ENGL 1102: Pre-Writing Assignments
Because the pre-writing stage is crucial to the overall success of your paper, you will be required to turn in pre-writing assignments, each of which will count as one participation grade. Prior to writing each out of class essay, you will be responsible for completing some form of pre-writing activity in which you work out your ideas on paper. Your pre-writing should show some logical development of the thesis for your paper, as well as illustrate how you will make your argument and support your assertions.
Checklist for pre-writing assignments
1.Is your thesis statement included in your pre-writing exercise? (35 points)
2.Have you worked out subtopics which will help to argue your thesis? Are they clearly and logically listed? (35 points)
3.Have you included moments in the text which support your arguments? Have you isolated some quotations from the text which illustrate your arguments? (30 points)
Please note: Your pre-writing exercises will be graded on the basis of the above checklist; you will not get an ‘A’ simply for turning something in on paper. Pre-writing exercises should be included with your final draft when it is turned in. Failure to turn in your pre-writing with your paper will result in a zero for that day’s participation grade, as well as a deduction of five points from your overall essay grade.
Sample essay assignment: Much of William Blake’s poetry serves to illuminate civil issues during the Romantic Era, and “The Chimney Sweeper” is no exception. How, in this text, does Blake critique the Church’s exploitation of child labor? What image does Blake paint of the Church? How does it contrast his representation of the orphans/chimney sweeps?
A thesis statement states the main idea of an essay; usually appears toward the end of the introductory paragraph
A strong argumentative thesis should:
1.clearly state your topic as well as the argument that you wish to make about that topic
2.justify or necessitate further discussion/argument
3.be specific
To formulate a strong argumentative thesis:
1.use specific language
2.make an assertion based on clearly stated support
what: the topic / main point you’ll argue in the course of the essay
how: specifically how you’ll illustrate that argument (i.e. subpoints) \
To begin planning your essay, ask yourself relevant questions based on the assigned topic:
With what types of images does Blake associate the Church?
With what images does he associate the children/chimney sweeps?
What details about life as a chimney sweeper does the poet persona mention?
How would you characterize these details? (Or rather, what’s your perception of what life is like for the sweepers?)
Consider Blake’s incorporation of figurative language (i.e. simile, metaphor, allusion, etc.) with respect to both the Church and the children. To what effect does Blake incorporate this language?
sample thesis: In “The Chimney Sweeper” from the Songs of Innocence, William Blake seeks to expose the Church’s corruption. Blake juxtaposes images of the children’s innocence and purity alongside the dark realities associated with chimney sweeping; in so doing, he highlights the immorality of the Church’s continued manipulation of the orphans’ naiveté.
what: Blake exposes the Church’s corruption
how: 1) images of the children’s innocence and purity contrasted with
2) illustrations/images of the harsh realities of chimney sweeping
3) highlights the Church’s continued manipulation of the orphans’ naivete
Sample pre-writing:
Thesis – what: Blake exposes the Church’s corruption
How (sub-points):
1) images of the children’s innocence and purity
2) contrasting images/illustrations of harsh realities of chimney sweeping
3) highlights the Church’s manipulation of the orphans’ naivete
- Images of children’s innocence and purity (sub-point #1)
A.Speaker seems innocent, accepting his life, oblivious to unfairness of it
Evidence: Speaker says that his mother died, and his father sold him into chimney sweeping
Analysis:No emotion (anger or sadness) – implies acceptance, knows nothing else
Evidence: “So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep”
Analysis:Matter-of-fact acceptance; no cynicism; seems unaware of injustice
B.Images of innocence and purity in association with children
Evidence: Tom Dacre’s hair = “like a lamb’s back”
Analysis: lamb = young (like children); white (symbolizing purity)
Evidence: Speaker mentions Tom’s “white hair” and head being shaved “bare”
Analysis: again, white = innocence/purity and bare = plain/clean/pure
Evidence: dream – children are “naked and white”
Analysis: white (purity/innocence) and “naked” = state of purity (like “bare”)
- Illustrations / images of the harsh realities of life as a chimney sweep
- Lives of chimney sweepers – darkness, fear
Evidence: Tom cries b/c Church shaves his head
Analysis: doesn’t have a choice; has to lose hair so he doesn’t get dirty with soot
Evidence: Tom’s hair curls “like a lamb’s back”
Analysis: simile – hair = “a lamb’s back”; lamb = sacrifice (lamb of God/Christ)
small sacrifice – Tom’s hair; large sacrifice – lives of children who sweep chimneys
Evidence: Soot spoils “white hair”
