Source : “Hills Like White Elephants ” by Ernest Hemingway
For this essay, you will analyze one of the five selected short stories in order to illustrate how a Specific Theme is developed in that short story. Together with your final draft, an outline of your essay, and a self-evaluation of the writing process (the latter you will write in class). No outside sources are required for this assignment, although you may consult critical interpretations of your short story. If you do so, you must cite all sources and include the article(s) on your Works Cited page.
You will discover your interpretation of your chosen story’s theme by analyzing the story’s dominant literary elements. In presenting evidence for your interpretation, you will focus on the three most relevant literary elements. Incorporate quotations from and paraphrases of the short story to support your ideas, citing all literary evidence with parenthetical in-text citations in MLA style.
Please remember that theme is NOT plot; NEITHER is it the topic or subject of the story. Your task is to arrive at an understanding of the author’s message by analyzing the story’s literary elements. Your thesis will then assert that message, and your body paragraphs will provide evidence for your understanding of how the message is revealed to the reader by the author. Think about the following:
• What is the dominant conflict, issue or question this story presents?
• What adage, moral, or cliché (such as “appearances can be deceiving”) does the story illustrate?
• How do certain passages point toward the theme?
• How do literary elements such as title, dialogue, names, characters, actions, setting, description, tone, point of view, symbols, etc., direct the reader to the author’s message?
• How do repetitious words and/or images point toward the theme? In other words, how does the author deliver his/her message? How have you, the reader, been able to determine the theme?
To review what is expected of you: Your introduction should introduce the story, its author and the importance of its theme in a manner that grabs the attention of your reader. Your thesis should be a finely crafted sentence asserting the theme of your story and incorporating in some way the “roadmap” for your body paragraphs. Your body paragraphs should each begin with a carefully crafted topic sentence and must contain specific supporting evidence for the theme you have chosen to illustrate. Each body paragraph should focus on the importance of a particularly dominant literary element and its connection to the theme you are illustrating. Evidence in your body paragraphs should consist of quotations from the short story, each documented using MLA style. Your conclusion should explore the ways in which the author’s message, your chosen theme, reinforces or challenges your observations of life around you. This final paragraph must address the significance of the theme you have illustrated and why it matters to a twenty-first century reader.
Cite short stories by page number, for example: (Greenberg 33). Your Works Cited page will contain a single entry for the story you have analyzed, unless you have used outside source material. If so, there should be an entry for each source you quoted or paraphrased in the writing of this essay.
No. of Pages: 2
