The Start of the Literary Essay Unit

Investigative Journalism is in the past and the Literary Essay is now here, but that doesn't mean you should forget everything we went over during the first unit.  Instead, you should be drawing on the writing aspects that carry over to this type of writing.  

You are still going to need to write creative leads.

You are still going to need to use paragraphs.

You are still going to be making claims.  

You are still going to need to support your claims with evidence and quotes.

You are still going to need to balance your writing between narrative and argumentative.

You are still going to need to close with a BANG! or a jolt or a clever twist or a cohesive ending.  

You are still going to need to write and edit and revise and submit a polished paper when we are finished.

Our first literary essay will be theme based.  You will be writing an essay identifying and supporting a theme from a short story.  With that in mind we agreed on a definition for theme:

A theme is a sentence that identifies the universal moral/message/central idea the author is trying to get across.

We also distinguished between thematic ideas:

love

curiosity

power

And themes:

Love is blind.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Sorry, all the above examples are cliche, but you get the idea.

For tonight, the honors classes are completing their two page writing on a theme they identified from "All Summer in a Day".

For tonight the standard classes are taking two thematic ideas (period three: hope and jealousy) (period four: individuality and jealousy) and turning them into themes that could be used in conjunction with "All Summer in a Day".

We will read and write more tomorrow.  

Until next time...