Please don't buy essays from places that can't spell.
Essay Option One
Choose One for Typed 1,500-word Essay 1 (100 points)
For all options for Typed Essay 1, your essay must have a minimum of three legitimate sources for your Works Cited page and you must use MLA format.
Option One
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a 5-page paper (1,500 words), typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Help in Writing This Thesis
To write this thesis, answer the question, what deep psychological forces compel Wolff’s characters to be such compulsive liars?
Option 2 (very difficult; I don’t recommend)
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a 5-page essay (1,500 words), analyze McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 3
Develop a cause and effect thesis that compares the theme of self-deception in Tobias Wolff’s stories and the 2013 David O. Russell film American Hustle. For your Works Cited page, you may want to consult various film reviews of the Russell’s film. Your essay should be 1,500 words.
To write this thesis, answer the following question:
What are the common causes of the self-deception in the characters from American Hustle and Wolff’s stories?
Option 4
One camp of readers argue that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 5-page essay (1,500 words). For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
To write this thesis, answer the following question:
What is the prevalent condition of Wolff’s characters, learned helplessness and despair, or redemption? Support your answer with four reasons.
“The Rich Brother”
Recognition of irony in the story
McMahon's definition:
Irony is a reversal of expectations that penetrate through our typical superficial grasp of reality so that we can comprehend life's often grotesque contradictions, which defy tragedy, comedy, pathos, laughter, and tears.
Irony creates a sort of mystical detachment, a Third Eye, looking wryly at life's bitter-sweet paradoxes.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, "Hell is other people." Perhaps true but we can gather this ironic paradox: "People, can't live with them, can't live without them."
Another example of irony:
The jealous man is guilty of cheating for he projects his paranoia of others based on the knowledge that he himself is a wretch with no integrity.
Donald and Pete: They are two brothers who can't live with each other, but they can't live without each other either.
Why can't they live without each other? The answer to that question will reveal one of the story's deepest themes.
Irony of the Story's Title
Pete is not rich at all. He is impoverished and emaciated by an ongoing sibling rivalry with his brother that has evolved into a symbiosis, a mutual dependence, rendering both brothers morally bankrupt.
Pete is also poor in another regard: He cannot change. He is a centripetal character (circle goes inward) as opposed to a centrifugal character (circle goes outward). Thus his life is one of impotence. He is effete and bereft in spite of being "The Rich Brother."
Irony in the Story
Pete is rich but he's poor in many ways.
Pete hates his brother Donald for stealing Mom's attention and ends up having to be Donald's mother.
Pete thinks he hates Donald's dependence on him, but in reality Pete is dependent on Donald's dependence on him. He is so poor that he has little else to fill his void. His only connection to life is being in a mutually-hate-filled, sick, toxic relationship with his brother. We can call this symbiotic irony.
Donald hates Pete for being stronger and richer than him, but Donald makes himself weaker to be dependent on Pete and Donald knows this dependence torments Pete. In other words, Donald bites his nose to spite his face.
Donald sees himself as a generous person but in reality he only "shares" his brother's money.
“Rich Brother” Lexicon
1. Decrepitude: weakened, broken down, the condition of both brothers who bear the wear and tear of a long, ongoing, hate-filled relationship. They are exhausted as they are caught in the serpent's grip, rolling off a cliff to their destruction.
2. hubris: excessive pride and audacity: "Grow up. Buy a Mercedes."
3. braggadocio
4. culpability
5. symbiosis: two people who have developed a sick mutual dependence on the other until they become emotional cripples. Symbiosis is a sign of immaturity, the condition of not being able to reason and to love.
6. passive-aggressive: showing your anger in cowardly, back-handed, insidious ways.
7. scapegoat: blaming a false cause for your problems
8. sibling rivalry
9. stagnation: the inertia from being in a symbiotic relationship
10. spite—an impulse for revenge that hurts you more than the person you hate.
11. Insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)
12. centrifugal
13. centripetal
Pete’s 6 Moral Flaws
1. He worships money, seeing it as a solution for everything.
2. He suffers from a brand of obnoxious smug pride rooted in his wealth. (“Grow up and get a Mercedes.”) In fact, Pete is not rich at all as evidenced by the story’s ironic title “The Rich Brother.” Pete in fact is anything but “rich.” He is impoverished by his condition of helplessness and moral decrepitude. Pete covers his flaws with a pose of hubris and braggadocio.
3. He sees things only at face value without digging deeper because he is afraid of what he will find.
4. He is afraid to confront his culpability for the past, namely, his role in hating on his brother Donald through his rivalry and blind ambition.
5. Pete is a liar to his brother and to himself. For example, he lies about his dreams, claiming he only dreams about sex and money when in fact he is haunted by guilt for the sins he once committed against Donald. We also find that Pete tried to kill his brother after an operation because he was jealous of the way his mother doted on Donald. Ironically, now it’s Pete who dotes on Donald and in doing so he assures that he keeps Donald crippled, which is to his advantage, or so he seeks.
6. He is afraid to confront his current role as Donald’s “mother,” which is ironic since he in a way attempted to steal Donald’s mother from him. In other words, Pete is dependent on Donald being dependent on him. What we have here, then, are two brothers trapped in a snake grip of hatred from which they can never let go. In psychology this is called symbiosis. People who cannot mature, love, and reason are drawn to clinging, desperate symbiotic relationships, which result in mutual crippling.
8. The story's ultimate irony is that Pete, who tried to kill Donald over a jealousy fight for Mom's attention, grows up to become Donald's Momma.
Donald’s 6 Moral Flaws
1. Driven by spite and cowardice, Donald sabotages his own life in order to make Pete bail him out again and again and again. This is Donald’s cowardly and passive-aggressive way of punishing Pete for what he did to him during childhood. Donald embodies the saying, “Bite my nose to spite your face.”
2. He uses religion to judge others while ignoring his own egregious flaws. In other words, Donald is a pompous ass.
3. Donald is stuck in a life of stagnation though he deludes himself with clichés that he is “breaking his pattern” (192)
4. Donald is stuck on a sense of lugubrious identity known as “victimization.” He is both overcome by spite and self-pity. As a result of seeing himself as a victim, he has reached a point of no return in which he is both undateable and unemployable.
5. As long as Donald can scapegoat Pete for all his problems, he never has to grow up and take accountability for his own actions.
6. Donald is big on generosity but only with his brother’s money, not his own.
The 7 Qualities of Symbiosis
1. Two weak people merge to hide and reinforce their flaws.
2. Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.
3. Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life.
4. One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because they are more and more dependent on the other.
5. Two people stay together, not because of love, but because of weakness, hatred, and fear.
6. In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. We see that Pete has a dream about Donald in which Pete is blind.
7. To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions.
Connect theme to writing assignment:
Both brothers live a lie to assuage the hell of their real existence. Wolff says, "The world isn't enough," which is true, but we could add to that and come up with this formula: The world isn't enough AND we prove too difficult to manage unless we can hide our scary self behind a mask that is far more glorious and salubrious than the monster face that lies underneath.
Because of our self-destructive tendencies, we see life fall short of what we hoped it could be. Life becomes for Pete and Donald the following:
disappointment
acclimation, the dulling of one's moxie over time
helplessness
symbiosis
banality of routine
failed expectations
Pete and Donald preserve their sanity--and prolong their insanity at the same time--by retreating into a false, parallel universe:
Pete is "rich."
Donald is "religious" and "charitable."
Both characters hunger for a beyond, a chimera, and some delicious, rarefied nectar from the god Tantalus as a balm for their pernicious wounds.
The above thesis is okay but not great. It's somewhat self-evident.
Arriving at a More Sophisticated Thesis Through Dialectical Argument
Option One
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a six page paper, typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. Be sure to have a debatable claim that is argumentative, cause and effect, definition, or claim of value.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Qualities of a Poor Thesis
Too broad and vague:
The characters in Wolff's fiction are liars.
Statement of fact:
Wolff's characters prefer lies to reality.
Incomplete sentence:
Lies in the fiction of Tobias Wolff.
Cliche, truism or platitude:
It's better to live with truth and integrity than to be a liar.
