Two Kinds by Amy Tan Elements of the Literature Unit Two: New Critical/Formalist Essay In this Unit, we examine how the elements of the literature beautifully create an artistic whole.
What we will not do in this essay, and future critiques has related the literature to our experiences as readers anymore. Now we delve into the literature to consider the characters, setting, exposition, and other elements individually or combined.
Your thesis statement should be narrowly focused and unique, so your analysis relates to concepts learned in Part I and Part II of the textbook. Keep in mind that you may develop a minor idea from within this essay or your next essay for your Unit Four research project, so choose your topic carefully.
Read and Review:
Pages 30-52 provide a refresher on essay drafting if needed.
Pages 1571-1573 offer more details and example paragraphs about the New Critical/Formalist essay critiquing format.
Each chapter on fiction in Part II provides a sample essay that you can review and/or model when drafting this essay. Choose your literary elements from within the chapters of Part II. You won’t want to choose a literary element from the chapter titles because that might make your essay topic too broad.
Literature Choices:
Choose ONE story from Chapter 1 (Fiction: An Overview) or from Chapter 10 (Collection of Stories for Additional Enjoyment and Study)
Topic Prompts: Choose One
Literary Element and Theme: Choose one literary element within the short story to analyze how the author used it to develop one specific theme within the work. Provide in-depth information about your chosen literary element.
Combining Elements for Image or Symbol: Choose two literary elements within the short story to analyze how effectively the author used them together to create an extended image OR establish a significant symbol.
Two Kinds by Amy Tan Elements of the Literature Requirements
Focus/Purpose: to analyze and to support an opinion to a primary audience of classmates and instructor
Content and Support/Elaboration: Your 5+ paragraph essay should be 525-625 words. Each paragraph should include concrete details from the literature as support for the topic sentence, either as an example or an explanation of your point.
Idea Organization: Create complete paragraphs (topic, supporting details, transitions) organized as needed to support your new critical/formalist ideas.
Style: This is not a reader-response essay, so third person writing is required. College-level academic formality is expected as well.
Format/Essay Conventions: You may organize this new critical/formalist content in an example, causal analysis, or an argument essay structure.
MLA: This essay must conform to 8th edition MLA standards. This includes the heading, the page formatting, and your credits of the literature in the in-text citations and the full citation after the essay. No additional research is permitted for this essay.
Once you’re satisfied with the final draft, submit your essay to the Turnitin drop box within iCollege by the due date provided.
The essay will be graded according to the Essay Descriptions and using the Rubrics posted in our iCollege course.
