Essay Instructions: RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT: 1000-1500 words (or more)-- 4 secondary sources-- The primary source is the story. In all, you will be using at least 5 sources in your paper. You may use more, of course.
Preparing to write the paper
1. Choose one of the following stories for your research paper. One way to choose a story is to
read the introduction to the author and then to read the first few paragraphs of the story. If you
want to know a little more about the story, let me know. I suggest that you read the story before
looking for commentaries (secondary sources--sources about the stories), since you'll want to
experience the story as literature with all its interesting details and surprises first. Once you have
chosen your story, read carefully and take notes, jotting down any questions that occur to you as
you read. All page numbers are from the 8th edition. Stories to choose from will be uploaded as pdf's.
"This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" (Tadeusz Borowski, 150)
"The Guest" (Albert Camus, 178)
"Cathedral" (Raymond Carver, 191)
"The Open Boat" (Stephen Crane, 359)
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 445)
"The Overcoat" (Nikolai Gogol, 475)
"The Real Thing" (Henry James, 594)
"Shiloh" (Bobbie Ann Mason, 859)
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (Joyce Carol Oates, 988)
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" (Flannery O'Connor, 1042)
"My Life with the Wave" (Octavio Paz, 1102)
"The Conversion of the Jews" (Philip Roth, 1151)
"Everyday Use" (Alice Walker, 1334)
"The Man Who Was Almost a Man" (Richard Wright, 1401)
2. Find four commentaries (articles, interviews, overviews, critical essays, etc.) about the story
and take notes or highlight the parts that help in your understanding. You will be using at least
two substantial quotations from each commentary in your paper. I encourage you to use
more than four commentaries (sources). Keep in mind that your research should focus on the
literature itself, not on the author, though you may find articles in which the author discusses the
story, or you may find that the author's own life is relevant to the story in a very specific way. The
primary source (the story) does not count as one of the four commentaries (secondary
sources). This means that you will have at least five sources listed in your works cited.
Don't use:
No internet (or print) sources that are "notes" or "summaries" of the primary source
(CliffsNotes, Endnotes, Classicnotes, Booknotes, Sparknotes, Novelguide.com, etc)
(Anything with lots of advertisements should be avoided.)
No encyclopedias, especially Wikipedia, which is a good general reference but not always
reliable, especially not as literary criticism
No dictonaries--definitions of words aren't commentaries (though it's good to look up
words, of course)
No unsigned internet articles
Use:
Books (biographies of the author, compilations of critical essays, critical studies of the
story)
HCCS databases (especially Literature Resource Center). Choose the tab with "Literary
Criticism, Articles, and Work Overviews." You will also see that you can search by the title
of the story, which is very useful.
Movies or documentaries that relate to the the primary source
Reliable websites (with authors listed)
Websites with .org, .gov., .edu
Writing the Paper
3. In your paper, begin with a brief introduction in which you tell why you chose this story or
play, what questions you had after reading, how your found your sources, which sources were
most useful. This introduction is required.
***You should use "I" in the introduction since you are discussing your personal response***.
4. Include a very brief discussion of the primary source itself, including quotations that you think
are important. This part of the paper shouldn't be more than a paragraph or two. (I emphasize
"brief" because in the past, some students have discussed the story for half the paper and
responded very briefly to the commentaries.)
5. Then discuss each commentary (source) in a full paragraph for each source, letting the reader
know what the critics have said about your story, novel, or play. Include at least two substantial
quotations from the source and your reponses to what the critics say. You will need to give the
name and author of each commentary, but don't use these as headings. I prefer that you organize
your essay by discussing the sources one by one. You may, of course, make connections among
the sources to make the essay flow nicely. I'm interested in what you find out about the literature
through research. Please follow punctuation rules for quotations. Quotation marks don't substitute for other marks of punctuation (commas, colons, semicolons, periods). Here is a
website that should be useful: Punctuating Quotations in Essays
6. At the end of the paper, summarize what you have learned by doing the research, perhaps
letting your reader know which commentaries answered the questions you had, which gave you
additional insight, which were difficult to understand, etc. Again, you should use "I."
7. Include a Works Cited list at the end of the paper, listing all sources alphabetically, using
MLA documentation format. Be sure to list your primary source (the story you are
writing about). You must follow MLA format exactly. If you need help, let me know. You
may wish to pick up a handout at the library or consult the following website: MLA Format
Research Documentation Guidelines:
1. Include the name of the author and title in a sentence in the text of the paper, not in
parentheses. The page number should appear in parentheses just after the quotation. The
page number always comes after the quotation marks and is not preceded by a p.; the period
comes after the parentheses. See example below. Websites and databases usually don't have
page numbers, so you need to include only the author and title. Remember that any
borrowed material (a quotation, a paraphrase, a summary, an idea) must have an intext
citation.
