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PART I
COMPOSING: AN OVERVIEW
Chapter 1 The Prewriting Process [pp. 2–16]
In this opening chapter, we focus on analytical reading—on giving careful attention to the
literary text and asking pertinent questions about it in order to derive a thorough
understanding of the meaning. At the same time, we assume that students will be writing
about this work, so we introduce them to several useful invention techniques that will
help them discover what they want to say about the piece when they get ready to write.
Who Are My Readers? [p. 6]
The issue of audience can be a tricky and elusive one for many students. Writing a class
paper presents a special problem in audience awareness. They know they are writing for
the instructor, who is their most artificial and most attentive reader. They know the
teacher is responsible for evaluating the students’ work and will read their essays no
matter how bad or good they are. But the writing that students do in class should prepare
them for writing they will do in other situations and for other audiences. They need to get
beyond the captive and limited audience of an instructor and learn how to write for an
audience of general readers.
The general reader—also called “the universal reader” or “the common
reader”—is essentially a fiction, but a very useful one. It is helpful for students to
imagine a reader who is reasonably informed and generally attentive, one who will keep
reading the paper so long as it is interesting and worthwhile. If students can focus on such
a reader, they can gauge how much detail and background information to provide. The
general reader knows a little about many things but lacks specific information on the
topic the writer wants to present. In the case of writing about literature, it’s very helpful
to ask, “How well do my readers know the literary work?”
The best way we know to help students develop and refine their audience
awareness is to use student writing groups. (See pp. 47–49 in the main text and pp. 16–17
in this manual for suggestions on the use and operation of peer groups.) Sometimes we
assign a short paper in which students are to explain or interpret a piece of literature for
younger readers or for readers who have not read the selection. Or you might ask students
to choose a favorite selection and write a recommendation for readers who aren’t familiar
with it, as in a movie or book review. The goal is to interest the audience in the reading
but not spoil it for them.
Here is a checklist of questions that may help students to analyze their audience
and define their purpose, especially if they are working in groups.
1. How well do my readers know the work? What details and information will I
need to supply? What questions will they be likely to have?
2. Will my readers be interested in my ideas? How can I get them interested?
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3. Will my readers be in agreement with my interpretation? Do I have to be careful
not to offend them?
4. How do I want my readers to respond? What do I want them to get from my
essay?
Prewriting Exercise (letters to and from Eveline) [p. 7]
The purpose of this activity is to teach students the concept of audience. But from
reading, or hearing the students read, their letters, you will also be able to see how well
they understand the characterizations in the story.
Prewriting Exercise (about purpose) [p. 8]
These four assignments may prove too taxing for students to complete individually.
Instead, you may want to assign this section to groups of three or four students to
complete as a project—checking, revising, and approving one another’s work.
Reading and Thinking Critically [pp. 9–10]
Not all reading is critical reading. Asking questions while reading is the best way to
develop the abilities to analyze, make inferences, synthesize, and evaluate. You can also
suggest some of these other techniques to promote critical thinking and reading:
• Make predictions as you read.
• Note any changes of opinion you have as you read and reread.
• Pay attention to patterns—and to elements that disrupt the patterns.
• Look for any significant shifts in meaning, tone, plot, or point of view.
• Mark passages that are especially memorable, ones that you might use in a
paper.
• Identify the selection’s most important images, symbols, and scenes.
• Think about the writer’s options; imagine ways the writer could have done
something differently.
• Compare the selection with other works that are similar in some way; make
comparisons to movies, songs, TV shows, or advertisements.
• Look away from the text occasionally and jot down your reactions.
• Freewrite for five to ten minutes immediately after reading a selection.
• Think about how you would describe this work to a friend or relative.
Self-Questioning (inventing ideas) [pp. 10–11]
Here are some possible responses to the invention questions.
1. Eveline’s home life is dreary, routine, and oppressive.
2. In her new life with Frank, Eveline expects to gain freedom, respect, adventure—
and maybe love.
3. Since Eveline apparently knows very little about Frank or Buenos Ayres, her
expectations seem to be based mainly on hopes and wishes.
4. The dust is a symbol of the dry stagnation of Eveline’s life.
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5. Dusty cretonne, a yellowing photograph of a priest, a broken harmonium, a
“coloured print of the promises made to the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque”
(which would be promises of lifelong virginity): these suggest decay and the denial
of a vital life.
6. Eveline is “over nineteen.” Probably she is around twenty years old, a time when
one usually reaches adulthood and is making life decisions.
7. Eveline’s father is an alcoholic, selfish, demanding tyrant, who—like most of his
kind—has moments of tenderness. His being in “a bad way” means that he is drunk.
8. Eveline sometimes thinks of him as an overgrown child in need of care, like the rest
of her siblings. But she also fears his violence and resents his making her beg for
money to feed the family.
9. Eveline’s mother led a “life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness.”
Eveline identifies so closely with her mother that she has adopted her dead mother’s
self-sacrificing role in the family.
10. Eveline feels sorry about the pitiful quality of her mother’s life and respects her
memory. But at the same time, she wants to avoid being trapped into simply reliving
her mother’s dreary existence.
