600 Word Blogpost Assignment

After today's class, we have a week to read and think about what we want to post for Wednesday, Jan. 21st. Our assignment in The Liars' Club is substantial but full of terrific material. I want us to respond seriously to it, and a bit more formally.

In the last class, we focused on Karr's images. You've begun a list of key images and have explicated some of them. I want us to continue this work in our lengthier blogpost.

Please write a thesis-driven analysis of TWO images that you find in the next reading (140-271). This post should be 600 to 800 words.

Remember that a thesis is an argumentative statement that you posit at or near the beginning of your post/paper. "Mary Karr uses images of animals " is a statement of fact, but not a thesis statement because it is not argumentative. Think about a thesis in the following way:

1. An author uses/does/writes something. . .
2. in order to. . .or. . .for the purpose of. . .or. . .and the effect is. . .

Don't feel locked into this phraseology, but remember that you need to bring your ideas to the text. If summarizing what happens in the memoir proves your point, your point isn't strong enough. Also, moral judgments are weak theses. We're interested in the writing, in the psychology, cadence, diction, syntax of the writing, not in passing judgment.

Which brings us to evidence. Once you assert something argumentative, you ought to prove it, right? People often think English papers are a drag, but we engage in this kind of discourse all the time. Maybe my thesis is that Gilmore Girls is the greatest show in television history. Great. I should prove it. Maybe my thesis is that the Browns are better than the Bengals. Great. I should prove it.

The difference here is that we are looking at a book. Ok. In my reading, I'm sure that animal imagery is very important. I need to think about why. Ok. I think it's important because it tells us something about the surroundings Karr grows up in, it tells us about the wildness of the family. YES. I'm halfway there. Now I need to bring up the two passages/images where that happens most clearly, most persuasively. I want to quote those passages. Then I want to write specifically about what's in them so that I can further my point. (If you quote 200 word passages, I will notice and expect you to analyze said passages extensively. Lengthy quoting is allowed but isn't a shortcut to the word minimum).

I care about this, why? Because I love being right. Because ! love showing people something that I noticed about a book (or the world) that they didn't. Because I like to stretch my brain. Because the better I get at this, the better I'll be at challenging what's told to me. These are just some of your reasons. Winning an argument, being persuasive, is central to existing in this world.

A few more complications: it's difficult for us to assume authorial intent. That means, we have to be careful writing something like "Karr obviously wants to show that her family is dysfunctional." When we're reading and writing about memoir, we will be tempted to think we know exactly what the author wants, and we will have more clues; we still want to hedge our bets, though, with something like, "Karr shows a family that seems to be dysfunctional." NOTE: I don't intend these sentences to be example theses. They are not argumentative enough. I merely want to show the kind of assertion that it's safe to make about a text.

Please think about readability. Include paragraph breaks.

This does not need to be a five-paragraph essay. It does need to be thoughtful.

Good luck.