Humanities Homework Help

Overview and Learning Objectives

For your weekly discussion assignment (worth 10 points), you will write a three paragraph summary and response based on one of our fiction readings from this week. (Note: You can find your reading assignment for this week under “Overview and Reading” at the top of the module for this week).

1. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’connor
2. Persepolis(Excerpt from book 1) by Marjane Satrapi

This assignment is informal and low-stakes, meaning I will not be picky about grammar or sentence structure. There’s no reward in playing it safe for these weekly writings. In fact, the best weekly writings will demonstrate the writer’s genuine curiosity and playfulness. Try out your own theories or make unusual connections. What do you see when you read the texts that maybe we didn’t see? Try out new ideas, or ask questions without feeling like you have to arrive at a point or thesis. Simply use writing to explore your thinking here and engage in the fun world of literature with your classmates.

While this is a low-stakes assignment, I will be looking for the quality of your ideas and your critical, analytical, and creative engagement with the text. To earn full credit, you must:

• Include a fully developed plot summary paragraph (at least 5 sentences)
• Include 2 fully developed response paragraphs (at least 5 sentences each)
• Include at least 2 quotes
• Reply to 3 classmates’ posts (by Sunday 11:59pm) with a full paragraph (at least 5 sentences each)
• Submit on time
• Absolutely no plagiarism. Plagiarized writing will receive a 0.

TASK 1

PARAGRAPH 1: For your first paragraph, you will summarize your chosen text. A strong plot summary will include:

• The author and title of the story
• When and where the story takes place
• The main characters and their characteristics
• The plot/main challenge/conflict
• The main events
• The outcome

PARAGRAPH 2 & 3: For your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, write a critical, analytical, or personal response to the text you just summarized in paragraph 1. In these paragraphs, consider trying out some of the analytical moves (i.e. the templates) provided below. Notice what the templates do to your writing and how they help move your thinking along.

Plot Summary Questions:

1. What did you expect to happen based on the title and first few paragraphs?
2. What is the inciting incident or destabilizing event?
3. How would you describe the conflict that develops (i.e. external, internal, secondary conflicts)?
4. What is the climax or turning point?
5. How is the conflict resolved?
6. What, if anything, surprised you about the plot?
7. Does the plot follow any common patterns? (i.e. a quest, tragedy, comedy, etc.)

Personal Response Templates:

1. _____ story/character moved my thinking on [this issue] because _____.
2. _____ in the story confused/challenged me about _____, because ______.
3. _____ in the story helped me more deeply understand _____, because ___.
4. _____ in the story opened my mind to ______, because _______.
5. _____ in the story confirmed my thinking on [this issue] because ________.
6. _____ in the story reminds me of ______ from the real world because _______.
7. I can relate to _______ character in _________ story because __________.
8. The theme of _______ that _______ story highlights certainly matters because _________.

Literary Analysis Templates:

1. The story, ______, reflects its time period and/or location because _______.
2. A contemporary/feminist analysis of _____________, reveals ____________.
3. The story _______ takes on a new meaning in our contemporary times because _________.
4. Several members of our class have suggested _________. I agree up to a point, but I still think that _________.
5. __________ and _________ text shed light on _________ when we analyze them side-by-side.
6. It might be said that _______ is chiefly about _________. But the problem with this interpretation, in my view, is __________.
7. A surface reading of _________ would suggest ________, but when we read deeper we can see _________.
8. In many places it would appear that _______ character is ________, but if we examine him/her/them closer, we see that he/she/they is actually ________.
9. Perhaps the largest influence in ______’s growth as a character is ________.
10. It might be argued that in the clash between characters _____ and ________ in _______, the author wants us to favor the character ______, since she is presented as the [play’s heroine]. I contend, however, that ________.
11. Although some might read the symbol of _______ as ________, I see it as _______, because _______.
12. The overarching meaning of the story is ambiguous because _________.

TASK 2

Doing 6 Mcs from two novels