11. Eveline’s mother, influenced by her religion, believes that pleasure in life must be
paid for later with pain. When she says, “The end of pleasure is pain,” she may be
thinking of sexual pleasures, which, for a woman, can end in the pain of childbirth
and the toil of caring for the child. She seems to be simply worn out by having too
little money to care for too many children.
12. Eveline’s father knows about good-for-nothing men who make promises they may
not keep, and sailors have a reputation for having “a girl in every port.” Her father
also has a good reason for wanting his daughter to stay at home instead of marrying,
since she takes care of him and his young children.
13. Frank is purposely not well defined in the story. He seems cheerful and devoted, but
Eveline has not known him long: “It seemed a few weeks ago.”
14. Eveline surely has a romanticized view of what married life with Frank will be like.
Yet her father might justifiably be concerned that she is too inexperienced to marry
and move to a foreign land.
15. Eveline has been a virtual slave to her father, seemingly because she promised her
dying mother “to keep the home together as long as she could.” But the modern
reader sees her as having quite fulfilled her duty to her father by now.
16. Eveline holds conflicting views that she has a “right to happiness” and that she has a
duty to keep her promise to her mother to serve the family. Her sense of duty to
others wins out over any sense of her right to a life of her own.
17. Although she feels affection for her brothers, one is dead and the other is gone all
the time decorating churches.
18. Eveline is “like a helpless animal,” paralyzed by the lights of an oncoming car. She
seems incapable of exercising free will. She is afraid of freedom, the unknown, and
the spiritual consequences of breaking her vow to her mother.
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19. Eveline’s terror paralyzes her and overwhelms any other emotion she might feel at
the dock. Also, Frank has seemed to be more a symbol of freedom than a real
person. To respond with “love or farewell or recognition” would require that she see
him as a human being.
20. Answers will surely vary here. One might say that running away to a new life is
Eveline’s one chance for happiness, and she refuses it—rightly or wrongly—out of
fear. Others might say that eloping to Buenos Ayres with a lighthearted drifter
whom she barely knows is not the wisest decision a woman could make.
Directed Freewriting / Problem Solving / Clustering [pp. 11–13]
The material generated through these invention methods will be similar to the
information resulting from the questions earlier. You may find that one technique works
best for you and that your students prefer another. Encourage them to try the various
methods so that they will have more options for discovering ideas to write about.
Finding the Theme / Stating the Thesis [pp. 15–16]
You will surely want to discuss this essential material with your students and be sure they
understand the difference between a topic and a thesis statement. Tell them also not to
worry if at first they cannot discover the theme of a piece. It takes practice in analytical
reading to develop the ability to see how the parts of a literary work dovetail to reveal the
meaning of the whole. We offer further help with determining theme in later chapters.
Making Connections
Compare Eveline to Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Consider their reactions to the men who want to take them away from home. Which one
made the smarter decision?
Chapter 2 The Writing Process [pp. 17–29]
Organization, which requires hard, clear thinking, is one of the most difficult elements of
the writing process for students to handle. Most writing specialists agree that compiling a
formal outline is unnecessary, but most also agree that devising some plan is essential.
Students should understand, though, that the plan can always be modified as the writing
proceeds.
The plan can be as simple as recording the main points of the essay in the order
to be followed. But we feel strongly that these points should be stated as sentences, not
merely as topics, in order to make clear the direction of the writer’s thoughts (as well as
to make sure that those thoughts have some direction). Students who merely jot down
topics sometimes experience difficulty in keeping their essays unified because, as they
write, their ideas veer off in directions not relevant to the thesis.
In this chapter, we suggest ways to organize an essay about a literary work and
offer advice about how to develop the ideas in this plan.
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Writing Rituals May Help in Getting Started
Most experienced writers perform—perhaps unconsciously—little rituals that help them
get started. Some people, for instance, always write in the same place—in a comfortable
chair, at a desk, at the kitchen table, perhaps lying on the living room rug. It does not
matter where a person writes, but having an established place may help to get the process
going when writing needs to be done. Some people sharpen pencils before they start or
find a favorite pen. Some always compose at the keyboard. Some get themselves a cup of
coffee or a soft drink to keep their strength up during this arduous undertaking. You may
want to discuss writing rituals with your students. If they have none, suggest that they try
to establish some just in case these preparations may help to spark the writing process.
Arguing Your Interpretation [pp. 17–18]
Here is a chance to relate writing about literature to good principles of writing in general.
With your class, discuss the meaning of these terms: claims, evidence, reasoning, and
refutation. Look for an editorial or letter to the editor in the school or community
newspaper as an example, and invite students to assess the elements of the piece’s
argument.
Building an Effective Argument [pp. 19–20]
For many people argument is a negative term. Perhaps it makes them think of unpleasant
shouting matches and bitter disagreements. We hear and see these nasty, noisy clashes on
the radio and TV all the time. But these are not examples of good arguments. They
substitute volume and name calling for reasoning and evidence. So it’s important for
students to see that arguing is a constructive process, one in which they identify an issue
for possible debate, take a position on that issue, analyze their position, and try to
persuade others that their position is worth sharing or at least reasonable. The general
procedure we outline on page 19 will guide them through this process. This plan is one
they can use throughout college.
