Writing Assignment #3

English 102:116

Professor Kratz

Rough Draft: Due by midnight on Sunday, December 3rd. Must be at least 750 words long. Must include: a quote from a primary source in every body paragraph, a thesis statement, and at least one paragraph making use of a secondary source.

Final Draft: Due by midnight on Saturday, December16th. Must be at least 1000words long.

Langston Hughes uses poetry to find a place for African Americans in America. Sometimes he fails. Other times, he succeeds—even if the “place” he finds is only marginal or revolutionary. For your third writing assignment, use “Harlem” and 1-2 other Hughes poems of your own choosing to explore Hughes’ relationship with America. Does he feel that there is room for real racial diversity? Is the sadness in his poetry an indication that he has given up on realizing this “dream”? And, why does Hughes choose poetry as the medium for exploring this issue?

*Note: Our text includes the following Hughes poetry: “Harlem” (715), “Ballad of the Landlord” (519), and “I, Too” (716). You can find more about Hughes and more poetry by Hughes at .

  1. You need to MAKE AN ARGUMENT (in other words, you need to analyze the poem(s), and use that analysis in an organized way to prove a single point). The second/third Hughes poem(s) you use is/are entirely up to you. One warning: use no more than three; keep your materials limited or you’ll end up with a paper that never has the chance to deal with any source in sufficient depth.
  1. In doing so, you must use ONESCHOLARLY, SECONDARY SOURCE found through your own research.
  1. You also must DISCUSS ISSUES OF FIGURATION, POINT-OF-VIEW, AND FORM.Further, I don’t want a catalogue of similes or enjambed lines; in addition to locating an example of a poetic element, you must analyze its significance and tie it back to your project.

STEP 1: INTERPRETATION

Review the “Interpretation” worksheet.Read “Harlem” and the other Hughes poems in our text and/or on the poetry foundation website, choosing a few (only one or two that seem especially relevant to the assignment). Analyze them PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO DETAILS.

Think about the elements we’ve covered (or will soon cover) in class:

  • Literal Language—including historically appropriate definitions from the OED (review the “Denotations & Connotations” and “OED Exercise” worksheets)
  • Point of View—including whether the narrator is a participant or non-participant, reliable or unreliable… (review the “Voice” worksheet)
  • Figurative Language—including images, similes, metaphors, symbols, & allegory
  • Form—including syntax & line (end-stoped vs. enjambed lines), rhyme & rhyme scheme, alliteration, assonance, meter, and closed/open form (review the “Rhyme Scheme & Meter” worksheet)
  • Context—including historical period (e.g. early 20th Century), artistic movement (e.g. Harlem Renaissance), literary genre (e.g. expressly musical/lyrical poetry), etc.
  • Diction & Dialect—Diction refers to an author’s word choice or vocabulary. Think about why an author chose to use concrete words or abstract words, common/easy words or unusual/difficult words, etc.One aspect of diction is Dialect, an author’s choice to use a particular variety of language spoken by an identifiable regional group or social class of people. Hughes often chooses to use dialect (non-standard English) in his writing (e.g. “The sink is broke, / The water don’t run” (“Madam and the Rent Man”). Why? What does it suggest about his speakers? What kind of audience is he writing for?

Ask good questions:

  1. What words, phrases, lines, and details may have confused or baffled you? Why?
  2. What observations can you make about the poem’s details?
  3. What words and phrases recur? How? Where? Why?
  4. What connections can you establish among the details of action & language?
  5. What inferences can you draw from these connections?

