Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Brief Overview
Your short essay assignment is a 4-5 page literary analysis. A literary analysis is a type of argumentative essay that provides an organized interpretation of a literary text through close reading. When you close read literature, you’re looking at both what the text says (its content) and how the text says what it says through imagery, figurative language, motif, and so on. In an essay, you are being asked to explain how certain literary devices in a narrative create specific effects and convey ideas.
Although you might notice numerous interesting details as you read, not all of those details will help you to organize a focused argument about the text. When you close read for an essay thesis, you will need to be selective about what you choose to consider in your essay. You need to narrow your argument/thesis to one motifLinks to an external site. unique to the text and how it bolsters one theme.Links to an external site. In the case of a novel, for example, you might analyze a repeated scene, image, or object (scenes of train travel, images of decay, objects such as typewriters, etc). You then provide direct quotes from the literary text as evidence and extensively close read those quotes with your unique thesis in mind.
Essay Requirements:
minimum 4-5 page literary analysis of ONE fictional text from our class (poem, short story, novel)—you cannot focus on multiple novels in the essay, and you will lose points if you turn in anything less than 3.75 pages of your own writing. The Works Cited page will not count as part of the minimum page length.
MLA formatting with in-text citations and a Works Cited page
A thesis statement towards the end of the introduction that cites how one motif of the novel/short story/poem bolsters one theme. Review the lectures/videos on theme and motif and thesis statements for more information.
One peer-reviewed secondary source that touches upon either theory, literary criticism, or historical/cultural contexts. Excellent form and structure, such as strong paragraph organization with a solid topic sentence, direct evidence from the text, and analysis.
Essay prompt:
In many stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in which they live. Often, a character feels alienated in his/her community or society due to bias against race, gender, class, or ethnic background.
How does the author–using rhetoric, symbols, motifs, actions and dialogue–represent a character as alienated from community in the story?
And likewise, how does the author represent the character responding to society?
What does that character’s alienation say about the surrounding society’s assumptions, morality and values?
In what way(s)do literary elements reflect how that society defines race, gender, class and/or ethnicity? How does this create conflict for the character?