Qualities of a Strong Thesis:
Debatable claim with mapping components:
While grossly flawed, Peter is morally superior to Donald because ____________, _____________, __________, and ___________.
While insufferably pompous, Donald is morally superior to Peter evidenced by ______________, ____________, _______________, and _________________.
The Bad News About Writing a Strong Thesis: You Have to Engage in Prewriting
You can't just sit down and write one. No one, no matter how smart and experienced in writing, just sits down and comes up with a strong thesis.
A lot of students get frustrated because they can't do the above. They sit at their desk, shake their computer monitor, and lament that they are incapable of writing a thesis.
A lot of students have unrealistic expectations. They think education, like so many other things in their life, is a consumer experience like going to the movies.
You don't sit in a composition class, absorb the teacher's wisdom, and then know how to write a thesis.
All good writers go through a process before arriving at their thesis. The process is called most commonly pre-writing though academics will often refer to this process as heuristics.
How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?
The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.
Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.
Here’s an example:
One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”
Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”
Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:
Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.
Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.
Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.
Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.
Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.
Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”
Here are some pros:
- I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
- I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli and Salmonella.
- I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
- I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
- I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.
Cons
- It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
- Relying on soy is bad for the body.
- My body craves animal protein.
- Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.
Here's a link to the basic prewriting strategies including the following:
pro-con list
dialectical argument, going back and forth
freewriting
looping (after brainstorming or freewriting, circle key words that stand out in your mind)
clustering
brainstorming
Consider a topic pertaining to "The Rich Brother": Why do Pete and Donald, who are the source of mutual torment, spend so much time together?
Donald needs Pete's money.
Pete feels guilty for his brother's woeful condition.
Donald wants to lecture and "teach" valuable lessons to his brother.
Pete wants to mother his brother and in effect feel like the superior adult.
Donald wants to spend his brother's money on good deeds.
Here's an essay by Mansura-Yasmin Moledina that ties many of the above ideas together.
Another Prewriting Method Discussed Earlier: Dialectical Argument
Response That Disagrees with the Essay Prompt
Judith Shulvits, through an interview with master short story writer Tobias Wolff, would have us believe that in Wolff's fictional vision his characters are a lot like us, which is to say we are all compulsive liars, blowing up fake worlds and identities to give us soothe from the real world, which, according to Wolff, is a downer. As he says, "The world just isn't enough for us." We can infer that this means we are so disappointed with the real world that we are understandably compelled to live in a fantasy world, a delightful balm and refuge from the stark universe that shackles us. This is hogwash. In fact, a close look at Wolff's characters shows that while Wolff is an amazing writer, he is a horrible critic of his own work, for he has his analysis completely reversed: It's not that his characters are too noble for this dull existence and need to hone a sharper edge to their lives through embellishments; to the contrary, his characters' need to embellish is precisely the disease and cause of misery they suffer evidenced by _____________________, _____________________, ____________________, and ________________________.
Opposing View
I will concede that Writer X (above) makes some good points about Wolff's characters being mentally diseased and how their disease, often prompting the characters to retreat into a false universe, exacts misery and self-destruction on their lives. However, Writer X, ever so certain in his convictions, fails to see the deeper, more complex picture of Wolff's worldview, namely, that the characters aren't diseased in a vacuum. Their disease--the need to live in a fabricated universe--is in part a natural reaction to the banality and unforgiving brutality of our existence. In other words, Writer X wants to impose an either/or fallacy on the Essay Prompt, arguing that we are either justified or not justified in creating a false universe for our enjoyment. In fact, we are neither. Through the intersection of our self-delusional tendencies and the tedium of our existence, we create, for better and worse, a web of lies that both exalts and abases us, evidenced by __________________, ________________, _________________, and ______________________.
Essay Option Two
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a six-page essay, support, refute, or complicate McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Avoiding Claims of Fact or Claims of the Obvious
Pete and Donald embody McMahon’s contention that we rely on “false narratives” and “tantalizing chimeras” to “assuage the boredom of our banal existence.”
