Essay 1: Prose Analysis
Instructions
When you have completed Essay 1, submit it to your tutor for marking and feedback using the appropriate assignment drop box.
Before you begin this assignment, please review the “Academic Integrity” section in the online Student Manual. If you use ideas from the Study Guide, you must cite them, even if they are paraphrased.
In approximately 650–750 words, state the main ideas of the passage and how these relate to the work as a whole, and then analyse the style to indicate the effects of the stylistic devices. This stylistic analysis could include the following elements: figurative language, rhetorical devices, diction, sentence structure. Not all of these elements will be equally prevalent in each passage. Focus on the most pertinent elements in the passage you have chosen, and deal with the most obvious characteristics first.
Instructions
When you have completed Essay 1, submit it to your tutor for marking and feedback using the appropriate assignment drop box.
Before you begin this assignment, please review the “Academic Integrity” section in the online Student Manual. If you use ideas from the Study Guide, you must cite them, even if they are paraphrased.
In approximately 650–750 words, state the main ideas of the passage and how these relate to the work as a whole, and then analyse the style to indicate the effects of the stylistic devices. This stylistic analysis could include the following elements: figurative language, rhetorical devices, diction, sentence structure. Not all of these elements will be equally prevalent in each passage. Focus on the most pertinent elements in the passage you have chosen, and deal with the most obvious characteristics first.
Reading the passage aloud will help to make the effects of the sounds, the sentence structure, and the diction more apparent. Considering the following questions will also help to determine which elements are most prominent in your passage.
Figurative Language Identify and explain the effect of any similes, metaphors, personification. Is there a pervasive pattern of images, or several related images? How do they convey theme?
Rhetorical Devices Does the author use parallelism, repetition, antithesis? Is there alliteration, consonance or assonance in the passage? Is there onomatopoeia?
Diction Are the words concrete or abstract, colloquial or formal? Are they pervasively monosyllabic or polysyllabic (more than one syllable)? Is there a preponderance of nouns, adjectives, or verbs? Are the verbs active or passive?
Sentence Structure Are the sentences long or short? Are they simple, complex, or compound sentences? Do they use parallelism for effect? Are there any incomplete or run–on sentences?
Under Sample Essays, see the sample analysis of a paragraph from “Araby” by James Joyce.
Figurative Language Identify and explain the effect of any similes, metaphors, personification. Is there a pervasive pattern of images, or several related images? How do they convey theme?
Rhetorical Devices Does the author use parallelism, repetition, antithesis? Is there alliteration, consonance or assonance in the passage? Is there onomatopoeia?
Diction Are the words concrete or abstract, colloquial or formal? Are they pervasively monosyllabic or polysyllabic (more than one syllable)? Is there a preponderance of nouns, adjectives, or verbs? Are the verbs active or passive?
Sentence Structure Are the sentences long or short? Are they simple, complex, or compound sentences? Do they use parallelism for effect? Are there any incomplete or run–on sentences?
Under Sample Essays, see the sample analysis of a paragraph from “Araby” by James Joyce.
Now it is your turn. Analyse ONE of the three following excerpts. Please submit the final copy to your tutor using the online drop box. Do not email your assignments; if you are unable to use the drop boxes, contact your tutor.
1. Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss,” The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction, 136.
Really—really—she had everything. She was young. Harry and she were as much in love as ever, and they got on together splendidly and were really good pals. She had an adorable baby. They didn’t have to worry about money. They had this absolutely satisfactory house and garden. And friends—modern thrilling friends, writers and painters and poets or people keen on social questions—just the kind of friends they wanted. And then there were books, and there was music, and she had found a wonderful little dressmaker, and they were going abroad in the summer and their new cook made the most superb omelettes. . . .
1. Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss,” The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction, 136.
Really—really—she had everything. She was young. Harry and she were as much in love as ever, and they got on together splendidly and were really good pals. She had an adorable baby. They didn’t have to worry about money. They had this absolutely satisfactory house and garden. And friends—modern thrilling friends, writers and painters and poets or people keen on social questions—just the kind of friends they wanted. And then there were books, and there was music, and she had found a wonderful little dressmaker, and they were going abroad in the summer and their new cook made the most superb omelettes. . . .
2. William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily,” The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction, 149.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
3. Sinclair Ross, “The Lamp at Noon,” The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction, 160.
And always the wind, the creak of walls, the wild lipless wailing through the loft. Until at last as he stood there, staring into the livid face before him, it seemed that this scream of wind was a cry from her parched and frantic lips. He knew it couldn’t be, he knew that she was safe within the house, but still the wind persisted as a woman’s cry. The cry of a woman with eyes like those that watched him through the dark. Eyes that were mad now—lips that even as they cried still pleaded, “See, Paul—I stand like this all day. I just stand still—so caged! If I could only run!”
And always the wind, the creak of walls, the wild lipless wailing through the loft. Until at last as he stood there, staring into the livid face before him, it seemed that this scream of wind was a cry from her parched and frantic lips. He knew it couldn’t be, he knew that she was safe within the house, but still the wind persisted as a woman’s cry. The cry of a woman with eyes like those that watched him through the dark. Eyes that were mad now—lips that even as they cried still pleaded, “See, Paul—I stand like this all day. I just stand still—so caged! If I could only run!”
Note: Your tutor may encourage you to rerite the Prose Analysis, since you may not have mastered the necessary writing and analytical skills so early in the course. You may choose a new topic in consultation with your tutor, in which case you will be awarded the higher of the two marks you achieve for the assignment; or you may rework the same topic, in which case you will receive an average of the marks for the initial essay and the rewritten essay.
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