Assignment Paper

Paper Prompt

Requirements: 6-7 pages, double-spaced; 12 pt Times New Roman; 1-inch margins in .pdf or .doc/x format; citations MLA style.

For this assignment, choose one of the themes or ideas listed below and discuss how it is developed in at least two texts we have read this term.

• The animal
• The afterlife
• Happiness
• Morality/Law

Your paper should be organized around a strong central argument that is both debatable (that is, not obvious and not a simple summary of the text), and supportable with textual evidence. Make sure that your argument has a clear logical structure which is readily visible in the introduction.

For this paper, you should focus especially on carefully selecting and analyzing evidence from the texts you choose. Your goal in offering textual support is to make your argument compelling and convincing for your reader. So in choosing textual evidence, be sure that you are 1) identifying passages that are relevant to your topic, 2) examining those passages carefully to fully explore their significance, and 3) making clear to your reader exactly how this quoted evidence relates to your central argument. Make sure that you introduce each quotation with appropriate context, cite it properly, and follow it with substantial commentary.

The prompt asks you examine a major thematic concern of the course, but we are not asking for an overview of the syllabus. This means that even as you grapple with a large theme, your papers should be quite specific in their focus. You might successfully choose no more than a passage or two from each text, and examine this material closely, and at length. You should not feel obligated to cover the entire text. Instead, work with passages that you, in you reading, have identified as being especially rich and worth exploring in detail, and which speak in some way to the topic you choose. This will help you stay away from summary and generalization, and to focus your effort on analyzing the text carefully.