Prewriting Strategies
Before reading my specific-to-this-course
prewriting ideas, you should (must) review the suggested strategies
on the writing web site I recommend above all others: www.nutsandboltsguide.com/process.htm.
This site has an excellent run down of strategies for generating
ideas for academic writing (it prints out nicely as well).
Start there BEFORE you move on to my ideas below.
Prewriting for literary analysis
differs from some of the more creative and open-ended approaches
to "invention" you might encounter in a traditional
composition or writing course. First, because these essays
require analysis, they also require writers to employ a formal,
academic voice. Second, most analytical assignments have a
prescribed range of topics. In this course, for example, your
first paper must analyze a Salinger story other than "For
Esmé with Love and Squalor." Finally, and most
significantly, analytical writing about literature constitutes
a form of argument. For this reason, it depends entirely upon
the collection and interpretation of evidence. In this case,
the analytical writer collects and interprets the language
of the text.
With these differences in
mind, let us explore some typical "prewriting,""invention"
or "idea generation" strategies to help us move
from a general assignment to a more defined sense of purpose.
Given that our first assignment requires us to pick from among
a group of stories, we might start with a quickwrite or freewrite
about which story we found most interesting and why. [top]
[up]
Freewriting:
[top]
Try this freewrite. Take
five to ten minutes and write without stopping on the following
topic: "Which Salinger story (other than Esmé)
raises the most interesting interpretive issues for you?"
Here's my freewrite answer
to that prompt (because my sample essay for you is on "Esme"
my freewrite is about Esmé). I wrote it in five minutes
without stopping. So please pardon the spelling errors, typing
errors, and incoherencies:
I think Esme offers the most interpretive
possibilities because the story so rapidly shifts time and
settings, has so many interesting characters, and makes
the most of its war context. I also find the stories preoccupation
with America and Americans interesting for a story set largely
in Europe. I'm still trying to figure out how much to do
with some of the allusions in the text -- Dostoevsky's Brother's
Karamazov and the writings of Josef Goebbels, but what most
interests me is the idea of time. Time as the threefold
settings of the story, time as the watch the narrator obsesses
over, and time as the watch that Esme sends Sergeant X I
find the watch both fascinating and interesting--and I also
like the element of humor, the disjunction between Esme's
smallness and the watch's giganticness. A discussion of
time also makes the connections to W.W.II and the shifts
of time in the story--which starts in the present and then
shifts to pre-invasion Europe and and ends (apparently)
in post invasion Europe. Of course, the cool thing is that
the story actually ends at the beginning which, chronologically
actually comes after the false ending that physically comes
at the end of the story even while chronologically it actually
falls in the middle. Confused yet. Good. Me too!! I think
this time warp functions as the central tension--I would
argue it is resolved unfavorably for our narrator--of the
text and as such a study of it should raise lots of vexing
questions and issues. Yippee! My five minutes is over....whew....that
was brutal....
Once I have a freewrite I can evaluate it. Does
it sound like this is the right story for me? Do I have a
genuine interest in it? Do I have enough quotes and examples
to explore my idea in the required length? In this case, it
sounds as though I do. Now I can move on to another technique.
[top] [up]
Brainstorming [top]
Listing
A simple way to brainstorm once you have a
story in mind involves listing. Because our assignment asks
us to link theme and culture to language or patterns of
images, etc., I could start my brainstorming with lists
of the themes, cultural contexts, or social issues that
attracted my attention while reading the story.
To assemble such a list about "For Esmé
with Love and Squalor," I would page through the story
looking for margin notes or key words I noted. I can and
should also run my list by peers in the class and see if
they thought about any other issues or themes when they
read the story. Class notes can also provide invaluable
support when putting together this kind of list.:
- father / daughter vs. romantic interest
relationships
- gender roles
- class relations
- poverty and economics
- war and its impact on adults and children
- time
- writing and writers
- religion
- America and Americans and Europe
- nazis--foreign and domestic
- the alienated soldier
- the war back home
- siblings
- existentialism vs. zen in Salinger's
story
I can also take another approach to this listing
process. I could make a list of the clusters of related
words, images, or ideas in the story and work my way to
themes and cultural issues later. In this method, I browse
through the story and my class notes looking for patterns
and sets of words, phrases, images, characters, objects,
and ideas. If I have read effectively, I have already underlined,
circled, and noted many of these words and passages in the
body of my text. As I did when compiling my llist of themes
and cultural issues, I m ight also wish to consult with
my peers in class. Assembling a list for Esmé, I
might include the following:
- references to reading and reading
- references to the watch
- detailed descriptions of clothing
- character names and associations
- focus on conversations -- Esmé/Narrator
vs. X/Clay
- representations of letters and letter
writing
- Esme's vocabulary--the agonies and the
ecstasies
- mock-epic military language in the story
- adverbs
- representations of singing and music
For the purposes of providing us all with
an example that we can argue about, I will focus on representations
of time in the story. It comes up in my freewrites and my
lists. This idea also allows me to link a pattern of images
to a thematic or cultural reading. As you go through the
process of writing your essay about any other story in the
collection. I will go through my process of writing my essay
about "For Esmé with Love and Squalor."
