HAMLET by William Shakespeare: An essay for EWRT 2

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EWRT 2 HAMLET by William Shakespeare: An essay for EWRT 2
Due: Wednesday February 2, 2022 Points: 100
Requirements: original essay, no plagiarism; rough draft (hand edited) and final draft with evidence of editing; length: 4-5 pages. Quote appropriately from the play and cite sources. Works cited page also required. Write your own original title.
This essay requires a strong thesis with three divisions of proof which become the basis of at least three strong topic sentences in the body of the paper.
Hints to achieve a high score: 1) Detailed topic sentences that control the body paragraphs
2) Effective use of (brief) quoted passages that supply exactly the evidence you need to support your point
3)Above all, a strong thesis that flows through the entire essay
Topics:
1) Clearly, Hamlet makes some good, some bad, and some ugly decisions in the process of trying to solve his perhaps insoluble problem. Compare one or more of his decisions to one or more of your own. What can be learned through the consequences and results? You may also choose another character (particularly Gertrude, Claudius, Ophelia, Horatio, Polonius and Laertes.)
2) Who is the best critical thinker in this play? See the bottom of this page. Use the terminology provided.
3) Who is the worst critical thinker? Try to get beyond the obvious in this and any essay your write for this class. Use the terminology provided.
4) Compare yourself to Hamlet or to another character in the play. Or compare Hamlet to a celebrity whose career you follow closely enough to provide good supporting details to demonstrate similarities and differences.
5) Spying—compare an experience of spying in your own life to those dramatized in HAMLET.
6) Disastrous obeying of parents—if you have had an experience that you think might apply, compare your own situation to that of the characters in HAMLET. If you already did this for the first essay, please do not repeat. Or: Parental “meddling” that leads to unwanted or unpleasant results.
7) Complicating your life with “over-thinking,” as Hamlet seems to do with some frequency, is not uncommon to many of us in 2021; write about a time when you “turned Hamlet” with a crucial experience in your life.
8) “He feels that he is in a play—he is anyway.” Write about a time when, like Hamlet, you felt struck in the theatrical determination of your life.
Argumentative Essays instructions:
Ask “What? Then “Why?” 1) Start with a strong thesis: Hamlet’s worst choice is being an obedient child to a parent who is now “beyond the grave,” because, an adult, he is a fool to cast aside the love offered by Ophelia; to imagine he can assure his father’s “eternal rest” when the former king could not do so himself; and to believe, contrary to what he learned at the university in Germany, that violence can bring about lasting peace.
Most instructors prefer to see this full thesis statement located at the end of the introduction
(opening paragraph.)
2) Topic sentences: The first sentence of each paragraph: Each topic sentence should contain one of the divisions of proof from the thesis statement (the words underlined in the above sample thesis).
3) DON’T SIMPLY RE-TELL THE STORY!!!! Focus strictly on your divisions of proof. Summaries direct the instructor to check the internet or look elsewhere in Sparks, Cliffs Notes, etc..
4) Include a handwritten rough draft if possible…. ALWAYS HAND-EDIT A TYPED ROUGH DRAFT.
5) Avoid I and you in your essay: Except in topics where you are asked to include your own experience for comparison.
6) Essential: Always use present tense when referring to art (which includes all written narrative(story telling, poetry, etc.). Of course, this includes music, etc.
7) No extra spacing between paragraphs
Use the PIE approach to paragraphs: 1) point 2) illustrate 3) offer an example—then repeat!
Some Critical Thinking Techniques and Approaches:
1. Independent thinking: The courage to comprehend and apprehend from your own unique point of view.
Open mind: The ability to comprehend, evaluate and analyze simultaneously conflicting points of view which may have validity.
3. Research: No informed opinion may be discovered without ample research, preferably from a wide variety of print and internet sources.
Purposeful thinking: The ability to focus, to center on goals, to keep a larger objective always in view.
Connecting/categorizing: One of the most powerful kinds of thinking is seeing underlying similarities in entities that seem dissimilar to everyone else. Catherine and Paris Hilton? Preposterous! Heathcliff and Sid Vicious? Ridiculous! (Until you read the excellent essays making those connections for the last EWRT 2 project.)
Synthesizing information: The ability to comprehend and absorb information and Amake it your own@ (a special sort of internalization where you begin to Aclaim ownership@: of the novel or project at hand). Perhaps you=ve told someone: AI=m reading my book.@ AI=m watching my movie.@ AI=m playing my game.@ When it becomes: AI=m strengthening my thesis. I=m perfecting my essay,@ then you are on your way to becoming a critical thinker and writer.
Objectivity: The sometimes essential ability to put aside preconceptions about the work under consideration and use pure analysis.
Questioning: We question the material. We questions our assumptions. We question the teacher. We question ourselves. Asking Awhat?@ and Awhy?@ will take the critical thinker a long way into any given subject, as well as helping her or him arrive at a strong thesis statement and divisions of proof.
Reflection: Another form of questioning that may witness the introduction of philosophical or psychological issues. From reflection, depth.
Predicting, problem solving, interpreting, and generalizing may relate to and sometimes evolve from the above. Critical thinking is an on-going life skill which we benefit from applying to many aspects of our short passage through this amazing universe.
Thinking “outside the box.” Finding imaginative solutions to difficult problems.
Ferrie 2022

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