Example 1 (In-text citation):
In Ian Watt's excellent biography, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, Watt says that "[n]
either Conrad nor Marlow had any faith in the rationalisations [of the Victorian ethic], but
they adhered to many of the values" (148).
Notice that I have not repeated "Watt" in parentheses before the page number. It is very
important not to repeat the author's name unnecessarily. Doing so is distracting to the
reader and implies that he or she can't remember the name of the author, even though you
have included it at the beginning of the sentence. (Imagining yourself as the reader is a good
idea.)
Works Cited Entry:
Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Print.
Example 2 (In-text citation): In Theatre U.S.A: 1665-1957, the author, Barnard Hewitt, says of Tennessee Williams and the
production of A Streetcar Named Desire: "Tennessee Williams had succeeded in investing
contemporary materials with poetry by intensifying the expression of the suffering of
realistically conceived characters" (441).
Notice that there is punctuation after the introduction to the quotation. In this case, I used a
colon; however, depending on the lead-in, you might use some other mark of punctuation.
It's important to follow normal punctuation rules when using quotations. Notice also that
the ending quotation marks come before the parentheses and that the period comes after.
Works Cited Entry:
Hewitt, Barnard. Theatre U.S.A.: 1665-1957. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. Print.
2. For your primary source (the story, novel, or play you are researching), use page numbers
only as long as it's clear that you are quoting from the primary source (and as long as you
have included the author and title in the introduction). The full citation will appear in the
Works Cited list).
The narrator of "The Real Thing" explains his philosophy of illustration in the following
passage:
I liked them [Major and Mrs. Monarch]--I felt, quite as their friends must have done-
-they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit. But
somehow with all their perfections I didn't easily believe in them. After all they were
amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was--the detestation of the amateur.
Combined with this was another perversity--an innate preference for the
represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they
WERE or not was a subordinate and almost always a profitless question. (598)
The quotation above is "blocked," which means it is indented 10 spaces from the left
margin. Quotations of four lines or more should be blocked. Notice that there are no
quotation marks around the quotation. Blocking it reveals to the reader that you are
quoting. Also, in a blocked quotation, the period comes before the parentheses.
Examples of Works Cited Entry for primary source: James, Henry. "The Real Thing." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 8th ed. Boston:
Bedford. 594-611. Print.
Notice that you should include the inclusive page numbers for the story.
3. Use the following format if you're quoting from a multi-volume source like Twentieth
Century Literary Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth Century Views, etc.
(Always cite the actual author of a piece, not an editor.) In-text citation: Lionel Trilling, in "F. Scott Fitzgerald" (from The Liberal Imagination), says this about
Fitzgerald's writing style: "Even in Fitzgerald's early, cruder books, or even in his
commercial stories, and even when his style is careless, there is a tone and pitch to his
sentences that suggest his warmth and tenderness, and, what is rare nowadays and not
likely to be admired, his gentleness without softness" (12).
Works Cited Entry: Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Liberal Imagination. New York: Viking, 1951. Rpt. in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection Of Critical Essays. Arthur Mizener, ed. Twentieth
Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963. 11-19. Print.
In-text citation:
4. If you're using the Internet, follow MLA guidelines by including the author (if known) and
title of the piece, the date the site was created (if indicated), the http address (optional), and
the date accessed. If the author isn't known, use the title of the piece (even if it's a simple
title like "A Poe Chronology").
Example:
Colleen Burke, in an article on the Internet, describes Heart of Darkness as a work that
"descends into the unknowable darkness at the heart of Africa, taking its narrator, Marlow,
on an underworld journey of individuation, a modern odyssey toward the center of the Self
and the center of the Earth."
Works Cited entry:
Burke, Colleen. "Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Metaphor of Jungian Psychology." 21
March 1998. Web. 17 Oct 2009.
Note: Check guidelines for dates to include. If you know the date when the site was produced
or last revised, include that. If not, include only the date you accessed the site.
5. If you use a database like Literature Resource Center, follow this format:
Example (in-text documentation):
Linda Wagner-Martin in " 'A Pair of Silk Stockings': Overview," comments on the story's style:
"Chopin's departure from a plot-oriented narrative, to the emphasis on the inner motivation of her
character, was as important as her abandonment of the details of local color writing."
Works Cited entry:
Wagner-Martin, Linda. " 'A Pair of Silk Stockings': Overview." Reference Guide to Short
Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. 1st ed. St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center.
Web. 17 October 2009.
6. To avoid repeating all of the information about a book with several essays about your
story, you may include one full reference to the entire book (with the editor) and then
cross-reference the individual essays. Here is an example.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century
Views. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Print.
Cowley, Malcolm. "Third Act and Epilogue." Mizener 64-69. Print.
Wanning, Andrews. "Fitzgerald and His Brethren." Mizener 57-63. Print.
and the center of the Earth."
lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they
There are faxes for this order.