Analysis: soot = dirt (symbolizing impurity); white = innocence/purity
Church = soot (symbolically) that takes children’s innocence through sacrificing them (making them sweep chimneys)
- Tom’s dream shows fear of death
Evidence: dreams that “thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, / were all of them locked up in coffins of black”
Analysis:common names = Blake’s appeal to his audience
Coffins of black = obvious image of death (coffin holds bodies; black = mourning)
Coffins also = chimneys (rectangular/narrow)
Sweeps sometimes died in chimneys
- Dream also shows death as reassuring/representative of freedom
Evidence: Angel opens coffins with a key
Analysis:Angel = Angel of Deathand Mercy (releases them into a place like Heaven)
Evidence: “wash in a river”
Analysis:Baptismal image (Baptism = spiritual cleansing; rebirth)
Evidence:Children “shine in the Sun”
Analysis: “Sun / son; capitalization (Son) alludes to Christ (Son of God)
- Blake highlights the Church’s manipulation of the children’s naivete
- Church’s teachings echo in Tom’s subconscious (through dream)
Evidence: Angel’s reminder that Tom be a “good boy” so he can have “God for his father”
Analysis:“good boy” = clean chimneys/do as Church tells him
Promise of God for a father (not specifically heaven) shows Church manipulates Tom’s orphaned state
- Tom takes comfort in dream – shows that orphans live for the Church’s promise of happiness in Heaven (not in this life)
Evidence: Morning is “cold” but Tom is “happy and warm”
Analysis:nothing’s different (he’s still cold and must go to work); Tom’s dream made him happy
Evidence: last line (“And if all do their duty / they need not fear harm”) exposes Church’s manipulation / false promises
Analysis:implied threat (what happens if all don’t do their duty? Couldn’t be worse than the reality, but kids don’t know that)
Evidence: dramatic irony in last line
Analysis:child-speaker obviously believes this; audience knows that it isn’t true – that if he continues to do his “duty” (clean chimneys), he should fear harm
As you get deeper into developing your essay, you may draw on what you have in your pre-writing, developing your points into topic sentences and fleshing out your evidence and analyses.
Below is an example of a more developed pre-writing, drawing on the same points, examples, and explications as in the sample pre-writing (above). Notice, too, that the intro and conclusion paragraphs are illustrated here as well.
- Intro paragraph
Hook: “So if all do their duty / they need not fear harm.”
Thesis: In “The Chimney Sweeper” from the Songs of Innocence, William Blake seeks to expose the Church’s corruption. Blake juxtaposes images of the children’s innocence and purity alongside the dark realities associated with chimney sweeping; in so doing, he highlights the immorality of the Church’s continued manipulation of the orphans’ naiveté.
subpoint #1: Images of the children’s innocence and purity
- Topic sentence (asserts the point/claim you’ll be arguing in the paragraph[s] to follow): From the opening lines of the text, Blake establishes the speaker as an innocent child who blindly embraces the stark realities of his life, apparently oblivious to its injustices.
Evidence: The speaker reveals shocking details of his life in a matter-of-fact tone: “When my mother died I was very young / and my father sold me while yet my tongue / could scarcely cry ‘weep! Weep! Weep! Weep!’” *(1).
*Note: Per MLA style guidelines, when quoting poetry, indicate line breaks via a / between breaks. Also, in the absence of line numbers, simple include the page number in parentheses.
Explication/Analysis: Theabsence of emotion with which the child relays these details implies complete acceptance of his life, as if he knows nothing else.
Support statement/claim: The last line in stanza one further underscores this acceptance, as the speaker continues, “So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep” (1).
Explication / Analysis:Again, the speaker’s matter-of-fact tone indicates that he fully accepts the reality of his life as a chimney sweeper; the absence of cynicism beneath his matter-of-fact tone also underscores his innocence, as he seems unaware of the injustice of his situation.
B.Topic sentence: In addition, Blake employs recurrent images resonant of innocence and purity in relation to the children.
Evidence: The speaker likens Tom Dacre’s hair to that on a “lamb’s back”(1).
Analysis/Explication:This simile alludes to the children’s innocence, as lambs are both young (like the children) as well as white, a color synonymous with purity.
Evidence: The speaker goes on to reference the Church shaving Tom’s “white hair” so that his head will be “bare” and therefore less likely to show dirt.
Analysis/Explication: The words “white” and “bare” both connote innocence.
Evidence: In the dream sequence, the speaker refers to the children as “naked and white” (1).
Analysis/Explication: Like the word “bare,” the term “naked” refers to a state of purity.
Subpoint #2: illustrations/images of the harsh realities of life as a chimney sweep
- Topic sentence: Blake characterizes the lives of the chimney sweepers as being shadowed with darkness and marked with fear.