We can elevate our claims of fact and the obvious by resorting to the journalist method of pre-writing, which we can call the Journalist’s Six Questions (applied to short stories):
- Who is involved in the conflict?
- What issues are most compelling in the conflict?
- When did the conflict begin?
- Where does the conflict seem most heated or violent?
- Why does the conflict still persist?
- How might this conflict be resolved?
One. Who is involved in the conflict?
Two brothers, Donald and Pete
Two. What issues are most compelling in this conflict?
Donald is unemployable, irresponsible, and deluded by grandiose notions of charity and religiosity when in fact he is squandering his brother’s money.
Further, Donald is full of resentment toward his brother Pete. This resentment is expressed through either direct accusations or passive-aggression (indirect hostility).
Pete feels guilty in the presence of his brother Donald and would rather avoid him though part of him is drawn to Donald.
Pete hides his sense of helplessness and impotence by being “the rich brother," a mask that he wears to hide the fact that he is the scared baby.
Pete would love to be free from the burden of Donald, or so he thinks, when actually part of him wants to mother Donald.
Three. When did the conflict begin?
In childhood, Donald and Pete competed for their mother’s attention. Because Donald was more fragile and weak, his mother gave him more attention and this caused resentment and acts of revenge in the heart of Pete. At one point Pete tears the stitches out of Donald's abdomen.
Four. Where does the conflict seem most heated?
It appears there is this cycle of Donald getting into trouble and Pete “coming to the rescue.” During these rescue missions, their mutual animosity is most inflamed.
Five. Why does the conflict still exist?
Both brothers languish in a state of helplessness and stagnation, stuck in their irrational mentality and immaturity. You could say they are caught in a "death grip" like two cobras rolling off a cliff.
It appears both brothers are addicted to the drama of being in their symbiotic relationship because this drama distracts them from the painful fact that their lives are both stagnant and dysfunctional.
Six. How might the conflict be resolved?
Both Pete and Donald would have to “grow up,” take accountability for their lives, forgive the other, and stop living their lies. They would have to find meaning to fill the emptiness that compels them to live in their false drama of mutual hatred. This would require the loss of resentment and blaming the other. In other words, these brothers would have to be re-born and start their lives all over again.
Apply the Journalist’s Six Questions to Creating a Debatable Claim:
To assert that Pete and Donald embody McMahon’s contention that we rely on “false narratives” and “tantalizing chimeras” to “assuage the boredom of our banal existence” is not a universal truth but a truth that only applies to those outliers who remain bogged down in the kind of resentment, emptiness, and symbiosis evidenced in “The Rich Brother.” We can conclude, therefore, that McMahon’s pessimism is unfounded when we consider that Wolff’s characters are uniquely dysfunctional evidenced by _________________, __________________, _______________, and _________________________.
Essay Option Three
One camp of readers argue that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little and too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 6-page essay.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option Three is the easiest option because a debatable claim is intrinsic to the assignment.
The best pre-writing exercises for debatable claims are rooted in dialectical opposition in which you argue both sides of the topic before you make your decision.
Debatable Thesis Templates for Option Three
While a strong case can be made that Wolff’s characters are rendered helpless in their delusions, it would be over-simplistic to argue that Wolff’s fiction is nihilistic when we consider _________________, _______________, _______________, and _____________________.
To deny that Wolff’s fiction is nihilistic is to deny the key causes of characters’ collapse and stagnation evidenced by ______________, _________________, ______________, and _________________.
All of us are afflicted with certain cycles of futility, but these cycles do not, as they do not in the case of Wolff’s characters, make a strong case for a nihilistic worldview because __________________, ____________________, ________________, and ______________________.
While there are moments here and there of lucidity, recognition, and even epiphany in Wolff’s characters, their insights prove feeble in the face of their nihilistic prison evidenced by _______________, ____________, _______________, and _____________________.
To argue that Wolff’s characters are trapped in a “nihilistic prison” is a gross over-simplification of Wolff’s masterful fiction evidenced by his stories’ ________________, ___________________, ___________________, and __________________.
