Assignment: English Literature Assignment Help on a Short Story and a Play
Basic requirements:
- Both the play and the story must be found in our textbook, although they do not have to be ones we’ve read for class.
- The paper must use quotations from the primary sources (this is discussed below)
- The paper should contain a minimum of four full That’s a minimum; to engage fully with your topic in a way that would earn an A or a B, you will need to go beyond the minimum.
- The paper should follow the formatting guidelines listed below.
- The paper must be submitted to Submit Assignment by 11 p.m. Sunday of Unit Four
A note about how to use the term “theme”:
It’s important to remember that while a theme can be considered a subject of a work, it’s not a subject in a literal sense. Bishop’s poem “The Fish” and Melville’s Moby Dick may both be about aquatic creatures, but “aquatic creatures” is not a theme—it’s a literal subject, not a conceptual one.
What you’re looking for are two works that seem to treat the same idea, concept, or aspect of life. For example, a student might analyze “Story of an Hour” and “Trifles” by showing how both works present the theme of female oppression (now that we’ve used it as an example, please avoid using this as the topic of your paper). In doing this, however, the student wouldn’t just point out that both works address that issue; he/she would show specifically and thoroughly some things that these works have in common, and also some things that they do differently, in regard to how they present the theme. The student might go on to pose arguments or theories about why these authors approach the theme in different ways—what their differences in approach might have to do with their historical context, the limitations of their genre, their personal lives, et cetera.
A note about sources and citation:
For this essay, you will be expected to quote sufficiently from the primary sources, i.e. the works of literature you’ve chosen to discuss (in our example, the primary sources would be “Story of an Hour” and “Trifles). You will also be expected to follow the MLA guidelines on acceptable ways of quoting and citing sources. If you don’t know what this means, you MUST go to whatever resources are available to you, include the links on the “Further Resources” page of our course, to learn about citation. Failure to understand the mechanisms of citation can lead to plagiarism, which can lead to a zero for the course.
