Write an argumentative essay addressing one of the following prompts. Your responses should be in the form of a formal academic essay, with an intro paragraph that summarizes your argument and contains a clear thesis statement, body paragraphs that support and provide evidence for your position, and a concluding paragraph. Your responses should draw on material from readings and lectures, and use appropriate quotes and textual analysis from multiple sources. Formatting should follow common collegiate standards, including common font type and size (11 or 12pt), 1” margins, and properly footnoted using the Chicago format. Your answers to these questions must take the form of an argumentative essay, meaning that in addition to being specific, debatable, and evidentiary, they must explain a relationship of historical causality by answering a why question inspired by these prompts. You are also free to write an essay on a topic of your own choosing, but please consult with me before embarking on this path.
Question 2)
Compare the main themes and concepts in the work of John Locke and Bartolome De Las Casas. For example, what do they mean, and how do they use specific, individual words and phrases like “Indian,” or “Christianity?” How do more complex concepts like race, labor, or justice play out in their work? More than a comparison, you should develop an argument about what explains their use – why do they present these particular meanings?
Comments:
Hi! I really enjoyed reading your essay and I think you are on a great track. I can tell you put a lot of thought and a lot of work into your draft. I think your analysis is in good shape although I would ask you to develop your argument and thesis a little bit more. Looking at your thesis, I think the “explanatory” aspect is there, but the “arguable,” “evidentiary,” and, “specific” aspects could be more clear. Your introduction and thesis make for a great comparison but I think your argument could be more clear in it. Going back to the prompt, it says, “more than a comparison, you should develop an argument about what explains their use (the words “Indian” and “Christianity” for example)– why do they present these particular meanings?” and I think this, and your thesis, is an area that you could develop a bit more. Grammatically, most of this draft is in really good shape. However, in multiple cases you referred to John Locke as “Locke” and Bartolome de Las Casas by his full name, or by his first name only. Although we can easily understand who you are talking about, I think it would flow just a bit better if you referred to both of them with their full names, both by their first names, or both by their last names. I don’t think this is a huge deal, but it could give the essay a little bit more uniformity! I really enjoyed the analysis in your essay. I felt the quotes you used made a lot of sense contextually, and that the analysis was in depth and interesting to read. You did a great job about introducing new ideas to us through your analysis. I think you are on a great path as a whole here! Keep up the good work.
I forgot to add this in my first comment, my apologies about that! I just wanted to add that I felt your essay was very organized with a clear intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Additionally, I felt as though you engaged clearly and effectively with the readings and the ideas/concepts that we were introduced to in our class assignments so far. I just felt like you should know you did well on these two areas, in addition to the comments I left a couple minutes ago. Keep it up!
Hi , Overall i think you have a good draft here there are just a couple points where i think you could strengthen it, firstly i think you need to rewrite part of the third paragraph, you should avoid speaking in absolute terms because when you make that sort of statement now you have to defend it. Secondly when you cite locke and talk about how the wealthier seeking more property has created a more unequal society, you need to back this up with a source. The same applies when you state that capitalism has continued slavery, if you want to talk about wage slavery you could cite some of the early American labor movements. I think you have a good draft here and I think once you fix these points it’ll be great.
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