Be sure to make the connection that persuading readers of a point of view on a
literary work is similar to persuasion of any sort. Literary critics may have some
advantage because the readers usually do not already have firm opinions of their own: a
good argument can stand on its own rather than working upstream against preexisting
judgments. Chapter 3 goes into more detail about the connection between argument and
interpretation.
Questions for Consideration (using adequate detail) [p. 21]
We think the sample paragraph is adequately developed. Here are the details used to
support the main point (the topic sentence):
• Eveline’s brothers and sisters are grown.
• Her mother is dead.
• Her father will be alone.
• He has a drinking problem.
• He is getting old.
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• She thinks he will miss her.
• She feels she is abandoning her father.
• She has written to him to ease the blow.
• The letter soothes her conscience.
Students may mention the following additional details as possible support for the main
idea of the paragraph:
• Tizzy Dunn and the Walters (possibly former friends of her father) are gone;
also gone is the priest who was his school friend.
• “Latterly he had begun to threaten her”; she apparently forgets this fear—or
discounts it, even though “now she has nobody to protect her.”
• “Sometimes he could be very nice”; she remembers when he took care of her
one day when she was sick and when he played with the children on a
picnic long ago.
The writer introduces personal opinion in the final sentence: “Eveline seems to feel . . .”
Most students will probably agree that the interpretation is valid, but some may
disagree about whether Eveline’s younger brothers and sisters (entrusted to her care by
her dying mother) are indeed “grown up” by the time she considers leaving with Frank.
Some might argue also that Eveline writes the letter to her father, not out of consideration
for his feelings, but as a means of avoiding a bitter confrontation with him.
Class Activity on Introductions and Conclusions [pp. 23–25]
You will want to be sure your students understand all of the material in this chapter—
especially the section on distinguishing critical details from plot details so that they can
successfully maintain a critical focus in their papers. But since an effective opening and
closing are crucial to the success of an essay, you may want to give your students extra
practice in writing these special kinds of paragraphs.
Ask your students to devise a thesis statement for a paper about a work of
literature they have read recently. Then have them write only the introduction and
conclusion for such a paper. After they have completed their paragraphs, you could have
them exchange papers and do peer evaluation. Write the following questions on the board
and ask your students to respond (concerning a fellow student’s paper) in writing.
ABOUT THE INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH
1. Is the main point of the (intended) paper made clear?
2. Is the topic introduced gracefully? Or is it too bluntly stated?
3. Is the thesis itself interesting? Or is it too obvious?
4. Would you want to continue reading a paper that began with this introduction?
ABOUT THE CONCLUSION
1. Does it simply repeat the introduction?
2. Does it convincingly establish the main point of the paper?
3. Does it have an emphatic final sentence?
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Ideas and Suggestions for a First Writing Assignment
You may want your students to apply some of the procedures for prewriting and drafting
that they have been studying in these first two chapters. We suggest having them write a
draft of an essay about Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” [pp. 236–37]. Here are some
directions you might give them.
1. Read the story.
2. Then turn to Chart 6-1 at the end of Chapter 6 and see how many of the
questions you can answer after a single reading. But do not be discouraged if
you can respond to only a few.
3. Reread the story, paying attention to the details. Then look once more at the
questions in Chart 6-1 to see how many more of them you can answer.
4. Use one or more of the prewriting techniques discussed in Chapter 1 to come up
with ideas for writing. You can use self-questioning, directed freewriting,
clustering, or whatever works for you.
5. Then devise a thesis (or claim) and draw up a list of details to develop and
support it.
6. Write a draft of your interpretation.
If students have problems coming up with an approach to this story, here are some
ideas for writing that might help them.
1. In interpreting the story, focus on Mrs. Mallard’s life and character to show
why she reacts as she does to news of her husband’s death. Why was she
previously unaware of the “subtle and elusive” thoughts that come to her as she
sits in her room? Why do other characters misread her reaction?
2. Focus on the imagery—the appeals to the senses—that Chopin uses to surround
Mrs. Mallard. Write about how the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations
contribute to the reader’s understanding of Mrs. Mallard’s experience.
You can, of course, also use the questions for discussion and writing that follow the story
[p. 237].
Other stories in the Anthology of Short Fiction that might provide students with
interesting characters to analyze or respond to are Langston Hughes’s “Salvation,”
Sherwood Anderson’s “Hands,” Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing,” John Updike’s “A
& P,” and John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums.”
Chapter 3 Writing a Convincing Argument [pp. 30–45]
This chapter expands the concept, introduced in Chapter 2, that interpreting a literary
work involves making an argument. As a way of thinking about how the elements of
argument apply to interpreting literature, a discussion of a controversial work or an
element in a work might be useful. We don’t mean a classroom debate on an issue, but an
exploration of where we get our opinions and why we accept some interpretations and not