Some Prefab Questions about “Harlem”:

  1. What’s the “plot” of the poem? What happens? Make sure you know the meanings of all words used. When was it written? Are there any important words the meanings of which may have changed over time? If so, look them up in the OED.
  2. What “dream” do you think Hughes is referring to? What does it mean to “defer” a dream? Is the “dream” a symbol (in making this determination, refer to the questions on p. 536)? If so, of what?
  3. Who’s the speaker/narrator? Is it Hughes or a character (what support do you have for your answer)? What implications does this narrative perspective have for the poem?
  4. The poem is made up of a series of metaphors:the deferred dream is compared to a “raisin in the sun,” a “sore,” “rotten meant,” etc. What’s the metaphorical significance of these comparisons (i.e. what might it mean to say a dream is like “a raisin” or a “sore”)? Are raisins vital/full of life, or shriveled? Are sores easy to forget, or do they insist on our attention?
  5. What kind of images does Hughes use? Concrete or abstract? Involving growth or decay? Why do you think he does this?
  6. Hughes uses an interesting set of verbs: “dry,” “fester,” “stink,” “crust,” “sag,” and “explode.” Are they all similar? If not, what’s important about the difference?
  7. Is there a regular meter or rhyme scheme? Is the poem in closed or open form? What does this contribute to the content of the poem? Remember that open form is more “natural” and that it is less “balanced” or “song-like”…
  8. Is there a lot of rhyme, assonance, and alliteration? Does the poem sound good/mellifluous or bad/cacophonous? How does the “sound match the sense” (remembering Pope’s recommendation in “Sound and Sense”)?
  9. The poem is a series of questions. Why do you think Hughes wrote the poem this way? Why not just TELL the reader that a dream deferred is like a raisin in the sun…etc.?
  10. Are most of the lines end-stopped or enjambed? Why does Hughes end and begin the lines as he does? Do the lines work with the grammar of Hughes’ writing, or do they confuse the meaning of what he’s saying? Do the lines endings slow your reading down, or emphasize words that would otherwise be lost in the middle of a clause? Why?
  11. Is there anything interesting in Hughes’ diction/word choice? Are the words he uses difficult to understand, or straightforward? Are they abstract or concrete? Why do you think Hughes chooses these kinds of words for this poem?
  12. How does it contribute to your understanding to think of this poem in the context of Hughes’ other poetry? Are there themes that Hughes returns to? Are there images or symbols in this poem that get developed across other poems (e.g. “Dream Deferred,” “Dream Variations,” and “Dream Boogie”)? What might these connections within the body of Hughes’ work tell us about this poem? About Hughes’ thinking?
  13. How does it contribute to your understanding to think of this poem in the context of the Harlem Renaissance? Of the early Civil Rights Movement? Of class/economics?

STEP II. RESEARCH

In addition to the poems (your primary sources), you must use onesecondary source found through your own research, AND IT MUST BE SCHOLARLY.

A scholarly source is one that has been peer reviewed—that is, reviewed by experts in the relevant field. If an essay comes from an electronic database of scholarly sources, or from a journal/book published by a university press (e.g. University of Pennsylvania Press), it’s scholarly.

Using a scholarly source guarantees that the source is reliable. Without this guarantee, you’d have to establish the following on your own:

  1. That the source is accurate (it can be verified elsewhere)
  2. That the author is an authority (he/she has relevant expertise on the topic)
  3. That the source is current (it was published/copyrighted in the last five years)
  4. That the source is unbiased (it has no agenda, and is objective)

You’ll probably want to do your research through one of the library’s databases. The following link will take you to a list of them: The four relevant databases are Academic Search Premier (a good general-purpose database with full-text articles), JSTOR (a digital library of academic journals), Literary Reference Center (provides information on authors and their works including biographies, articles, reviews and interviews), & Literature Resource Center (providing scholarly journals and selected full-text articles).

First, choose your search terms (key words identifying the author, specific work(s), or subjects within those works that are most importantto your project). For instance, you’ll probably want to start with “Langston Hughes,”“Harlem”—or the title of your poem, whatever it is,”and “America.” Make sure to set the parameters of the search to limit results to only Full Text sources, in English, and published in the last five-ten years.

You want a list of results about ten or fifteen entries long. If it’s any longer, you need to further focus your search. If it’s any shorter, you might want to make your search terms less focused/specific.

Now review your results. Look through the abstracts at the beginning, at the first few paragraphs, and at the end of the article to assess whether this article is really going to be useful to you. Work through your results in this way until your find the one or two you want. And only then should you read it in full.

