Essay #3: Torture discussion.

The assignment: 500-750 word essay defining the term torture from a particular perspective and how it relates or what it means to you, today.

Please post some of your ideas about how you intend to approach this subject and from which perspective, as well as any information or articles you may have found, and maybe even a little debate about what "torture" is or can be.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" citation info

Here you go for Flannery:

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is found in an anthology called Literature and the Writing Process , edited by Elizabeth McMahon, Susan Day, Robert Funtz, and is found on pages 320-330. The anthology is in its Sixth Edition, and was published by Pearson Education Inc. in 2002, in New Jersey.

Hope you all had a splendid revisioning weekend.

Citation information:

The citation information for Dry September is this:

The story itself is found in an anthology of William Faulkner's works entitled Collected Stories of William Faulkner, published by Vintage International in November of 1995, and there doesn't seem to be an editor. The story is found on pages 169-183, if that information is at all relevant. If you have trouble creating a work cited entry with the information provided above, just email me.

[Update: Yes, Vintage International in New York]

The citation information for A Good Man is Hard to Find will have to wait until I can get the book I copied it from back from my colleague, Amber.

A Woman President in Chile

This is inspiring news, comrades. Any comments?

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

Use the comment section under this post to explain to us what you think Flannery is getting at in "A Good Man is Hard to Find". Notes about Flannery's history, writing style, and anything else are welcome. Again, don't be afraid to ask questions. This is yet another opportunity for us to pursue a dialogue which will probably help you form some more opinions about the short stories we're going to write about.

William Faulkner's "Dry September" notes.

Comment under this post what you think the meaning (or meanings) are beyond the surface level in William Faulkner's "Dry September." Don't be afraid to ask questions or pose questions. We're encouraging a dialogue here.

The Big Question:

What does all of this (the arguments presented by Orwell) really mean to you, to us, and to society as a whole?
Don't be shy. Let us know what you think.

A Work Cited Entry for Orwell

I will give you the information for the Orwell essay "Politics and the English Language" and then you let you craft the MLA citation. So, here is the information:

George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," is an essay from an anthology of essays entitled In Depth: Essayists For Our Time, edited by Carl Klaus, published in 1993 by Heinle in Boston. The essay is found on pages 540-550.

That should be all the information you need.

Faculty Email is Down

I'm not able to send or receive any emails I have't already responded to. The server won't even allow me to log in. So, I'll just see all of you in class today. I hope things went well. I will bring the MLA Style guide as well as my book, and you might want to bring your book too. We're going to practice MLA citations and workshop.

Quoting Material from within Material

Sara asks this question:

How does one go about citing a source within a source? In "Pc or Not
Pc? That is the Question" written by Michael Major he cites William
Luta. How do I cite William Luta? The first time I cite would it be
William Luta cited in "Pc or Not Pc? That is the Question" by Michael
Major? And then what would it be the following times?

Well, essentially what we do is this: Introduce the original source (Michael Major) and explain to the reader that the original source is quoting from a source (Luta) that they (Major) have cited within their own text. It's a little daunting at first, but if you think about it, it's not that hard. I'll post an example from one of my own papers:

Ragan paraphrases Fredrick Asals, explaining that “her ‘prophetic vision’ is one of stark extremes: ‘all of her protagonists come to one variety or another of that agonizing crux, ‘Jesus or you’” (388).

Here you see that I have noted that Ragan is paraphrasing Fredrick Asals, and then I go about using the quote as it would be cited from Ragan's paper. But, there's another way to go about it. Note this:

Well, as O’Connor points out in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose:
I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. (qtd. in Ragen 387)

Here you can see that rather than explain that Ragen is quoting another source, I went straight to the bibliography Ragen offers at the end of his own essay, and stripped that information, using it as a source in the paper. But, if you notice I put (qtd. in Ragen 387) at the end of the source, signifying that the quote was found in the Ragen essay.

So, either you can explain to the reader that the original author is quoting/paraphrasing another source, and then cite that source as if the reader knows that I'm still talking about Ragen. Or, you can introduce the source being quoted from by the original author as if you actually had that source in hand, and then make a note in the parenthetical citation explaining that this was actually quoted from your original source.

I hope that helps. Sara noted that she was going to post this on the blog as a question, but didn't know how to post directly to the blog without using the comment section. The answer to this riddle is: you can't, unless I have all of you create blogs and then I could add you as contributors to this particular blog. In which case, you could then post directly to the blog without using the comment section. Seeing as how that would be the biggest pain in the ass ever conceived (some of my collegues have spent weeks trying to get their students to make blogs and then sign up for their blog), we should instead use the comment section.

I hope this helps. If not, feel free to leave some questions in the comment section.

The Thesis Statement

Imagine the thesis statement as the heart of your essay, or the backbone, rather. From a thesis statement is presented the opportunity to reveal your sentiment about the topic at hand, and the chance to reveal your argument to the reader. So what is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement is sometimes one, sometimes several sentences which explain to the reader both your opinion on and how you intend to approach the matter. For example, after a brief introduction to the Topic (Orwell's Argument in Relation to Society Today), one might offer this as a final word in the introduction of the essay:

Nevertheless, it is plainly obvious that with the changes in information technology today, Orwell's original argument has entirely different implications, both for society and the individual today.

Though this statement is itself a bit vague, it does open up for the writer, a chance to explicate further, two subjects: the implication of Orwells argument for contemporary society, and the implication of Orwells argument for the individual--both of which can be approached from the angle that the information age changes Orwell's arguments a bit. (Those things we talked about on Tuesday).

I think this would be the perfect opportunity for some of you to (comment) post what YOU think is your thesis statement and open the discussion up to whether or not they are advantageous for you as a writer.

Well, Well...

Our upstairs neighbor and his drunk girlfriend blasted some of that great 60's music (while singing along with it) until 3 am. So, I'm sitting here at 9:00 blasting some Leftover Crack, the most raucous punk I could find in my collection. And while I'm at it, I thought I'd go ahead and clarify some stuff here:

People are still emailing me with proposals, and that's fine. I'm guessing the reason people are having such a problem with this assignment is its openness. Really what I was doing with this was asking you to craft your own essay assignment using Orwell's ideas as a basis. His ideas are there. They are important. What can we do with them to show people something unique about language today?

I'll get to posting about a thesis statement in a little while. This music is so loud I can hardly hear myself think.