1102 Com position II: Essay #1

J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

With any luck, you have already done some preliminary work for this paper. Yes—surprise!--I’m going to ask you to do more or less what the past two exercises have involved: to focus on an isolated incident, episode, encounter, or moment in the novel, and develop an analysis that demonstrates how that moment illuminates the novel as a whole. In other words, you’ll examine how that moment points to important themes or ideas or concerns in this book. If you selected a sufficiently interesting episode the first time around and want to keep working with it, that’s great. If not, you’re welcome to choose something else. (If you do that, I would encourage you to assign yourself the same idea-generating exercise we did initially; it’ll give you material to work with.) Your complex goal in this 1000 word essay (about three pages, perhaps a little more) is to offer a compelling interpretation of a particular scene or episode and show how it leads to a reading of the novel itself. This is the central argument you will want to articulate in your introductory paragraph. In subsequent body paragraphs, you will elaborate on your reading of the scene you have chosen, providing plenty of close textual analysis, as we’ve been working on. You’ll also want to connect that moment to other important moments in the text—not too many, perhaps, but enough to support the argument you’re making, enough to establish a pattern. You’ll want to incorporate textual analysis in these sections, too, introducing brief, relevant quotations and commenting on them as you work to establish connections and construct your reading. Your conclusion will present in a fresh way (not repetitive, in other words) the interpretation you have developed and finish with a gesture toward the large significance of your analysis. At this point you’ll want to think about big, challenging questions—what does this novel suggest about our culture? Or about our class structure? Or about America in the 1940s? Point outward. Show why your insights about this novel matter.

Your final paper is due on Thusday, February 8^th. Next week I will give you additional guidelines about formatting and documentation that will apply to all of your writing assignments.

For next Thursday Feb. 1, I want you to bring a carefully thought-out, detailed outline of your paper. It should include a rough statement of your argument (although you will continue to improve and refine this as you work on the essay, I assume) and a breakdown of the central idea of each paragraph, along with key quotations you are likely to use in each paragraph. Sketch out how one paragraph will lead to the next: what connecting ideas will you use to bridge the paragraphs? Finally, what are some big questions you might address in your conclusion? You don’t need answers yet—just possible questions.

Here’s a sketch of what your outline might look like (but you would fill in detailed statements, of course, where I have general descriptions):

1. Tentative statement of main argument.

2. Body

            a. analysis of textual episode or moment—first idea, quotations

connecting idea

            b.—second idea, quotations

connecting idea

            c. connection to other important textual moment, incident, etc. Quotations.

Connecting idea

            d. another connection to novel: establish pattern. Quotations.

Connecting idea

            e. continued elaboration on pattern. Quotations.

3.  Conclusion: Big question?