CCLA01: Strangers to Ourselves: the Critical Study of Narrative

CCLA01: Strangers to Ourselves: the Critical Study of Narrative

Assignment One-Analysis

Choosing one of the five short stories from the anthology, indicate through an analysis how elements of discourse contribute to the story's overall effect. Your essay should be 1,000-1,500 words long, and follow the module format for presentation.

Assignment One tests your comprehension of the terminology we have discussed in Unit One of the module, and your ability to apply the terminology to the analysis of a short narrative.

Deadlines

Submission of First Draft for Peer Review Session : Monday, February 5th
Submission of Final Draft : Monday, February 12

Please staple your first draft and the peer review form completed by your partner on the front of your final draft.

Strategies for Writing

Prewriting

1. Begin early. Start to think about the assignment from week two of the module onwards. Put aside a block of time in which you can read through the five stories in the anthology at one sitting. On your first reading, try to read for enjoyment, much as you might read a novel or watch a movie for pleasure.

2. After reading, choose the story that appeals to you most. If you have difficulty deciding at this stage, you may want to work on two stories, and decide on the story you will work on later.

3. Through a prewriting activity such as brainstorming, freewriting or mind-mapping, explore the effect the story has had upon you. If you have studied literature before, you may be used to looking for the theme, or message, of a narrative. Narratives, however, may carry different messages for different readers. If you find exploring difficult, you might begin by considering the following questions:

4. On reading the first paragraph, what did I think the story would be about?
5. In what ways were my expectations confirmed or changed by the events in the story?
6. Which events in the story made an impact upon me? Why?
7. Has reading the story caused me to change my opinions about anything, or deepened my understanding of anything?

8. Has reading the story caused me to revisit or relive anything in my own life? If so, what?

9. From the material generated by the freewriting activity, try generate a summary of the effect of the story upon you as a reader: if you can, you may want to organise your material into a series of points and sub-points.

10. Now go back to the short story, and read it closely, examining it in terms of the distinction between story and discourse we have discussed over the last four weeks. Locate specific elements--use of time, narration, point of view, existents--which are present in the short story. Do any of these seem particularly significant, in that they are used frequently or at key points in the story?

11. This is the hard part. You have to conceptually relate material generated from steps 4 to 5. How do the various elements you have identified in 5) create the effect(s) in 4)? It may help here to think of specific examples from the text of the short story.

Still puzzled?--Here's an example of how I would work my way through prewriting.

Writing the Essay

If you are used to writing essays about literary texts--if you've studied Literature at "O" or "A" level, the advice below may be redundant. Consider it as a scaffolding to help you assemble your essay, not as a series of unbreakable rules.

Planning

Before writing your draft for the peer review session, plan thoroughly. Without planning, I often find myself running into "writer's block" and not knowing what to write after an inspired first page or two. Before you set out to write the essay, then, have a clear idea of the following:

• Your central argument in the essay. This is sometimes called the thesis. It is often best to express this thesis early in the essay, to give a clear direction to your writing.
• The direction your argument will take. Will you advance a number of sub-points? In what order?
• The evidence for your argument. You'll need to quote from the short story here, using a mixture of paraphrase and in text and block quotation
• How to document your references using MLA Style.

Some Other Suggestions:

• Express your thesis early on in the essay, in an introductory paragraph.
• While it may be useful to give a brief summary of the short story just after your introduction to the essay, resist the attempt to just retell the story rather than analysing it. One way to avoid this temptation is to consciously adopt a structure for the essay which does not follow the structure of the short story. For instance, you might choose to write about two or three characters in turn--if you were stressing existents--rather than to proceed chronologically through the short story, mentioning each character as he or she occurs.
• If you are uncertain about writing introductions, the use of quotes, or conclusions, follow the link to a guide to essay mechanics I have produced. Note that these guides aren't specific to this module, but they may help you in essay writing

Follow this link for Further Suggestions for Reviewing and Revising your Essay.

Sample Essays

Follow this link to some of the best responses to Assignment One produced by students in Semester 1, 2000-2001.