Final Essay

For your final essay, you should choose one of the following options.
•Compare and contrast the poems and/or poets within this week’s reading. You may compare poems by the same poet, or poems across more than one poet. Have a debatable, persuasive claim and focus on specific points of comparison, using the Lesson in week 7 to guide your structure. Please consult the MLA handbook if you are in doubt about citation form.
•View the list of American Essayists (below). Select an essayist who wrote after the Civil War (note, the list includes some pre-Civil War essayists. Do not select a pre-Civil War essayist). Search the internet for an essay by your selected author and read it. Compose a thesis that has a persuasive, debatable claim about the significance of the message or theme in the essay or the success/effectiveness of the essay as a whole. Summarize the essay in your intro paragraph, end the paragraph with your thesis, and be sure to include your three points of evidence in your thesis statement. Cite the essay as you would any article on the internet as you examine your points of evidence.
•Compare and contrast John Grisham’s piece to any essay, long-form article on a website like The Atlantic or other news sources,  or film/documentary that explores a contemporary social issue that matters to you. Have a debatable, persuasive claim and focus on specific points of comparison, using the Lesson in week 7 to guide your structure.

Submission Instructions:

Your essays should be in MLA Style and approximately 1625-1950 words, not including the Work(s) Cited page. Meeting the minimum word requirement makes you eligible for a C grade. Meeting the maximum word requirements makes you eligible for an A grade. As with most academic writing, this essay should be written in third person. Please avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).

In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor’s name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don’t forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short stories, plays, or poems.

Should you choose to use outside references for prompt one or two, these must be scholarly, peer-reviewed sources obtained via the APUS library (select Advanced Search and check the Peer Reviewed box). Reliable open web sources may be used for prompt three. Be careful that you don’t create a “cut and paste” paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care not to plagiarize.

Supporting Materials
Literature 200 Level Rubric (38 KB)

Some Major American Essayists

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
St. John de Crevecœur (1725–1813)
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
James Madison (1751–1836)
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Frederick Douglass (1817?–1895)
Herman Melville (1819–1891
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
H. L. Menken (1880–1956)
E. B. White (1899–  )
Ralph Ellison (1913–1994)
Louis Auchincloss (1917–  )
Betty Friedan (1921–  )
James Baldwin (1924–1987)
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–  )
Gore Vidal (1925–  )
Edward Abbey (1927–1989)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)
John McPhee (1931–  )
Joan Didion (1934–  )
Garry Wills (1934–  )
Jonathan Kozol (1936–  )
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–  )
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002)
George F. Will (1941–  )
Garrison Keillor (1942–  )
Annie Dillard (1945–  )
Dave Barry (1947–  )
Katha Pollitt (1949–  )
Bill Bryson (1951–  )
Brent Staples  (1951–  )
Deborah Tannen (1951–  )
Anna Quindlen (1952–  )
Cornel West (1953–  )
David Sedaris (1956–  )
Malcolm Gladwell (1963–  )

This week’s readings:

Read: John Grisham: Somewhere for Everyone (in our text).

Read: Sharon Olds, “First Thanksgiving” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53387

Read: Sharon Olds, “Still Life in Landscape” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53386

Read: Sharon Olds, “After Making Love in Winter” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36723

Read: Sharon Olds, “The Planned Child” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36230

Read: Linda Pastan, “A Rainy Country” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=42085

Read: Linda Pastan, “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/34957

Read: Linda Pastan, “The Obligation to Be Happy” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/39788

Read: Linda Pastan, “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/41918

Read: Larry Levis, “SIgns” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47941

Read: Larry Levis, “To a Wren on Calvary” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47946

Read: Larry Levis, “Winter Stars” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53388