Evidence: In the second stanza, the speaker comforts Tom Dacre, who cries because “his head, / That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved [ . . . . ]” (1).
Analysis: Tom’s tears at the loss of his hair clearly indicate that he doesn’t want his head shaved, yet has no choice in the matter. Indeed, the simile comparing Tom’s hair to that on “a lamb’s back” alludes to the reality that the Church essentially sacrifices the children. In Christian theology, the lamb symbolizes Christ and His sacrificial crucifixion. On a small scale, Tom must sacrifice his hair for the practicality of life as a chimney sweep; on a larger scale, in likening Tom to a lamb, Blake implies that the children themselves are sacrifices at the hands of the Church, as many of them met their deaths in the chimneys they cleaned (a fact to which Blake will allude later in the text).
Evidence: As mentioned earlier, Tom’s hair is “white,” a color symbolizing purity (and thus emphasizing the children’s innocence). Yet in comforting Tom, the speaker reminds him that “when your head’s bare / You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair” (1).
Analysis: Soot is literally dark and so would dirty Tom’s light hair. Figuratively speaking, the darkness of the soot mirrors the darkness in a Church that would subject children to such horrors as those the sweepers face.
- Topic sentence: While the speaker and Tom generally seem accepting of their fates as chimney sweepers, Tom’s dream reveals a both a subconscious fear of and desire for death.
Evidence: Tom dreams that “thousands of sweepers, Dick Joe, Ned, and Jack, / were all of them locked up in coffins of black” (1).
Analysis:First, Blake’s use of common names is a clearly an appeal to his readers, many of whom likely knew a child with one of those names. The fact that the children are locked in “coffins of black” is a clear representation of death, both in the sense that the color black is associated with mourning, while (of course) coffins contain deceased bodies.
Yet the coffins themselves – with their rectangular, narrow shape – are reminiscent of the chimneys in which Tom and his fellow sweepers spend much of their days. The correlation between chimneys and coffins is further evident in the fact that many chimney sweeps died, either as a result of soot inhalation or through being trapped in the chimneys themselves.
- Topic sentence/transitional statement: Yet Tom’s frightening dream of death takes a more reassuring turn, representing freedom from a life of oppression.
Support statement: The “Angel” in Tom’s dream may well represent the Angel of Death, as this Angel unlocks the coffins and sets the children free, releasing them into a pastoral environment reminiscent of Heaven.
Evidence: The children “wash in a river” (a Baptismal image representative of rebirth) and “shine in the Sun.” Blake’s reference to the “Sun” is a play on its homonym, “son,” with the capitalization clearly alluding to Christ (as Son of God).
Analysis: Thus the Angel of Death also becomes the Angel of Mercy, as the Angel enables the children to escape the confines of their coffins (chimneys) to run and play in Heaven. The carefree description in this stanza represents a stark contrast to the details of the children’s waking lives.
Subpoint #3: Blake highlights the Church’s manipulation of the children’s naivete
- Topic sentence: The Angel in Tom’s dream takes a more sinister turn, however, when he reminds Tom of his duties to the Church. The fact that the Church’s teaching finds its way into Tom’s subconscious is further evidence of just how much the Church manipulates the children to suit its purposes.
Evidence: Blake writes, “And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy / He’d have God for his father, and never want joy” (1).
Analysis: For Tom, being a “good boy” would necessitate obeying the Church (i.e. cleaning chimneys).
The Angel’s promise of “God for his father” certainly also would echo the Church’s teachings, but the wording (referencing not Heaven, but the promise of a Father) indicates a deliberate manipulation of the children’s orphaned states.
- Topic sentence: The fact that Tom takes comfort from his dream also points to the Church’s exploitation of the children, as they obviously live not in the hope of happiness in this life, but the (Church’s) promise of joy in the next.
Evidence: The speaker says that “Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm” (1).
Analysis: Clearly nothing in Tom’s life has changed as a result of the dream; the morning is still “cold,” and he is again preparing to spend the day working as a sweeper. It is the images of Heaven from his dream that comfort Tom.
Support statement: The dramatic irony of the closing line also exposes the Church’s manipulation of the children, as it is clearly an implied threat that the child speaker repeats as a reassurance.
Evidence: Blake writes, “So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” (1).
Analysis: This is reminiscent of the Angel’s admonition to Tom that if he would be a good boy, he would be rewarded. The implication, however, is that if Tom isn’t a good boy, then perhaps he should fear harm.
Yet the earnestness of the speaker’s tone throughout the poem lends dramatic irony to this line as well. Clearly he believes what the Church has told him, but of course, the reality is that if he continues to do his “duty” (i.e. sweeping chimneys), then he certainly should fear harm.
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