Clustering or Mapping
Having chosen a topic I could then repeat
the listing proces--only now more narrowly focused on the
themes and images related to my topic--or I could do some
clustering or mapping. I will provide an example of this
kind of clustering in class. [top] [up]
Journaling [top]
Quote Analysis Journal Entries
When trying to stir up my analytical energes (especially
if I really do not yet have a thesis or clear cut idea of
how I want to approach my topic) I often do what I call
"quote analysis journaling." In these journal
entries I pick out a passage or cluster of lines that interest
me and simply do a close reading of those lines. For this
prewriting activity I refer to the book and move back and
forth from the text to my writing. I also do not worry about
writing without stopping or other freewriting strategies,
but I do keep myself narrowly focused on the language of
the text and the line or lines I want to explicate. As I
write, I do not worry about spelling or sentence structure.
Because I often use parts or all of these analytical journal
entries later, I usually compose these entries in Word so
that I can cut and paste what I need into the draft later.
Consider this example from "For Esmé with Love
and Squalor":
Quote: "She was wearing a wristwatch, a military
looking one that looked rather like a navigator's chronograph.
Its face was much too large for her slender wrist"
(93).
Journal Entry:
Another example of the narrator's detailed observations
about Esmé's appearance, his comments about her
watch emphasize its inappropriate size. On this level
the watch functions both metonomycally and metaphorically
as a symbol of adulthood As a metonym it connects her
to the parent who wore it, her father. As a metaphor,
the physical juxtaposition of the watch's shape and size
represent the unfair imposition of adult responsibilities
on a young adolescent. The previous sentence also includes
some key words. The wristwatch has a "military"
appearance, establishing its link not only to Esmé's
father but also to the narrator who faces imminent participation
in the D-day invasion. Marking both the death of the father
and the danger of the surrogate father figure, the watch
looks "rather like a navigator's chronograph."
Both Esmé and the narrator navigate difficult times
in their lives and both feel isolated from those who might
give them some direction. For Esmé the isolation
comes from the death of her parents. For the narrator,
the isolation results from the alienation experienced
by the soldiers as they prepare for war, an alienation
marked by the "uncomradely scratching of pens"
and the sounds of ping pong balls. "Chronograph"
functions on one level as merely a synonym for 'watch,'
but in the structure of the narrative chronos or time
plays an essentail role, as the story shifts from a fictional
present to a pre-invasion and then post-invasion past.
Perhaps the text itself functions as a navigtors chornograph
for a narrator attempting to make sense not of the horrors
of war but the horrors of American domesticity. [top]
[up]
Try these and other prewriting activities
as you work on developing your own topic. In this course,
our prewriting activities culminate with a schematic outline
that you submit to me. For ideas on that technique you will
have to turn to the instructions and sample for the schematic
outline on the web site's assignment page.
The Backbone of an Essay:
Thesis and Topic Sentences [top]
The Thesis
The thesis statement provides the umbrella under which
everything in your essay must fit. In the case of the analytical
writing about literature we will do in this class, the thesis
will state an argument about the connection between a language
or idea pattern in the text and a thematic or cultural issue.
The heart of the thesis, the active verb, will link these
two sides of the thesis equation:
pattern in text --------------- active verb -------------
theme(s) and/or cultural issue(s)
Example:
The contrast between Esme's letter and those of the narrator's
family underscore the narrator's despair over the shallow
materialism of his "adult" and "American"
world.
- pattern in text: letters
- active verb: underscores
- theme(s): materialism, isolation of narrator
Another example:
Representations of time ultimately undercut the story's
upbeat conclusions about the transcendent power of love.
- pattern: representations of time
- active verb: undercut
- themes: love and its power (or lack thereof)
Topic Sentences and Clincher Sentences
In this class, you may, if you wish, begin your essays
with your thesis (intros more often than not function as
space fillers). Whether or not you include an intro, the
thesis functions as the key to your essay's structure. All
paragraphs and, therefore, all topic sentences, must fit
within the framework you establish in your thesis. For this
reason, every topic sentence must either refer directly
to your thesis or refer to the preceding paragaph. This
guideline ensures unity and coherence on the essay level.
