5 PAGE MAX
The aim for this essay is to help you conduct research and integrate other scholarly voices into your own argument and analysis. Along with identifying key passages in the text that you think will help you answer the question, you will also use 1-2 scholarly sources (1 is mandatory but you can use 2 if you’d like) in this paper based on the instructions that you will be given in class and during a library workshop on finding and incorporating scholarly sources. Please choose any ONE of the questions given below:
1) Explore the extent to which Walter’s character in A Raisin in the Sun provides a commentary on the state of black manhood. How does Walter conceive of masculinity? How does he achieve his manhood as the play progresses and what does this manhood consist of?
2) How does A Raisin in the Sun depict the roles that the three women (Mama, Ruth, and Beneatha) play in the Younger household? How does each character define her identity and is that how the other members of the family see her?
3) A Raisin in the Sun takes its title from a line in Langston Hughes’s poem, “Harlem.” How does the play illustrate the theme of the poem?
4) How does Hansberry characterize Beneatha? How do her interactions with her two suitors, Joseph Asagai and George Murchison, help readers to understand different facets of her personality and desires?
5) Any other topic of your choice. You need to get the topic approved by me first. (Please write your topic in the form of a question [as in the prompts above] and email me)
Your paper should answer the question using a clearly defined thesis and use textual quotes from the play to support each point that you make. You should analyze those quotes, and explain how this analysis adds to our understanding of the entire play. Please remember that you are writing an analytical paper, NOT a plot summary. You should use brief plot summary only to establish context for quotes and other necessary instances, but not otherwise. Thus, for this essay, quote passages and discuss not only what they mean, but how the way that the author expresses those ideas reinforces that message. You should be very diligent in grounding all your arguments in quotations from the text. I recommend that every paragraph in your essay (with the exceptions of the introduction and conclusion) contain at least one quotation from the text. Pay close attention to the language, imagery, figures of speech in the passages you have chosen. When incorporating the scholarly article into your essay, please refer to it at least twice. Please provide in-text citations each time you refer to the texts.
Be careful that you make the passages from the text support your own point without allowing the quotes to make your point for you, i.e. please explain ALL your quotations, even if they seem self-explanatory, and do not leave them to explain themselves.
Things to remember:
Thesis should be a clear, concise argument
Please avoid general comments in the introduction. Forget all “throughout history” and “from the beginning of time” sentences. Focus the introduction on the specific text that you will write about and introduce the topics you will discuss clearly.
Topic sentences should establish the main idea of the paragraph
Develop and explain each point clearly
Support/evidence for each point should be persuasive and appropriate. Explain each quote without leaving it to clarify itself
Always introduce quotations with their context. Do not simply insert them without a preamble
Make clear and logical transitions both between sentences and paragraphs
One paragraph should focus only on one idea
Whenever you refer to something that happens in the text, besides establishing basic context, you need to cite it. You cannot use evidence without citing it
Explain every point you make in detail. Imagine you are writing the paper for someone who is not familiar with the text
Use the scholarly article at least twice
Add a 1-paragraph reflection on the peer review at the end of the essay
Format the essay in correct MLA format
