Essay

 Now that you've finished reading You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, please write a two-to-three page essay, typed and double-spaced (no extra spaces between paragraphs; please indent your paragraphs) on one of the following topics based on the novel.  Upload it to Turnitin after you have proofread it. 

     When you quote, use MLA-style in-text citations, so that I or anyone else can turn to the page to check the quote. This essay be graded on a 100-point scale. This is to help get you working in the right format for your larger research paper at the end of the semester.  

     The best essays will not only be interesting, but also they will be in the proper MLA format.  Use a Work Cited Page if you quote. (The best papers quote.) I want you to get used to using a Works Cited page. The Works Cited page is extra beyond the two-to-three pages of your content. This is not a long essay. It's short for a reason. I want to see that you understand the basic structure of an essay.

     The main thing to keep in mind for this essay is to have a thesis, a thesis statement, support, and conclusion. Don't answer questions, per se. My prompts are meant to inspire you to find a thesis. Also, try not to be conclusive in your introduction. Your thesis statement should introduce the subject, not make a conclusion. 

Choose ONE of these topics:

     a) I've already had you look at the ends of a few of Walker's stories. I want to push this. A story's theme is usually best seen in the ending of the story. “Theme” is what a story is about, its basic truth, and it is best expressed as a statement. While people might say a story has “a theme of love,” that is really just the subject. Your general statement of theme needs to show a value, a truth that you see. If the subject is love, might the theme be, “Love might make you feel great for a while, but in the end, you're crushed by love and made weaker”? Or might it be “Love conquers all and makes each of us better”? They are both about love, but are different. Your statement of a theme needs to show a value. Theme is something that you discern by the events of a story. This is all to introduce my question. Is there a theme to the book? After all, the title is You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down. Are the women in this book successful? What else are they--self-absorbed, preachy, or worse? Are they spiritually alive? I ask because the epigram for the book is a Herman Hesse quote, "It is harder to kill something spiritually alive than it is to bring the dead back to life." (And what does "spiritually alive" mean?) 

  OR

     b) Many of these stories were written in the 1970's, and it was published in 1981. The characters in the stories often refer to the systematic poor treatment of the black population. Nearly forty years later, this year, 2020, we witnessed on video the casual killing of George Floyd, which brought to light the fact that people of color are still often systematically mistreated. Using a story or two from this collection, reflect on where we are in this year of Black Lives Matter. How will you judge progress?

OR

     c) If you see Alice Walker as a talented writer,  consider what "talent" means and where in this book does her talent show?

Your essays and your research paper will be graded as follows, mostly based on a standard developed by the University of Georgia. If your paper is late, you'll lose 10 points (out of 100) instantly, and then another five if it's not in by the next class (and five more each class after that).

1. Content (60 points)

• Is the content appropriate to the topic, the writer’s purpose, and the reader? 


• Is there adequate support and appropriate detail to support the generalizations? 


• Does the writer display critical thinking? 


• Does the writer present fresh insights? 


• Does the writer avoid logical fallacies? 


• Is it simply interesting and compelling?


• 2. Organization (10 points)


• Is the structure appropriate to the topic, the writer’s purpose, and the reader? 


• Is the overall essay coherent and unified? 


• Are individual paragraphs coherent and unified? 

3. Style (10 points)

• Is the style appropriate to the topic, the writer’s purpose, and the reader? 


• Are the sentences syntactically clear? 


• Are the sentences appropriately varied in structure and length? 


• Are the words denotatively and connotatively appropriate? 


• Does the writer use precise rather than vague words? 


• Does the writer avoid cliches, ambiguous diction, and jargon?


• 4. Mechanics (10 points)


• Is the essay free of spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors? 


• Is it in the MLA format exactly?

     Moreover, note that papers that contain, in any combination, four of the five major editing errors will receive an editing failure, which is an additional 15 points off.  The major editing errors are Fragments, Fused Sentences or Comma Splices, Agreement (subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent), homonym problems (it’s and its, for instance), and apostrophe errors. Because these errors are so significant, I am emphasizing that you avoid them.

      In all, you are showing me with this paper how well you can write and think