Composition II—Essay 1: Exploring Fiction

For your first essay, you will be exploring the topic of innocence and/or experience (you may
discuss just one or both). Analyze a work of fiction (a short story); identify a significant theme the work
conveys about innocence or experience. For instance, what does the work show/say about youth or
maturity? Is purity or naivety a good thing or bad? Does experience make one wise or callous? Think of
something the literature shows about this topic and use that to form the basis of your claim.
The fiction readings assigned for class discussion are applicable to this topic, but you may also use
any of the other fiction works in the “Innocence and Experience” chapter of our textbook (starting on 74).
Other approved works outside of that section are “A Rose for Emily” (623), “What We Talk about When
We Talk about Love” (876), or “The Storm” (861). Note: do not discuss “The Story of an Hour” as you
already talked about it in your diagnostic essay. Select a work that says something compelling about
innocence and/or experience.
To help generate ideas for a thesis, consider exploring some basic questions about your work and
what you think the piece is saying about innocence/experience. For specific questions, many of the
pieces in the textbook have a section of questions for further analysis and making connections. Also see
page 76 for “Further Questions for Thinking and Writing” that may help you gather ideas. In order to make
an effective literary discussion, you must look beneath the surface of the literature and investigate some of
the underlying themes or points being made. Avoid plot summary. Look deeper into why things happen
instead of what happens in the work, something not so apparent or obvious to a casual reader.
When you have thought of a point the work makes about innocence/experience, devise a working
thesis. Make sure your thesis is clearly about innocence/experience and the literature. If I say, “Experience
makes people callous,” this will be an invalid thesis because there’s no indication of what story or character
shows that claim. I would instead need to say, “Louise’s experience as a wife makes her callous.” That thesis
is both clearly about a specific character (Louise in “Story” and suggests a theme about experience).
Most importantly, essays in this course must be literary arguments, so you need to choose a thesis
statement that makes a debatable claim about an issue in these stories. The key to an argument is that there
are two opposing sides, each of which contains valid points and pitfalls. Likewise, your discussion should
have multiple sides (can someone argue or find evidence of the opposite of what you’re saying?) and require
persuasive evidence (if someone could believe otherwise, what made you believe the way you do?). Find a
statement that others may challenge—is Louise really that callous? Is it Louise’s experience what results her
attitude or is there evidence it’s caused by something else? These are aspects of the work that are debatable,
with valid points in support of either side, making my example thesis an arguable statement. Since this
opinion could be argued against, this seems to be an acceptable idea to start with. From that initial opinion,
I would then refine my idea into a specific thesis and spend the length of my essay defending this belief and
showing why/how I see the character as I do. In your discussion, you must quote and cite appropriately to
support your claims. See Blackboard and your textbook for information about how to do so.
In order to begin this assignment, first re-read the literature in question and make notations or
highlights pertinent to the claim you’re considering; ideally, do this second reading after we’ve discussed a
few works in class so you can gain better insight into how to read literature. Next, brainstorm/pre-write to
fully develop your ideas and make connections. Once you have developed some ideas, you will be required
to submit five separate assignments to Blackboard to represent the stages of your project’s development.
Stage 1: Outline 1—formulate an outline for your discussion
 State the work’s title and author
 State your working thesis
 Include at least 3 points to support your claim
 See the outline template on Blackboard to use as the foundation of this stage of the essay

Stage 2: Journal 2—respond to and revise your outline

 Download your outline feedback from Blackboard
 Review the notes and revise accordingly

Stage 3: Draft 1—develop your outline into a working draft

 Check for Journal 2 feedback
 State your work’s title and author and underline your working thesis
 Develop at least 2 body paragraphs (375 words minimum) with underlined topic sentences
 Include relevant quotes from the text and in-text citations—highlight/color them blue

Stage 4: Essay 1—continue developing your discussion and put on finishing touches
 Check for Draft 1 feedback
 Introduction paragraph states the author and title and includes your underlined thesis
 Support your discussion with valid points; underline your topic sentences
 Include relevant quotes from the text and in-text citations—highlight/color them blue
 Conclusion paragraph and separate Work Cited page
 750 words minimum (your works cited does not contribute; essays with less than 750 words will be
returned to you for resubmission and will be subjected to late penalties)
 See the MLA Handbook for standard formatting requirements and other guidelines
 Use no sources other than the literature—do not use anyone else’s opinions or ideas, cited or
uncited (please note that class discussion is now considered your knowledge and is therefore free game
but reading anything on the web is not). Any use of outside sources (cited or otherwise) will be
considered a failure to follow directions and will result in a failing grade.

Stage 5: Journal 3—revise

 Check Essay 1 for feedback
 Evaluate each notation/highlight and make changes
 Note: be sure to revise fully and take all notations into consideration—not just for this assignment
but also for future ones (what corrections or resolutions should carry into new projects?)