Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to expand your understanding of research methodology and to expand your understanding of a given text.
You must utilize a number of outside/secondary sources, and you must include an Annotated Works Cited page with your final essay that includes all of your primary and secondary sources cited in the paper.
Assignment: Write a 5-7 page Thesis-Driven essay that incorporates FOUR (4) to SIX (6) secondary sources on the works of either Ernest Hemingway or George Orwell that we covered for class. You must include your previously constructed Annotated Works Cited with your final paper.
Ways to Proceed: You may examine any facet of these authors that strikes your fancy. Ready research topics might include how certain biographical events in your author’s life influence the production of their texts. George Orwell’s time in Burma as a colonial police officer or Ernest Hemingway’s time as a World War I Red Cross ambulance driver are a couple of incidents that could help you to illuminate their writings better. You could also examine the historical and / or cultural influences of the time period in which your author is writing. World War I, the European culture in which he was immersed, and the years immediately following the war were incredibly influential on Hemingway’s works. Similarly, World War II, his time in Burma as a colonial police officer, and the development of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union under Stalin heavily influenced Orwell’s fiction.
These are not an exhaustive lists of topics for researching Hemingway or Orwell. You are not limited to only these. But, if one of these helps you to get a foothold into researching your texts, please feel free to use it.
After you decide on what you wish to write, you will need to do research to see whether it is indeed a viable topic for discussion in a 5-7 page thesis-driven essay. Please keep in mind that you need to use 4-6 SECONDARY sources in this research paper. With that said, perhaps it may prove useful to distinguish between PRIMARY sources and SECONDARY sources. A primary source is one that is written by the author. In this instance, anything published by Hemingway and Orwell would be a primary source. A secondary source is anything written ABOUT the author, his work, or any other subject matter under discussion that relates to the authors primary source. For instance, if you were writing on Ernest Hemingway, then A Clean Well-Lighted Place would be a primary source because it is written by Hemingway. However, Mark Spilka’s Hemingways Quarrel with Androgyny is an example of a secondary source because it is a text written about Hemingway.
You additionally need to prepare an Annotated Works Cited for all of your primary and secondary sources that you plan to cite in the body of your essay before your turn in your final draft of your research paper.
As long as you write a coherent essay centering on either Hemingway’s or Orwell’s works, and as long as you utilize four to six secondary sources, I am totally fine with whatever you choose to write about. Nevertheless, if youre in doubt regarding whether you have an appropriate topic for your essay, see me BEFORE you begin writing!!! Other than that, you are only limited in this assignment by the primary texts chosen for you and by your own imagination.
Criteria for Evaluation: Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, one-inch margins (top, bottom, left, right), twelve point font (Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, etc.). Your essay should be between five (5) and seven (7) pages in length, not including your Annotated Works Cited. You will need to use between four (4) and six (6) secondary sources in addition to any primary sources that you use for this essay. Proper MLA citation and documentationincluding parenthetical citations in the text of the paper and an Annotated Works Cited pageis an absolute necessity for this essay.
