ESSAY #2: TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMAGE OR SYMBOL
DUE: March 30, 1998
Write a four-to-five-page essay in which you trace the development of an image or symbol in one or two of the texts we’re studying. For example, you might examine Emerson’s use of eye imagery in Nature and "Experience," or the rose bush in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. First, you’ll want to choose an image or symbol, and develop a list of the places it appears and the ways that it functions. As you work, you’ll want to perform some close reading of each of these instances, drawing on the skills you practiced in the first assignment. Then, you’ll want to ask yourself some further questions about the image or symbol: Does it run throughout the text, or only in a particular portion of the text? Does it appear at particular moments? (For example, if you considered the scaffold in The Scarlet Letter, you might note that it appears three times, at the beginning, middle, and end of the text.) How does the author use the image or symbol? What does it suggest? What meanings are associated with it? Does the image work the same way in each place? Or does it have changing or even evolving meanings? Does the author specifically address the symbolic nature of the object or image (as, for example, Hawthorne discusses the shifting meaning of the A in The Scarlet Letter)?
SOME TIPS:
1) Select carefully. In a four-to-five-page essay, you probably can’t fully address the A in The Scarlet Letter or the white whale in Moby-Dick. You might, however, be able to narrow your focus, considering the meaning of the A to the townspeople, for example.
2) Though this assignment is not a formal close reading, as was the first essay, it does require that you read closely and explicate the implications of the image or symbol that you choose to explore. You’ll be unpacking the meanings that this image or symbol carries in the text, unfolding for your reader the work that this image or symbol does.
3) As you unfold the implications of your image or symbol, you may have to work hard to maintain your focus. But be firm with your critical impulse--this essay must have a thesis.
Feel free to consult with me as you choose your topics and develop your essays. I’m also happy to read and comment on drafts. Note that the sooner you hand me a draft, the more likely it is that I’ll be able to read and respond to it in a timely fashion.