Our last breather before we get into the heart of the final essay. This time we are diving into Mark Twain’s “Advice to Youth” and we are analyzing its truest message. Here are just a few ideas for you to consider before writing this piece:
1. Who is the audience, really?
2. What is his approach and was it carefully chosen? If so, why?
3. What is the overall theme of the work?
Here are your specs:
POV: Third Person ONLY
Format: MLA
Word Count: Minimum 250
Primary Source: “Advice to Youth”
Things to consider:
PURPOSE: Remember, this is not an expository essay, it is an argumentative essay. Therefore you should be starting with your thesis statement, ensuring that the thesis addressed the topic in a way that motivated the reader to want to respond.
BORROWED MATERIAL: Be selective when choosing the borrowed material. Don’t just find something to throw in the essay and cite it. That is not productive at all, not to mention it will get you a frowning face!
Let your borrowed material, since you are reading the sources BEFORE you write the paper, be your guide.
As you write, annotate, make note of what you like. Keep it. Then figure out how you can use it in your essay.
REVISE AND EDIT: I cannot stress this enough. You MUST give yourself time to revise and edit your paper. There may be paragraphs that would fit better in a different section of the essay. There will definitely be errors. Give yourself time to revise and edit in order to submit the best paper possible!
I recommend that you save each draft separately, for example, “Essay 1 Draft 1”, “Essay 1 Draft 2”, Essay 1 Draft 3” and so on and so on. Doing so ensures that you keep all the original content just the way it came out, but as you make changes the previous copy or copies remain in their original state. There is no worse writer’s feeling that revising and edit, erasing what you previously wrote, only to realize you need it.
STAY IN THE LITERATURE. CRITIQUE THE LITERATURE. DO NOT WRITE AN ESSAY INSPIRED BY THE TOPIC OF THE LITERATURE. YOU’LL GET A FROWNING FACE. –
A huge mistake is to understand the literature, be able to identify the topic, and instead of writing about the literature, you write about the topic the literature covers.
For example, “The Story of an Hour” presents an unhappy wife during a time when women had no other options than to be a wife.
If a student were to write an essay exploring how different being a wife is now to how it was then, and how wrong it was during that time in history for women not to have options, and how . . . Well, hopefully you get it.
This essay would receive an unfavorable grade. It does not critique the writing. It creates a completely separate work inspired by the writing. Even if this essay has little “speckles” of Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts and actions, it still would not be about the essay. It would only use those “speckles” to fulfill the borrowed material requirement. The presence of those speckles would be meaningless.