The assignment for your rhetorical/textual analysis is to develop and support a thesis answering this question: After reading Second Skin, what does an analysis of the collection’s rhetoric reveal? Making connections between the poems and stories will help you find a pattern in the book’s use of language. Quotations from the poems and stories should support your interpretation/thesis.
Remember the GEW rubric values critical thinking “characterized by complexity and clarity,” so make sure the thesis is not merely descriptive or evaluative. An interpretive thesis answers the questions, “What is one of Hertzler’s significant arguments and how does his use of words make that argument?