STEP III. FINDING & ANANLYZING QUOTES

The method for finding and analyzing quotes differs somewhat from primary sources/poems to secondary sources/critical essays.

For your primary sources/poems, I refer you to Step 1 above. After having analyzed your poems in the ways suggested in Step 1, find those passages that are most relevant to your project. (Also, it would be useful at this point to have a rough sense of what you think is going on in the poem with respect to your assigned topic.)

For your secondary sources, choose quotes relevant to your project. Make sure that they are “idea” quotes—that they deal with the author’s ideas, and so will be an appropriate and productive target for your critical thinking. Be careful to distinguish between “idea” and “summary quotes”—quotes that just summarize facts or events. These are (usually) dead ends for critical thinking. Also, be careful to use only those quotes that reflect your author’s own ideas: authors often include the ideas of other writers in their own work, but don’t necessarily agree; to use such a passage in your paper and say that it represents the thinking of your author would be wrong…

To analyze your secondary sources, be critical. Rather than just summarizing what the author says, evaluate what he says and how he says it. Does his logic hold up? If not, is his position still persuasive? Does he make any assumptions? If so, does his argument fall apart without those assumptions in place? Do the kinds of terms he uses, or comparisons he makes tell you anything about his perspective? Is it a perspective with which you are comfortable? Why, or why not?

**A Note on Citations:

For every quote, both from your poems and critical essay, you must include a parenthetical citation. Use MLA form: (last name of author, page/line number). However, any poems you include from outside our text and for your secondary source, you MUST include a full citation on a works cited page. The form of these citations differs. For instructions on appropriately quoting and citing poetry, see the “Poetry Citation Guide” on the class website. For instructions on citing your secondary source, see the Owl Purdue guidance:

STEP IV. BODY PARAGRAPHS

Follow the directions in the “Writing Assignment 3, Paragraphing” worksheet on the class webpage in the Writing section.

STEP V. THESIS FORMATION

Only after you’ve written a couple of rough body paragraphs should you commit to a thesis. Your argument should follow from your analysis and research, not the other way around. To refresh your memory on what it is a thesis statement must do, see the “Thesis Formation” worksheet on the class webpage.

STEP VI. ORGANIZATION

Once you have a thesis and a few body paragraphs, you should attend to the organization of your argument. Your paper needs to work like a clock: lots of parts each contributing to the work of the whole. Your paper needs to prove a thesis. That thesis needs to be supported by one major claim (topic) made in each paragraph. Each paragraph’s claim/topic needs to be proven with analysis. Each piece of analysis has to follow clearly and logically from a quote. A good way to ensure that this is the case is to do a “Reverse Outline.” For instructions on how to do this, see the “Reverse Outline” worksheet on the class webpage.

STEP VII. INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION

The introduction and conclusion of any paper should be the LAST thing you write; neither has to include quotes or analysis.

Introductions

Do:

1)Engage readers with your topic.

2)Contextualize & introduce the paper’s major issue(s) and sources.

3)Focus readers’ attention on the particular aspects of the topic that matter to you.

4)Deliver the thesis (traditionally).

Don’t:

1)Be overly broad or vague (eg. “Throughout history, people have been racially biased…”). Rather focus your reader’s attention; state as specifically as you can what matters to you in the paper that follows.

2)Start with a dictionary definition. Rather, be confident enough about your argument to put it in your own words.

Conclusions

Do

1)Concisely review the logic of your position, andsum up the argument of your paper.

2)Recommend action based on your research and analysis.

3)Suggest further questions for research.

Don’t

1)Engage in any new analysis.

STEP IX. REVISE, REVISE, REVISE

Complete the paper in enough time to be able to put the paper aside and read it with fresh eyes. Does it fulfill all the requirements above? Find a friend or classmate to complete a reverse outline and see if he/she understands the logic of your paper. If there are places where his/her understanding goes astray, you know where you need to spend more time explaining yourself or revising your strategy.

Make sure that your citations are in correct shape, and that there are no grammar or spelling errors.