Literary Terms You Should Know
Key Passages in “The Other Miller”
We read regarding Miller’s rift with his mother, “One thing Miller told them was true: he hasn’t had a letter from his mother in two years. She wrote him a lot when he first joined the army, at least once a week, sometimes twice, but Miller sent all her letters back unopened and after a year of this she finally gave up. . . . Miller is a serious man. Once you’ve crossed him, you’ve lost him.”
Miller suffers from juvenile grandiosity, a similar trait in Pete and Donald in "The Rich Brother."
All three share the “lie” that their self-righteous indignation is based on a justified contempt against their adversaries when in fact their real enemies reside within themselves. Unable to empathize or connect with others, they all live this lie and suffer solipsism. Additionally, any kind of redemption seems nearly impossible.
And what was the mother’s “crime” that caused her son to shun her? We read, “Miller’s mother crossed him by marrying a man she shouldn’t have married.”
Even more disturbing, we read that Miller felt he and his mother were happy alone together: “She couldn’t see what she already had, how good it was with just the two of them.”
So to spite his mother for marrying Phil Dove, Miller, who hates the military, shoots his foot to punish his mother by joining the army and getting sent to Vietnam.
The psychologist Erich Fromm says in order for us to mature, we have to leave our parents, both physically and psychologically. This separation process, according to Fromm, is called individuation. It is the beginning of the process of becoming an independent adult who can love and reason without the need of parental approval.
But there is no evidence of maturity in “The Other Miller.” Even Miller’s motivation to see his mother is not based on humility and the need to reconnect with someone he loves. His motive is juvenile grandiosity. We read he wants to return home to Mother so she can “receive his pardon.”
Miller’s grandiosity is a mask, or lie, to hide the fact that he is an emotionally crippled child.
And what does he return to? A funeral for his mother.
Narcissism in Brian Gold and Miller
Miller’s Narcissism Is Rooted in the Incorrigible Wish to Remain a Child Dependent on His Mother
- When you’re a child, your mother loves you unconditionally and takes care of all your needs. However, there comes a time when you must grow up and break the tie from your mother. You must venture into a world that doesn’t love you unconditionally, a world that will not meet your needs. This is called adulthood. The narcissist refuses to grow up. He never achieves what Erich Fromm calls "individuation."
- The narcissist, such as Miller, cannot have healthy relationships. He can only have sick symbiotic relationships, a diseased mutual interdependence that results in more and more dependence. The result is that both parties in this symbiotic relationship become emotionally crippled.
- The narcissist is selfish and does not want his “host” or “hostess” to break free from the symbiotic relationship and achieve emotional health. For example, when Miller’s mother wants to start a life with a healthy distance between her and her son and remarry, Miller feels jealous and betrayed. He’d rather be his mother’s “little boy” forever and ever as the symbiotic relationship turns into emotional gangrene and eventually spiritual death.
Write a thesis: claim of definition for narcissism
Wolff's characters are liars because they show classic narcissistic tendencies evidenced by _________________, _________________, __________________, and _________________.
Wolff's characters warn us that the narcissist cannot achieve redemption because _______________, _____________, _________________, and _______________.
While McMahon makes good points about the difficulty of redemption in Wolff's narcissistic characters, he is in error when we consider _____________, ___________, ___________, and ___________________.
Redemption, albeit a flawed and incomplete version, is rendered in Wolff's stories evidenced by __________, ___________, ____________, and _____________.
The kind of flawed and incomplete redemption described above is not even worthy of being called redemption. What we see in Wolff's stories is nothing at all that's redemptive. What we experience in these dark tales is hard-hitting nihilism evidenced by ____________, ____________, ____________, and ___________.
Lesson on Finding and Evaluating Sources for Your Research Paper (adapted from Practical Argument, Second Edition)
When you use sources for a research paper, the sources supplement your ideas; however, it should be clear the sources do not take over the writing of your essay. Your voice, your knowledge, your deep thinking about the issue are all on center stage of your essay.
Some people say a research paper is 80 percent your words and another 20 percent of quotations, paraphrases, and summary from your research sources. That sounds about right.
Your college library has a Website, containing its online catalog, electronic databases, and reference works.
Evaluating Sources for Your Research Paper
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer reviewed, read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Comments