Length: 600-750 words
Technical Notes: This assignment should be prepared according to manuscript guidelines (see handout) and should be cited following MLA style guidelines (see handout) and should thus include a Work Cited page.
Assignment Task: Write a 600-750-word response to the below prompt on August Wilson’s play, Fences. As noted in the syllabus, consultation of outside sources (e.g., Spark Notes, Grade Saver, Wikipedia, Cliffs Notes, etc.) is disallowed. Again, this is NOT a research paper, so absolutely NO outside research should be used in this assignment—acknowledged or unacknowledged. ANY assignment that is discovered to have relied on outside sources, even to provide historical context, will be treated as a case of plagiarism and will result in failure of the course.
While short, this response paper should still exhibit all the formal features of an essay: an argumentative thesis statement to organize and direct your paper, logically developed and coherent body paragraphs that complicate and support your thesis, and a conclusion that brings everything together and that attempts to answer the “so what?” question (i.e., attempts to explain why the topic is important and why others should care). In short, this essay should read like an essay and should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, as well as an original title AND a work cited page.
Ø Prompt: A question audiences frequently ask in relation to August Wilson’s play, Fences, is whether or not Troy Maxon loves his son, Cory. Write an essay that responds to this question. Whatever position you take in this debate, be sure to support your claims with evidence from the text. Additionally, take care to anticipate and respond to counterarguments. Thus, if you believe that Troy does indeed love Cory, you should explain why Troy continually diminishes and dismisses Cory’s goals and dreams for his future. Alternatively, if you take the position that Troy does not love Cory, explain why Troy exclaims to Rose that he does not want Cory to be like him and desires him to experience a life free of disappointment (473).
All written assignments should be supported with evidence from the text, cited according to MLA style guidelines. However, while textual evidence is important to support your claims, extensive quotation of the text is discouraged. Instead, reproduce only the most relevant parts of a quotation, or paraphrase. To that end, there should be no block quotations in this assignment.