“The Cask of Amontillado” Poe — CHARACTER ANALYSIS

 Character Analysis: In short fiction, as in most fiction, the characters are oftentimes the richest representations of the author’s imagination. Major and minor characters are motivated by desire and belief as well as crippled by weakness and human frailty. These are the personages that give a text its essence. For your first essay, you will analyze the character(s) of one of the designated texts and write a thoughtful analysis of their connection to themes, other characters, symbols, beliefs, or values of the text. These are only a few examples, but you are not limited to these concepts. You may choose to compare two characters within the same text, or you may choose to compare two characters from different texts. You may analyze a character’s conflict within a text, or you may scrutinize his desires, beliefs, or values within the text. You may also consider his or her connection to the society that he or she lives in. In this case, you may analyze how poverty or racism or sexism affects him or her within the text. You may also choose to analyze how other characters affect a certain character within the story. Whatever topic you choose, be creative and be sure you can fully develop and analyze your points. Story Selections “Roman Fever” Wharton “The Cask of Amontillado” Poe “Barn Burning” Faulkner Essay Structure Introduction: Your introduction should give your audience proper background information on the text(s) and prepare them for what you will be analyzing in your essay. It should also include a creative and specific thesis that states your claim about the character(s) that you will be discussing. Thesis: Your thesis should be one statement that makes a creative and argumentative claim about the characters that you are analyzing. It should be located in the last part of your introduction, preferably in the last sentence. Body: Your body should develop and further support the main idea of your essay. You should have at least five body paragraphs with paragraphs II, III, and IV focusing on claims that support your thesis. You should have at least one parenthetical citation in each body paragraph to support your claim. Each paragraph should contain at least 8 complex sentences. Conclusion: Your conclusion should give a general overview of your main points while explaining what your reader should gain or take away from your argument. Basic Essay Requirements  Essay should be MLA formatted including the heading and page numbers  Essay should be double-spaced; 12 point Times New Romans Font  Minimum 2 complete pages for essay with minimum of eight sentences per paragraph  Work Cited page required Source Requirements  Minimum of three sources for essay (one from your text; two from scholarly articles from AVL only)  Do not use any dot com, dot net, or dot gov cites for your sources; they must be scholarly  All sources must be properly MLA formatted using proper parenthetical documentation  No more than 20% of your essay should be quoted from a source  Do not forget your in-text citations as they will count off many points if left off your final draft.  Never use Wikipedia, Bookrags, Enotes, blogs or sites with pre-prepared research and essays. If in doubt, do not hesitate to ask me!  Very Important: Never use 1st person or 2nd person pronouns, such as I, me, my, mine, you, your, etc. in your essays. Also, never use contractions, such as can’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t, etc. This will be the only time I give you this reminder, and it applies to ALL assigned papers!