Explore how formal elements function in a particular story
Assignment:
This assignment is a creative take on a literary analysis. Choosing one of the following two options, you will write a short. Creative piece that extrapolates upon a class reading. The assignment includes two components:
1) a short, written creative piece that you present (1-3 pages), and
2) a short explanation (2-3 pages), which cites what aspects of the text you drew on to form the basis of your extrapolation.
Option 1: The Magic Tree House. Imagine you suddenly find yourself in the world done of the texts we read this semester. What would you experience? See? Feel? Do? This option will help you explore deeply the role of setting in the text of your choice. How do you imagine you might react in the social, political, and environmental climate of the story or novel?
Option 2: Fan fiction. Choose a character from a text. Tell a story about what this character might have done, outside of the action of the story. What might sale have been like when s/he was younger? What might he be doing when the narrator is not focusing on them? What might she do after the story is over? This option will help you explore the role of character development in the text of your choice. What indications of character psychology have you seen in the text? How could you extrapolate from there?
Rationale:
This exercise will give you practice exploring the role of reader expectation in the novel as well as the role of setting or characterization.
Part 2-
Overview
By this point, we have read a considerable number of fiction works that are considered prime examples of the form. For this paper, you will explore how formal elements function in a particular story. You should not simply summarize the story. Nor should you simply explain where the element is present in the story. Instead, you must offer an analysis, an interpretation of the story supported by textual evidence.
Assignment
This paper should make a claim about how the text means. You might choose to make a claim about the nature of terror in the text (what is it that is terrorizing), a claim about how terror builds in the text, or a claim about some other aspect of the text. To do this, you will need to have a claim, which explains how you think meaning is made in the story at hand.
It should be something that a reasonable person could disagree with. To do so, you might
1) Explore how the story uses terror to illuminate a formal element of the text (like character, narrator, point of view, or genre)
2) Explore how terror in the story relates to a larger meaning (such as what the text suggests about the nature of terror or power).
Please feel free to drop by my office hours or schedule an appoint so that we can discuss how to specify your claim or build your argument.
Format
• The paper should be 4 pages double-space, Times New Roman or similar font
• include page numbers
• Include a works cited page.
