Literature Essay based on stories on the American Dream

Write an original and rewarding analysis of the significance of a textual echo that you find particularly interesting in one of the following texts: Zone One or The Crying of Lot 49. Choose a fresh textual echo that particularly intrigues you, and analyze how the author uses it to develop an interesting claim or insight about a specific keyword (or intersection of keywords). You must come up with a fresh thesis, which should emerge from your textual analysis, not the other way around. (For a definition of a “fresh” thesis, see Echo Analysis 2.) Your thesis should identify what the author is saying or showing about the keyword (or intersection of keywords), and it should specify how the staging of the textual echo conveys this. Your thesis should be 1-3 sentences. Underline this thesis. For this assignment you do not need an introductory paragraph, so your thesis can be elsewhere, even in your concluding paragraph. Think carefully about the following questions before you write. For more detail, see Echo Analysis 2. How do the paired passages constitute a textual echo? What keyword (or intersection of keywords) does this echo evoke or call our attention to? What is the author saying or showing about the keyword (or intersection of keywords) by staging this echo the way he or she does? Your echo analysis should have at least four paragraphs: Devote at least one paragraph to each passage, moment, or scene in the textual echo. Each of these paragraphs should briefly describe the context in which the passage, moment, or scene occurs (1-2 sentences) and clarify how the passage, moment, or scene presents a specific way of viewing or thinking about a keyword or intersection of keywords (4-6 sentences). Devote another paragraph to clarifying how these specific ways of viewing or thinking about the keyword(s) combine to form the analysis or argument the author is offering about the keyword(s). Make sure to specify how one part of the echo builds on, refines, or redirects what the other part is saying or showing about the keyword. Create a brief concluding paragraph (3-4 sentences) that summarizes your major claim and reviews the interpretive payoff of your analysis. Be sure to clarify what interpretive insight (about a feature of the novel, the textual echo, or the keyword[s] ) you’ve offered that readers of the novel would likely not have noticed on a first reading.