Optional opportunity for earning substitute credit for
either Writing Assignment #1
or Writing Assignment #2
or both

If you want to improve your score on either of the 20-point writing assignments you have submitted so far, you may do so by submitting one or more essays.  The same standards will apply.  You may find it useful to use the checklist for an essay in progress.


(1)  If you are submitting a substitute paper for Writing Assignment #1 or #2, it is due under my office door (Denison 109) by 5:00 p.m. today.  (If you are submitting substitutes for BOTH writing assignments, the second will be due on Friday of this week.)

The subject of this essay is T. Coraghessan Boyle's story Greasy Lake" (pp. 111-119).

Before you read the story, collect your thoughts about the general agenda of curiosity you should be bringing to bear on any story.  What are the general questions about plot structure (18), characterization (90), point of view (53-54), setting (135-36), possible symbolic elements (242, 917), etc., that you should be pressing now even in your initial reading?  (The pages I've cited here are good starting points, but it would be obtuse not to be thinking about crises and climax, epiphany, the possibility of foil relationships, etc, just because these concepts don't get mentioned on these particular pages, which assume your familiarity with the concepts laid out in the introductions to the chapters they conclude.)

After reading the story once, re-read it in the light of the questions the editors have provided on p. 119.  You should ask yourself not only what might be said in response to these (on the basis of what facts of the story), but what assumptions must the editors have been bringing to bear on their reading of the story such that these questions occurred to them.  Or, put the other way around:  how does the story indicate to the experienced reader that these questions are relevant to be pursued?

The topic is:  The story is told from the first-person participant point of view.  Your job in the essay is to assess the character of the narrator.  What is the evidence (tone, style, commentary) that the values and personality of the central character have radically changed since the time of the events he tells us of.  Note that this is logically a comparison/contrast task.  (One of the questions you might take up would be:  what do we infer to be his motivation for telling the story?)  An issue you will want to address somewhere in the course of your essay is whether, all things considered, we are to take the speaker as a reliable narrator.  (Your position on this shouldn't be your central point, but it should show up somewhere in the course of your overall analysis.)

Before beginning your draft, you should refresh your acquaintance with the standards for evaluating essays will apply.  As your draft takes shape, you may find it useful to use the checklist for an essay in progress.

Faculty Senate regulations require me to bring your attention to the provisions of the KSU Honor System.


(2)  If you are submitting a substitute paper for BOTH Writing Assignment #1 AND #2, the second of these is due under my office door (Denison 109) by 5:00 p.m. today.  (The first will already have been submitted on Monday of this week.)

The subject of this essay is Kate Chopin's story "The Storm" (pp. 95-99).

Before you read the story, collect your thoughts about the general agenda of curiosity you should be bringing to bear on any story.  What are the general questions about plot structure (18), characterization (90), point of view (53-54), setting (135-36), possible symbolic elements (242, 917), etc., that you should be pressing now even in your initial reading?  (The pages I've cited here are good starting points, but it would be obtuse not to be thinking about crises and climax, epiphany, the possibility of foil relationships, etc, just because these concepts don't get mentioned on these particular pages, which assume your familiarity with the concepts laid out in the introductions to the chapters they conclude.)

After reading the story once, re-read it in the light of the questions the editors have provided on p. 99.  You should ask yourself not only what might be said in response to these (on the basis of what facts of the story), but what assumptions must the editors have been bringing to bear on their reading of the story such that these questions occurred to them.  Or, put the other way around:  how does the story indicate to the experienced reader that these questions are relevant to be pursued?

The topic of this essay requires you to synthesize a series of insights you will have arrived at in the course of formulating answers to the questions on p. 99.  How do setting and plot work reinforce each other in such a way as to convey Chopin's attitudes towards sex, love, and marriage?

Before beginning your draft, you should refresh your acquaintance with the standards for evaluating essays will apply.  As your draft takes shape, you may find it useful to use the checklist for an essay in progress.


Faculty Senate regulations require me to bring your attention the following statement: 

Fall semester 1999 marked the beginning of Kansas State University's undergraduate Honor System. The basic difference between the new Honor System and the previous method of adjudicating instances of academic dishonesty is that students will hold majority representation on Hearing Panels, whereas in the previous system, hearing panels were made up entirely of faculty and administrators. This significant change gives students ownership of the effectiveness of the Honor System and a reason to help protect the integrity of our University.

It is expected in all academic work in this class that all work be done individually by you. Do not collaborate on any academic work unless specifically approved by your instructor.

On all assignments, examinations, or other course work undertaken by undergraduate students, the following pledge is implied, whether or not it is stated: "On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work."

For more information, please visit the Honor System web page at:  http://www.ksu.edu/Honor

On this assignment, you are authorized to discuss any topic or story with any other student enrolled in the class.  You are not to use any library materials, or any materials available on the Web, except for ones assigned in this course.  All drafts of your essay, however, are to be exclusively your own writing, except that you are encouraged to read the next-to-last draft of your essay to someone else, aloud, for the purpose of discovering spots where syntax or logical coherence needs repairing.


  Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.  Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

      Contents copyright © 2000 by Lyman A. Baker

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

      This page last updated 11 April 2000.