Choose one of the following poems to write Essay 4 about:
“The Mother,” by Gwendolyn Brooks
“Disabled,” by Wilfred Owen
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks
Analyze how the speaker feels about his or her circumstance and the decisions he or she makes. Trace the mental, emotional, and physical challenges the speaker faces. What hardships do they face? What wounds and scars do they carry? What haunts them? What keeps them from feeling whole or achieving peace and what does this reveal about the speaker?
**DO not write as if the writer of the poem (the author) is the same person as the SPEAKER! He or she is NOT!
Instructions: Compose a critical analysis essay on one of the topics below. Your essay should be well developed, unified, coherent, and grammatically correct. Refer to the Grading Criteria for MCC English Classes in the First Day Handout for this course. Required length: 2 full pages.
Create a thesis statement, and back up your claim with support/evidence from the text. Support should contain clear, specific examples from the poem you are analyzing, as well as documentation for all text references. Include at least 2-3 quotations from the poem in each body paragraph of your essay, for a total of 6 quotations.
Do no use any Secondary Source for this essay.
Follow MLA format: Use size 12, Times New Roman font and 1-inch margins; double space. Include a Work Cited page. It is not included in the length requirement; it should appear on a separate page at the end of your paper. Without a Works Cited page and/or secondary sources, you will lose 20 points.
Poetry:
With poetry, you need to separate the lines with “/” slashes. You also cite line numbers instead of page numbers with poetry.
Example: The speaker reflects, “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (lines 13-14). The slash appears after “know” because that is the end of the line and the next line begins with the word “of.”
See other essay directions and examples in Canvas to help with citations, grammar, analysis, and works cited information.
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