Critical reasoning “The sleep of plants”

Essay 1: “The Sleep of Plants”
(due Thursday, September 15th, by 5:00 pm)

Your paper is due on Canvas by 5:00 pm on Thursday, September 15th and should be 2 pages in
length. (Please follow the MLA formatting guidelines laid out in “How to format your essay.”)

For your first essay (2 pages in length), your assignment is to analyze a single passage from “The
Sleep of Plants,” providing one of many (possibly conflicting) interpretations of the passage you’ve
chosen and making this interpretation convincing and compelling through careful and thoughtful
analysis of textual details.

Choose a passage of one sentence to one short paragraph from Richter’s story. Keep in mind
that your analysis should not focus just on the content of the passage, but should consider it as a
piece of writing that generates its meaning through specific representational choices. If you feel that
you can easily summarize everything there is to say about the passage in a sentence or two, it may be
a sign that you should look for another. You may find it helpful to choose a passage in which the
language seems particularly dense or puzzling, or one that leaves you with more questions than
answers upon a first reading—questions that you can explore through the writing process.

In its finished form, your essay should do three things (you might very well use these three tasks to
determine the order and structure of your essay):

❖ Introduce the quotation: describe its context in the larger story, frame the reader’s
understanding of it, set up its significance. You should also quote the passage so you and the
reader can refer back to it throughout the coming discussion. (If you choose a full paragraph
that is too long to quote in its entirety, you’ll need to describe it instead, and then attach a
separate sheet to your essay with the passage typed out so I can refer to the exact passage.)

❖ Analyze it thoroughly, commenting on specific details in the passage that you find interesting
and important. Remember that analysis does not mean repeating for us in your own words
the basic content of the quoted passage: it’s your task to make explicit what’s implicit in the
passage, by considering word choice, style, structure, etc.

❖ Make an argument about the passage’s larger role in and significance to the larger story. This
is your chance to offer an interpretation of the passage, an account of why you think it
matters. Your interpretive claim should grow out of and be supported by the analysis that
precedes it, and it should remain grounded in the details of the story—that is, don’t
generalize beyond the text.

In addition to producing a nuanced analytical reading of your chosen passage your goal for this
assignment is to craft excellent paragraphs that:

❖ are organized around a central idea,
❖ develop from beginning to end,
❖ are stylistically pleasing (e.g. vary sentence length),
❖ include textual evidence (i.e. incorporate citations appropriately),
❖ transition smoothly from one to the next.

Important Dates
❖ Wednesday, September 14th: Essay Workshop
Upload a complete draft of your essay to the workshop forum on Canvas and bring a
printed copy of your essay to class with you. To receive credit for this workshop, your essay
should satisfy all of the expectations listed above—that is, it should be a complete version
of the essay even if you’re still hoping to revise portions of it. Failure to submit a draft
that satisfies the assignment requirements for this workshop and/or to bring your
essay to class will result in the deduction of 5 points from your final grade on this
essay.

❖ Thursday, September 15th: Essay 1 due by 5:00 pm
Your essay is due by 5:00 pm on Thursday, September 15th. Please upload your completed
essay to Canvas by this time. You do not need to include a Works Cited page with this essay,
but please follow proper MLA formatting throughout. For guidance, see the “How to
format your essay” document on Canvas.

Note: As we’ve discussed in class, all essays for our course should be your own original work,
written specifically for this assignment. This means that both the ideas in the essay and the writing
in which you present those ideas must be your own. A few principles regarding academic honesty:

❖ “Borrowing” ideas about a text from the internet or other student essays is a form of
plagiarism, even if you didn’t mean to plagiarize by consulting these other texts. To prevent
inadvertent (or deliberate) plagiarism, you should avoid consulting outside sources or study
guides about the text you are writing about altogether, even if you think you don’t
understand the text fully and want help. The reason we write analytical essays in the first
place is to come to a better understanding of something difficult by tackling its complexities
through a written exploration of ideas. I’m interested in what you have to say about our
course texts, not what the internet or another scholar tells you is the “right” answer.
(Remember: there is no one right answer.)

❖ I strongly encourage you to use our in-class workshops to get feedback on your work and to
take advantage of the tutoring services available in the Writing and Reading Center if you’d
benefit from further writing support. However, the paper you turn in to me should still be
written by you. Excessive editing or revising by a friend, family member, or tutor may
constitute plagiarism if the essay in question is no longer solely authored by you. If you turn
in an essay that substantially differs from the voice and style of your other work for this class
(emails, freewriting, discussion, etc.), your essay may receive a zero.

English 101

Grading Rubric: Essay 1

The following rubric is meant to give you an idea of the criteria I will use in assessing your first
essay, describing my grade scale and the characteristics of essays within each grade range. Large-scale
problems involving your analysis of the text or the coherence of your discussion are inherently more
severe than minor mechanical errors, but such errors will affect your grade insofar as they show a
lack of effort or revision, fall below college-level writing standards, and/or prevent comprehension
of your ideas. Note that a passing grade on this paper presupposes that your writing is clear
and accessible to an outside reader and is free of severe recurring grammatical errors. (It also
presupposes that the essay meets all length and other requirements outlined in the prompt.) While
this rubric is not a checklist, you may find it a helpful tool in evaluating your own papers-in-
progress.
an A paper
A: The essay presents a thorough and nuanced analysis of the passage that concludes with a
convincing interpretive reading of the passage. The essay introduces the passage clearly and
succinctly, describing its larger context and significance in a way that effectively frames the
discussion to come. The quoted passage is properly formatted and seamlessly integrated into the
writer’s own discussion. The paper’s observations are striking and original and point to details about
the passage’s underlying structures, integrating textual evidence through a thorough and persuasive
analysis of quotations and other details and exploring the implications and significance of this
evidence. The essay concludes with a convincing account of why this passage matters for our
understanding of the larger story, offering a persuasive interpretation that grows logically out of and
supports the analysis that precedes it. The paper is well-organized in coherent paragraphs, and the
analysis develops in a way that clearly communicates the writer’s purpose. The essay’s style shows an
attention to reader engagement and comprehension. An “A-” paper may be an “A” paper with a few
minor flaws or may present a slightly less ambitious or nuanced analysis and interpretation of textual
details than an “A” paper.

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