Each student must include authors read in class and you may want to include some professional criticism to help support or argue against ideas. Remember to take a critical outlook on the readings and use your best writing strategies to make sure the essay and paragraphs are well organized and fully developed. State an appropriate thesis with significance and topic sentences that develop and argue the thesis.

This is a 4 – 6 page essay on a specific short story(ies) assigned for reading and study in this unit.
Each student must include authors read in class and you may want to include some professional criticism to help support or argue against ideas. Remember to take a critical outlook on the readings and use your best writing strategies to make sure the essay and paragraphs are well organized and fully developed. State an appropriate thesis with significance and topic sentences that develop and argue the thesis. Include in the discussion reactions to the author’s ideas and reflect upon those ideas to explore opinions. Furthermore, discuss and develop how the author (s) use the literary elements to enhance our understanding of the author’s purpose (s). Support the ideas with textual details from the readings as evidence (develop quote sandwiches).
To help develop and focus the essay, here are some suggested topics:
1. Compare how an author or two who, in your view, shares, to some degree, a common point of view about life in America. State how far they agree or disagree and analyze the individual techniques that each uses to convey that point of view.
2. Analyze a story or two as a literary work. This essay can focus on style, plot and structure, characterization, development of theme, tone, setting, use or misuse of myth, identity, etc. Determine what the artistic purpose of the work is and how well the author uses the literary elements to enhance or achieve that purpose.
3. Discuss the portrayal of women in at least TWO authors.
4. Write an analysis of a certain theme in the work of TWO authors. Compare and contrast them to make some kind of evaluation.
5. Choose one or two authors that develop the personality of its narrator. In an essay, describe the personality of the narrator and discuss how the author conveys that personality to the reader. Support and illustrate. Discuss the element of characterization and the significance of creating the characters as such.
6. A sense of place is a prominent theme in several short stories. Explore and examine how the places we grow up shape us as people. How is identity created by where we live? Explore values and beliefs while looking at the role setting plays in development of identity.
7. One can argue that many authors are on a journey in search of something. Identify and describe a journey with all of its ups and downs. In the end, come to some conclusion about the journey and the search: What is gained? What is lost? Is it worth it? Select particular literary elements that enable readers to determine the positive and negative outcomes/consequences of the identified journey
8. Reexamine one of the stories and write an essay indicating what actions and objects seem symbolic in their suggestions. How do these actions point toward any central theme in the story?