Writing Assignment

on

Susan Glaspell's Trifles

 

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Explain as fully as you can the range of significance that Glaspell has built into her choice of title for this play. 

Here are some questions you might explore by way of brainstorming to turn up relationships that might eventually find a place in your paper.  (Notice that these are not the sorts of questions it makes sense to consult the library about.)

• How many different things are we introduced to that qualify as "trifles"?
• How many different ways might it be important to pay attention to "trifles"?
• How is the concept of point of view imbedded in the sense of the term "trifle"?
• What ironies surround this notion, in the course of the play?

But remember:  your job is to produce an analytical essay, not a list (and still less a list of lists, which is all you will end up with if you just summarize what you end up with as answers to the above questions). 

The topic at hand calls for "discursive organization."  That is, it asks you to methodically develop some thesis.  (This means that the overall organizational strategy of your final product will be "expository/argumentative":  you need to discover some appropriate logical classification of your claims into means and ends.  You will therefore need to ask of every assertion in your paper:  what serves this, and what does it in turn serve?  The sole claim that is ultimately served by every other (through some "chain of command," but does not in turn serve some other (at least not within your essay) is your essay's thesis.  Those claims that are not themselves backed up by others, but only serve to clarify or demonstrate some other claim "up the line" are your "fundamental evidence."  These need to have the properties that qualify for them to be assigned this role.  That is, they need to be clear and not disputable by the audience you are addressing in your essay as a whole.

Consider the audience for this essay to be not the instructor of the course but someone with the following properties:

• She has read the play a couple of times.
• But these readings happened a couple of weeks ago.
• She has a pretty good memory for detail.
• But she has not had an opportunity to reflect systematically on what she has read in this case.
• She is completely open-minded and curious -- willing to be convinced of anything, no matter how strange-sounding at the outset, provided only that an adequate case be made.
• She has a no-nonsense mind:  she is quick to notice inconsistencies, begged questions, ambiguity and vagueness, and to call them to account.  In assessing whether an adequate case for something has been made, she is highly demanding in all the appropriate ways.

Your job, then, is to meet the needs and demands of this reader.

Given the terms of the assignment (in bold italics, back at the start), not only does your paper have to be organized around a thesis, but your thesis has to be of a certain sort.  Its job is to capture some insight about (1) how the play leads the audience (2) to notice something important about something.

• For example, it might be about how people's assumptions (conscious or unconscious) fit people (folks in general -- those presented in the play, but also, implicitly, the likes of us, the audience) or hinder them, from noticing what they ought (in some important sense or senses of "ought") to notice.

Before deciding that you have in hand a final draft, you will want to review the general instructions on writing assignments.

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

      Contents copyright © 1998 by Lyman A. Baker. 

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

   This page last updated Sunday, February 20, 2000.