you’ve solved the mystery. Give it all away in the thesis paragraph.
3. Then, in the body of the paper, prove it, prove it, prove it, with your details. Use your own structure to create topic sentences. But don’t repeat. Your goal: make sure every sentence demonstrates in an additional way your knowledge of the material. As long as the assertions are supported by explicit references to the texts, the reader gets to consider their validity. Thematic development is essentially the payoff for reading the essay. For example, if your thesis were that the sky above us here in Los Angeles is vast, the next time you return to that idea in the body of your paper, you might mention clouds, the next time, the nighttime stars. But don’t merely repeat. Make it new.
4. Do not omit unifying statements about how and why the speaker says and does things, often at the end of each paragraph. Why have you have focused on certain assertions?
5. Expand your close reading of the evidence. Do not offer unsupported generalizations.
6. At any given point, you may need some textual evidence to help secure your point. However, do not copy down any text without immediately following up with an explanation of its importance. In other words, you are copying the verbiage in order to explain something about it that a reader of your essay might not know otherwise. What you don’t say, the reader doesn’t know. Do not just repeat the verbiage of the text in your analysis.
5. Transitions: rather than having a statement as a topic sentence use an analytical sentence so it is clear how each paragraph is developing from one to the other.
6. Quotations: if a quote is indented you do not need quotation marks. Copied text does not apply to the overall word count.
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