While the formula I have provided offers a useful structure
for a thesis sentence, you have more flexibility with topic
sentences. While a topic sentence should provide a transition
(back to the thesis or to the previous paragraph) and provide
a broad idea of what you will do in a paragraph, it need
not fully state the argument of your paragraph. That can
sometimes wait for the clincher sentence. On the other hand,
sometimes you may wish to state your full argument at the
beginning of your paragraph and then use your clincher to
set up the next paragraph. Whichever strategy you choose,
remember to make it easy for a reader to follow the logic
of your essay. When a reader finishes a paragraph she or
he should know what you set out to accomplish in that paragraph
and she or he should know how that idea or argument relates
to the rest of your essay.
This sounds complicated but some examples may help. Consider
the sample essay provided on the course web site (see the
assignment page).
Only three of the essays in the Library of America’s
Emerson: Essays and Lectures begin with a question. In
both "Prudence" and "Wealth" those
questions set up rhetorical counterpoints eventually displaced
by confident and persuasive arguments. In "Experience,"
however, the first sentence poses a question that remains
open even after the attempted closure of the essay’s
final paragraphs. That question, "Were do we find
ourselves?" initiates a series of images designed
to explore the depths of human confusion and doubt (471).
When combined with diction deliberately re-deploying
the language of earlier essays, these images of perceptual
and epistemological doubt undercut the beleaguered rallying
cry of the essay’s final lines.
In this essay on Emerson, the thesis identifies a pattern
in the text ("images of perceptual and epistemological
doubt"), features an active verb ("undercut"),
and explores a them (Emerson's philosophical optimism, or
lack thereof).
The next paragraph should begin the process of proving
that thesis.
According to the speaker of the essay’s first
paragraph, we "find ourselves…In a series of
which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it
has none." This claim juxtaposes a familiar Emersonian
notion with a startlingly unfamiliar qualification.
In "Circles," for example, the speaker asserts
that "Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess
to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow…but
the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal
movements of the soul he hideth; they are incalculable"
(413). We do not know outcomes, but we can trust they
will ultimately reflect God’s creative power. In
the first paragraph of "Experience," unknown
extremes call into the question the existence of divine
purpose, a qualification that contrasts directly with
the conclusion of "Circles": "The way of
life is wonderful; it is by abandonment… ‘A
man,’ said Oliver Cromwell, ‘never rises so
high as when he knows not whither he is going’"
(414). In contrast with the enthusiastic narrator of
"Circles," the narrator of "Experience"
suggests that uncertainty generates doubt and anxiety
rather than exhilaration.
In this paragraph the topic sentence introduces the idea
of the paragraph (the use of a quote before the topic sentence
is an unusual and not necessarily recommended approach),
but the clincher sentence makes the key argument (that uncertainty
has replaced exhiliration).
The next paragraph follows a similar model, focusing our
attention on a specific quote.
The first lines of "Experience" replace
the expanding circles of the earlier essay with a staircase
ambiguously suspended in time and space: "We wake
and find ourselves on a stair: there are stairs below
us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above
us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight"
(Experience 471). Instead of gently and purposively
expanding circles, the speaker presents us with an image
of an un-moored staircase which we "seem" to
have climbed. We cannot see our past and the future also
winds on without any perceptible end. The verb "wake"
refers punningly, to his son’s death and Emerson’s
efforts to awaken from his grief over that death. On another
level, "wake" hints that the enthusiastic hope
of Emerson’s earlier writing might also have been
a dream from which its author is now waking. Unlike
the "man" of Self-Reliance, "who is in
the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises
his reason, and finds himself a true prince," the
speaker of "Experience" wakes up to the possibility
that the high prince of transcendentalism may be a "sot"
after all (Self-Reliance 269).
The topic sentence introduces the quote and the clincher
links the quote back to the essay's unifying idea, the emergence
of lingering doubt in Emerson's philosophical system. For
further examples, please review and discuss the topic and
clincher sentences in the rest of this sample essay (you
can download it from the assignment
page) [top] [up]
Citing a Text [top]
Our grammar and writing text, easyWriter,
offers details on how to quote text in your essays. See section
38c for details.
In this section of the Writer's Guide I wish
to emphasize not the details of documentation but the variety
of ways you can structure sentences and paragraphs depending
on how you work in your quotes.
