Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is clearly a major influence on both Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Whitman
Prompt
Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is clearly a major influence on both Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Whitman clearly influences Ginsbirgs “Howl.” Yet there are also differences in the way these writers envision America. Particularly on the subject of the relation of the individual to the community ( as may be defined in many ways) their views vary, if not always conflict. In this essay, argue a particular issue you perceive as relevant to this theme. In your paper you may also refer to the essays by Maya Angelou, J. Wagatsuki-Houston, and Joan Didion — “Graduation,” “Double Identity,” and and “On Going Home,” — which I have made available.
There are two basic approaches you may take:
1) Focus on one work, arguing for a way to understand a particular element of the text, using ideas drawn from the other works to help you clarify (if only by contrast) or support your position.
This is a “Lens essay.”
2. Argue for a particular way you believe two of the works relate to one another.
This is a “Comparison Essay.”
Given these two approaches, it’s important to remember that this assignment, like all our others, is an “argument essay”—you identify an “issue” (review our argument sessions), adopt a position, make a claim, and then argue for it. Essay 2 just offers two ways to write such an essay using two sources rather than one.
One way is to write a “lens essay,” approach #1 on the prompt. It’s an argument about one text, what we can call the “analysis text” (AT), just as Essay 1 was. This essay will have a specific claim to argue about the AT. The second text, the “lens text’ (LT) is used to help you make your case for this claim. The LT is a support tool, one resource among others that will help you, to some degree, to be persuasive). We’re not interested in the LT for its own sake. We don’t argue about it. In a way, we’re just saying to our reader, “maybe this idea of Emerson’s (or whoever) will help you appreciate my argument about Thoreau (or whoever).”
Your use of the LT can be highly selective. You can pick out just one idea, or passage, or argument of the LT, then summarize it clearly (that’s what we do with the LT—we summarize the part of it that we’re exploiting). It’s possible that the part of the LT you want to use is its overall idea, or it might be a very small part of it. In either case, it’s important not to spend too mush of your precious space summarizing the LT—after all, your essay is about another work.
Further, the lens can be positive or negative. That is, the idea from the LT can help us perceive how similar an idea in the AT is– for instance, E’s idea of “intuition” can help us understand what T means by “conscience,” and why he trusts it to be a reliable moral guide, even when it conflicts with social norms. Or it can be a negative lens– How E’s idea of living in the present helps us see, by contrast, that Didion’s view of human psychology differs profoundly from his—she sees the past as a real and enduring part of who she is in the present. It’s crucial that you not fall into the mistaken idea that the purpose of the essay is to show how “Ginsburg (or whoever) is like Whitman (or whoever),” or “what would Thoreau ((or whoever) think about Angelou (or whoever). These mistakes lead to thin essays that don’t argue for a real idea of their own.
In structure, where the LT is introduced depends on the specific point you’re arguing. It can be mentioned in the intro, but it’s not necessary to do so. The two most common ways to integrate the LT are:
A) To summarize the idea right after the intro, or
B) As works better in quite a few essays, lay out the issue problem in the AT, offer the LT idea, then use the LT idea to help you argue your point. For instance, an essay on “Douyble Identity” might
1) Clarify Wagatsuki’s problem, then summarize her solution to it.
2) Introduce Whitman’s idea of merging opposites.
3) Use this idea to help argue that Wa’s solution does (doesn’t) constitute a merging of “identities.”
Be aware that among the 7 sources you have available one of them must, either as AT or LT, be one of the 19th C. authors- E, T, W. Within this limit, all the possible AT/LT relations are available, and they are all equally likely to lead to a really good or not so hot essay.
As always, don’t stop thinking once you get a notion of which sources to use. Sometimes as writers think about their ideas the LT/AT relation switches. For instance, it could start as using an E. lens to illuminate D, but could shift to using D as a lens to understand E in a different way. There’s no “right” relationship, just as there’s no “right” claim (though there are right and wrong ways to read the “facts” of the texts, the parts that aren’t open to argument.
The other kind of essay is a “comparison essay.” In this kind of essay, (approach 2 on the prompt), we’re equally interested in both of the texts we’re writing about, or to say it a different way, we’re interested in a specific “relation between the two texts,” one that, once we’ve argued for it will help us better understand how the ideas of the two works are connected. For instance, writing about Thoreau and Angelou, and the two different kinds of communities they discuss, you could be primarily interested in just using T as a LT to help us see that unlike T’s community of neighbors characterized by respect, A is evoking a community of shared identity and suffering, characterized and empowered by love. Or you could write a comparative argument, arguing, for instance, that the difference between the two kinds of communities is explained by their different purposes– that T’s “community of conscience (derived from but not the same as the community of neighbors) is designed to change a public policy, a law; but that A’s community of love is intended to counteract the psychological damage done not just by Jim Crow laws, but by the social/cultural racism behind those laws.
Sample Topics
1. Discuss the difference between T’s notion of “neighborliness” and Whitman sense of individuals united by individual physical contact. Are they parts of the same basic assumptions about people? Fundamentally different? Does shared “conscience” provide a basis for social cohesion?
2. Whitman insists that the “sign of democracy” is the principle that all individuals are equally valued and equally welcome (included by) the nation. Do you think E’s views are compatible with this vision? Why. Why not? Is W’s kind of democracy realistic? Does it matter if it’s not—should we still pursue that aim?
3. Both E and W speak very little about money, especially as a devices force. T sees it as the root of American social tensions? What do you think?
4. Thoreau sees slavery as both a moral and social “evil.” How does Angelou’s essay imply that abolition does not resolve the issue of racial oppression in America.
5. Consider how Angelou’s essay draws a distinction between the local community and the national community. Is her view of the difference in how they affect Marguerite consistent with Thoreau’s idea of the neighbor?
6. How would you reconcile Didion’s ambivalence about the role of family with Emerson’s sense of the self-reliant individual?
7. In the end, do you believe Wataksuki’s resolution of her conflict fits Emerson’s idea of being true to herself?
8. Despite how much “Howl” is a response to “Song of Myself,” they doffer in many wats, especially in tone and in the range of Americans they focus in. Consider explaining these differences in light of the different purposes the poems are intended to serve.
There are innumerable ideas available here—these topics are just suggestions meant to help you formulate your own positions—use them as much or as little as seems useful to you.
Skills to Demonstrate
1. Accuracy of reading.
2. Selective summary based on relevance to your argument.
3. Thematic Focus—ensuring that each paragraph in the essay serves to clarify or advance your position.
4. Paragraphing — working to give each paragraph a specific job to do.
5. Labeling– working to use topic sentences to alert the reader to the specific work you intend the paragraph to do.
6. Transitions—using clear sentences to indicate to the reader how each paragraph relates to those around it.
7. Increased clarity, precision, and economy of diction.
8. Editing—more attention to sentence variety
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