Week 10 Assignment
Goal: Demonstrate comprehension and evaluation of a secondary source essay.
Directions:
Choose one of the three critical essays (secondary sources) in this module:
- Consigny, “Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants,'” or
- Deneau, “Chopin’s ‘Story of an Hour,” or
- Gruesser, “Walker’s ‘Everyday Use.”
Prepare to write: Read and understand the critical essay you choose.
Write: In a paragraph of about 200-250 words, paraphrase (=restate in your own words) the author’s (=Consigny, Deneau, or Gruesser’s) interpretation of the story he or she is writing about.
Identify the author’s thesis in your own words.
Be sure to include a sentence that states the title and author of the secondary source.
Based on your own understanding of the primary source the scholar is writing about (so either “Story of an Hour,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” or “Everyday Use”) state whether or not you agree with the author’s thesis and state why or why not (it is ok to use the pronoun “I” for this part).
If you quote directly from either the critical essay or the primary source be sure to put the quotation inside quotation marks.
Proof the paragraph for grammatical, spelling, and formatting errors.
Note that the title of a critical essay, like that of a short story or poem, should go inside quotation marks (follow the title as written above).
Style tip: Don’t *announce* which essay you have chosen: “I choose Deneau’s essay,” is not very informative; instead, begin the paragraph with a statement about the content of Deneau’s essay. This will show the reader that you are an intelligent, informed writer and thinker.
Cite: Include a Works Cited citation of your chosen secondary source (you can find this on the page for each reading).