You can present an extended quote and then spend
a paragraph analyzing it:
The first lines of "Experience" replace the
expanding circles of the earlier essay with a staircase
ambiguously suspended in time and space: "We wake
and find ourselves on a stair: there are stairs below
us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above
us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight"
(Experience 471). Instead of gently and purposively expanding
circles, the speaker presents us with an image of an un-moored
staircase which we "seem" to have climbed. We
cannot see our past and the future also winds on without
any perceptible end. The verb "wake" refers
punningly, to his son’s death and Emerson’s
efforts to awaken from his grief over that death. On another
level, "wake" hints that the enthusiastic hope
of Emerson’s earlier writing might also have been
a dream from which its author is now waking. Unlike the
"man" of Self-Reliance, "who is in the
world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises
his reason, and finds himself a true prince," the
speaker of "Experience" wakes up to the possibility
that the high prince of transcendentalism may be a "sot"
after all (Self-Reliance 269).
Note how the paragraph breaks down this longer quote into
much smaller detail, actually analyzing particular words and
phrases as it argues its interpretation. Remember, you should
only quote language that you intend to interpret or that helps
you make your interpretation. For an example of the latter,
look at how the language of the text works in to the clincher
sentence in this sample paragraph. The language itself functions
within the interpretive sentence. This is rare. In most cases,
you need to follow language taken from the text with your
own analysis of its meaning.
As a rule, shorter quotes work more effectively than longer
ones and ensure that you devote the bulk of your paper to
your analysis, not a regurgitation of the text. My favorite
way to incorporate quotes from the text remains the tried
and true "interpretation within the same sentence that
quotes the text." A few examples follow:
In Nature the speaker becomes the famous "transparent
eye-ball, " a "nothing" that simultaneously
sees "all." "Experience," by contrast,
presents a crisis of perception: "All things swim
and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our
perception." Sunlight characterizes the visual world
of Nature ["The sun illuminates only the eye of the
man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child"
(10)] but in "Experience" "Sleep lingers
all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day
in the boughs of the fir tree." Confusion and disorientation
have replaced the "transparency" born of confidence
that the speaker is the conduit for "the currents
of Universal being."
In this set of sentences, the analysis merges quotes into
the sentences that explain them, especially in the first and
final sentences. A more effective example of this use of quote
comes from an essay on Salinger's "For Esmé with
Love and Squalor" offers further examples.
As a metaphor, the physical juxtaposition of the watch's
shape and size represent the unfair imposition of adult
responsibilities on a young adolescent. The previous sentence
also includes some key words. The wristwatch has a "military"
appearance, establishing its link not only to Esmé's
father but also to the narrator who faces imminent participation
in the D-day invasion. Marking both the death of the father
and the danger of the surrogate father figure, the watch
looks "rather like a navigator's chronograph"(93).
Both Esmé and the narrator navigate difficult times
in their lives and both feel isolated from those who might
give them some direction. For Esmé the isolation
comes from the death of her parents. For the narrator,
the isolation results from the alienation experienced
by the soldiers as they prepare for war, an alienation
marked by the "uncomradely scratching of pens"
and the sounds of ping pong balls (88). "Chronograph"
functions on one level as merely a synonym for 'watch,'
but in the structure of the narrative chronos or time
plays an essentail role, as the story shifts from a fictional
present to a pre-invasion and then post-invasion past.
Perhaps the text itself functions as a navigtors chornograph
for a narrator attempting to make sense not of the horrors
of war but the horrors of American domesticity.
When in doubt about your use of quotations, come back to
this paragraph for some excellent examples of both form and
layout. [top] [up]
Plagiarism (and How
to Avoid It) [top]
The University of Redlands Statement on
Academic Honesty makes clear the writer's responsibility to
avoid plagiarizing the ideas of another writer. If you have
any doubts about what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid
it, please read this page over carefully. If you have any
further questions after reviewing this policy, do not hesitate
to contact me.
"The University of Redlands looks
upon all dealings between the student and the institution
as bound by a high standard of integrity. Consequently,
the University does not condone or tolerate plagiarism or
cheating in any form...Therefore, students should comply
with the following requirements for acknowledging sources:
Quotations: Whenever sentences
or phrases are quoted, quotation marks or indentation and
single spacing must be used, along with the precise source.
Paraphrasing: Any material either
paraphrased or summarized, no matter how loosely reworded
or rearranged, must be specifically cited in the footnotes
of the text.
Ideas: Any idea borrowed from
another person or source must be footnoted or cited within
the text. This includes any material the student might have
written himself or herself for another course or exercise.
The student is required to obtain permission from the instructor
before reusing old material or using current material.
Bibliographies: Students preparing
papers and reports must list in a bibliography all sources
consulted.
Dynamic Prose Style
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Active Voice
Sentence Variety
Diction and Word Choice
Assessment Methods
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