Essay #2:
A strong draft will be full length and respond to the criteria described below. Drafts are of course works in progress, but should demonstrate full responsiveness to the class materials and a class week’s worth of effort.
After watching a film from the list below or reading the long story “So Much Water, So Close to Home,” you will develop an epiphany theory about one of the characters. This will be a formal essay, with a strong thesis (your theory) and structured body paragraphs. Your thesis will be an original, un-obvious argument about:
1) What causes an epiphany for a character, OR
2) What the result of an epiphany is for a character, OR
3) Who has the biggest or most interesting epiphany or most easily missed-by-the-audience epiphany, OR
4) Exactly what someone’s epiphany is or is not (the failure to have an epiphany can be just as interesting as actually having it, if the audience knows something the character doesn’t).
So the basic task here is to hone in on an idea you have about a character’s epiphany.
*4-5 pages, plus an MLA formatted Work Cited page (you will only cite the film or long story, as there is no research component for this essay).
*MLA formatting required as with the last essay.
You will put your skills of criticism to work theorizing. You will follow the academic structure that this and next week’s class materials will cover.
Watch your chosen movie again (even if you saw it before this class and watched it last week as well), and take notes. Like any good piece of writing, you will focus on particular scenes, moments, and lines that prove your point. You will especially need to re-watch the parts of the movie you want to land on in your paper. Notes will also make it easier for you to name actors, directors, and to quote key lines accurately, and accuracy is important in college writing!
Your essay will:
Begin with an introductory paragraph that starts with a brief summary and funnels down into a thesis.
The thesis will state your theory about a character’s epiphany (or the audience’s epiphany) AND say why it’s important or interesting.
The body paragraphs will be the place where you offer evidence for your thesis. Work from a list of evidence, using one piece per paragraph, talking about scenes, moments, and lines, continuously working to prove the point you are making in the thesis. Topic sentences (Such as, “One piece of evidence that supports the theory that Bill’s epiphany is more important than Doug’s is . . . OR “A second way we can see that Tina is driven to her epiphany by Bob’s drinking is . . .) should start each body paragraph and are critically important to an academic essay.
The paper will close with a conclusory paragraph that wraps up your paper’s overall argument and points, and talks about why this all occurred to you and matters to you, and therefore is valuable to your readers.
This is not a free-form essay by any means! Please take this description of the essay’s structure very seriously, and look for examples in the lectures.
Crucial note: It is very important for you to remember that you are under no obligation to discuss everything about the film or story: you are only beholden to your own thesis, and to supporting that one idea.
Keep in mind that as you write your paper the following areas are potentially rich in supportive evidence for your body paragraphs, since they are the places your idea about your thesis came from:
Themes of movie (issues or ideas that the film is exploring—possibly psychological, political, moral)
Premise
Opening/starting point
Plot
Cinematography/Filming quality and techniques (sudden cuts, close-ups, etc.)
Lighting, sets, and scenery
Character actions
Character speech
Character appearance
Ending/final scene or words