SHORT LITERARY EXPLICATION ASSIGNMENT

LENGTH: 1200-1500 words

FORMAT: Double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman or similar font.  Pages should be numbered and stapled together.  Your essay should have a title, but don’t waste paper on a title page.  Consult MLA guidelines for any other issues.

DUE:  (the day of the final exam)

THE ASSIGNMENT: The word “explication” comes from a Latin word that means “unfolding.”  When you explicate a story, play, or poem, you “unfold” its meaning in an essay by interpreting or analyzing a portion of it.  You can analyze a character, a single incident, symbols, point of view, structure, and so on.  No explication can take into account everything that goes on in a work; the explication would be longer than the work itself.  So your paper should focus on one or two elements that you think contribute to the overall meaning or purpose of the work.  A good explication concentrates on details: you should quote portions of the work to show how the text supports your thesis.  Then you should offer comments that show how the portion you’re interpreting contributes to the story as a whole. 

SUGGESTED APPROACH:

(1) Choose from your textbook a story, play, or poem that we have not discussed in class.

(2) Read the work several times, until you think you have an idea of its overall theme or meaning.  Jot down notes as you read.

(3) Choose an element of the story (plot, character, theme, image, metaphor, structure, etc.) that seems to you to enhance or define the meaning as you understand it.

(4) Construct a THESIS that indicates (a) your focus, and (b) the relation of that focus to the work as a whole.  A thesis represents your conclusion or opinion about the work.  Thus your thesis is argumentative; it should not be an obvious point, but should be a thoughtful statement that indicates some of the complexity and depth of the work that takes a point of view on the work—a statement that needs support to work as an argument.  Don’t settle for the first generalization that comes to your mind; that approach almost always leads to trite responses.  See the following examples:

A Non-Argumentative (and Therefore Bad) Thesis: “The characters in ‘A Rose for Emily’ are Southerners.”  This thesis is not an opinion; it’s a fact.  Facts can’t be argued, so the paper is finished before it’s been started.  The reader will ask, “So what?”

A Too-Vague (and Therefore Meaningless) Thesis: “ ‘A Rose for Emily’ is about changing attitudes in the American South.”  This statement is a little more argumentative that the one above, but it’s still primarily factual, and it gives no indication of the author’s focus or opinion.

A Better Thesis: “In ‘A Rose for Emily,’ William Faulkner uses images of rot and decay to comment on the decline of Southern aristocracy.” 

(5) EVIDENCE: Find quotations and examples in the story that support your thesis, and organize the rest of your paper around this evidence.  In a paper based on the “Better Thesis” above, the reader will expect detailed examples (including direct quotations from the story) of images of rot and decay.  In addition, the paper should fully explain how the quoted (or paraphrased or summarized) lines function as commentary on Southern aristocracy.

(6) OTHER IMPORTANT ADVICE:

1. Put titles of short works (short stories, poems, short plays) in quotation marks.  Put titles of long works (novels, book-length poems, long plays) in italics.

2.  Follow your direct quotations with parentheses containing the appropriate page number from your textbook.

3.  Somewhere in the first paragraph of your paper, mention the story you are explicating by title and author.

4.  When you write about literature, it is best to write in the present tense: “The grandmother reaches out and touches the misfit on the shoulder,” not, “The grandmother reached out and touched the misfit....”

5.  MAKE SURE YOUR PAPER IS NOT MERELY A SUMMARY OF THE PLOT OF THE WORK.  You are writing for an audience that already knows what happens in the works.  Include only enough plot summary to provide background and to support your thesis.

6.  Include a title for your paper.  “Explication of ‘A Rose for Emily’” is not very original.  Your title should give some indication of your topic.  For example: “The Rotting South: Decay Imagery in ‘A Rose for Emily.’”  Center your title above your first line of text.  Rules for title format do not apply to your own title.  It should look exactly like your first line of text (see MLA guidelines).

7.  No research is necessary for this paper.  If you do use secondary sources, however, you must indicate this through proper documentation.