The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,”

Compose an argumentative essay of at least 1,000 words in which you analyze one or more of the stories we’ve read. Your thesis should require an argument. In other words, it shouldnt be obviously true at first glance.

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Your goal for this assignment is to offer a strong critical analysis of a literary text, which means that you should:

• Make interpretive claims about the poem(s), rather than simply summarizing
• Use specific pieces of evidence (quotations, summaries) to support more general claims, which ultimately support or illuminate your thesis (main argument)
• Structure your argument (paragraphs within the essay, sentences within paragraphs) in a way that communicates your argument clearly, showing your reader how you analyze specific pieces of evidence to reach your conclusions.

Your essay should directly respond to one of the following prompts. Note that you don’t necessarily need to answer the “questions to consider” for each prompt. Those questions are designed to help get you thinking.

PROMPT 1: In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” the characters engage in a kind of wishful thinking or self-delusion. Choose one of the stories and explain what it’s suggesting by having its characters accept a reality that doesn’t seem objectively true?

Questions to consider in connection with this prompt:

• Are the characters’ beliefs harmful, helpful, or both? In what way?
• Is this story allegorical? What is the storys theme? Is it saying something about religion, politics, art, imagination, etc.?

PROMPT 2: What point is The Lottery making about human nature? How do you know it is making that point?

Questions to consider in connection with this prompt:

• Is the story allegorical? Is it satirical?
• Is the story critical of the characters? How does it criticize them?
• Does the story portray the characters in sympathetic ways? In what ways does the story encourage us to sympathize with the characters?

PROMPT 3: What lesson, if any, do you think Sylvia learns at the end of “The Lesson”? How do you know?

Questions to consider in connection with this prompt:

• Does Sylvia change at the end of the story? If so, how?
• What “lesson” was Miss Moore trying to teach her and the other kids?

PROMPT 4: In Everything that Rises Must Converge, with which character should our sympathies lie–Julian, his mother, both, neither? Explain your reasoning.

Questions to consider in connection with this prompt:

• Is the story critical of the characters? How does it criticize them? How do you know its being critical of them?
• Does the story portray the characters in sympathetic ways? In what ways does the story encourage us to sympathize with the characters?