Essay 3 -- English 111, E9
Professor Rob Brazeau

Write a 1250 word essay, due February 15th, on one of the following topics.  This essay is worth 20% of your term work.  On February 10th bring a draft copy of your essay to exchange with a member of your class.  

1) Discuss the representation of family and community in MacLeod’s “The Boat.” To what extent is the relationship between the protagonist and his father hampered by the community’s expectations?  Are there any ways in which community is shown in a positive way in the story?

2) W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of William Butler Yeats” is an elegy (a poem that commemorates the death of a person).  However, Auden is using the occasion of Yeats’s death to make arguments about the importance of poetry in a world that seems to ignore it.  Discuss the poetic devices (symbol, image, figurative language like simile and  metaphor, etc.) that Auden uses in this poem and consider how they contribute to the overall argument that he offers here.

3) Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” has been called “the most mean-spirited poem in the English language” (Fogel).  Focusing on the harshness of the language that Plath employs in this poem, offer a discussion of the over-arching social and political point that the poet is making about the relationship between the genders.  For this topic, you will want to discuss both the father-daughter relationship and the husband-wife relationship referenced later in the poem.

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	Checklist

-devise an ORIGINAL TITLE for your essay that includes the title of the work on which your paper focuses.

-after careful consideration and brainstorming on the topic, develop an ARGUMENT that addresses the topic you have chosen.  DO NOT SUMMARIZE THE PLOT.

-DO NOT RESTATE or REWORD the assigned topic in your essay or its title.

-your introduction must have a THESIS STATEMENT that clearly indicates the focus of your essay or its ARGUMENT, and its MAIN POINTS.

-SUPPORT your interpretations and arguments with QUOTATIONS from the text.