The
Interpretive Essay
Instructor
comment for Revision. No outside source.
Instructor COMMENTS for editing purposes are below.
Feedback
to Learner This
1. As with Essay # 2, the writing here
is quite strong. As you move into a potential revision, my main questions are
about focus/claim and about how citation is being used.
2. I. Thesis — I haven’t read this
story before, but from what I can tell, the fact that Thing is symbolic of war
is widely agreed upon. As such, it doesn’t make for the best thesis for the
essay, because it’s a received idea. With these essays, I’m looking for as
close to an original idea about the text as possible, and for you to argue for
that idea in a way that makes us believe in it.
3. II. Connecting to the Thesis — Body
Paragraph One doesn’t relate to The Thing, so much, and thus not to the thesis.
Only Body Paragraph Two does this in a consistent way. Body Paragraph Three,
though referencing the Thing, is more about the conventions of fairy tale in
the story.
4. III. Change Focus? — I identified
a sentence towards the top of Body Paragraph Three (AKA Paragraph Four) that
struck me as more original, focused, and interesting.
5.IV. Quotes and citing — I don’t
understand what you are citing. It seems to be a book rather than a website,
but the Works Cited suggests a website.
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More
instruction
Now, in 2 –
3 drafts, you are going to write a polished literature essay with either that
same story or one that a peer was assigned as your subject. You will be making
an interpretive claim about the story in the form of a thesis and supporting
that claim through evidence. As our textbook suggests, interpretive claims
engages with “how a literary text works, what it says, [and] how one should
understand it”.
Here are
some example interpretive claims about “Shiloh” in different stages of
completion:
“Although
the story ends in a place of ambiguity, there is enough evidence to suggest
that Norma Jean is going to leave Leroy as soon as they return home from
Shiloh.”
The rest of
the essay will try to persuade readers why that might be the case.
“The characters
of Leroy, Norma Jean, and Stevie, and the way they interact, represent a New
South in direct conflict with The Old South as embodied by Mabel Beasley.”
The essay
will focus on theme and character to persuade a potential audience.
“The Civil
War battleground of Shiloh, Tennessee is a metaphor for the state of Leroy and
Norma Jean’s relationship.”
Though I
dipped into the realm of the evaluative by calling the metaphor “apt,” my key
purpose is to prove that such a metaphor has developed here.
you will
find a few other examples of interpretive claims for other selections from the
textbook.
Tips for
an Interpretive Literature Essay
1. Stick to one major idea or claim
about the work
2. Your purpose is to provide “a new and
deeper understanding” about the text or some aspect of the text.
3. Five elements: Tone, thesis, motive,
evidence, and structure.
4. Use the present tense for writing
about literature, both for the characters and the author.
5. You can use “I,” but don’t overuse it
unnecessarily.
6. Your thesis must be explicitly stated
and arguable.
7. Your essay should be interpretive rather
than evaluative; however, you can do some of the latter in the conclusion.
Guidelines
I am hoping
to receive an essay of 4 + pages in length.
Your essay
should follow MLA convention: double-spaced; 12 point-type; legible font;
half-inch indentation to begin each new paragraph; header with last name and
progressive page number in the top right-hand corner of the page; name,
instructor name, class name, and due date on the left-hand side of the page;
center-aligned title; in-text citations and/or parenthetical citations; “Works
Cited” on a separate page at the end of the essay.
Quotations
(at least one per body paragraph, I should think) – although I prize the use of
indirect quotations (summary and paraphrase) over direct quotations, more
direct quotations than usual are appropriate when writing the literature essay.
Still, “more” should not mean anything beyond 10% of your essay.
For this
essay, I do not want to see the incorporation of any external sources. In Essay
# 2, we’ll be focusing on author biographies and other contexts for the work
that can be explored through research. In Essay # 1, the only relationship I’m
interested in is the one between you and the text itself.
The original paper attachment is below.
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