Posted: April 14th, 2022

ESSAY 2 SCAFFOLD/STRUCTURE

ESSAY 2 SCAFFOLD/STRUCTURE

Your essay should examine one text and how it expresses “the culture and values of the time and place.”

Think about a structure (somewhat) like the following:

Opening paragraph

Provide a historical gloss and/or identify a leading concern/issue of the time period.

Introduce your chosen author and text and establish the relationship to this

concern/issue. Does the author embody the values or work against them? Does

the author exemplify the culture or question it?

First body paragraph

Establish a relevant claim about how the text engages with “the culture and values of its

time and place.”

Think about a particular characteristic/idea/concern/issue of the age.

Find a relevant passage from the text and explore how it communicates with or engages

with the concern/issue you’ve established in the opening paragraph. In other words,

illustrate the claim you make by examining the textual evidence that supports the claim.

You could quote from an outside reading source, a critic, who provides an enlightening

connection or insight to your claim.

Second body paragraph

Establish a new claim about the text’s engagement with the culture and its values OR

deepen the initial claim made in the first body paragraph.

Find another relevant passage from the text that supports your claim and examine how it

illuminates your claim.

Quote a secondary source in order to engage with and discuss its connection to your topic

sentence’s claim.

Third body paragraph

Take what you have so far and draw a parallel to modern times. In other words, explain

how your chosen text works to reveal an ongoing emerging identity within American

thought. Perhaps make a connection to a later text as a way of discussing how the

issue/concern/characteristic is still being developed, challenged, deepened, subverted, or

improved upon.

Quote from a secondary source in order to engage with its connection to your argument.

Conclusion

Do what you normally do in concluding paragraphs, i.e. synthesize some thread that has

now emerged from having written the previous paragraphs. Communicate a central truth

or idea that has been discovered along the way. Drop in that one amazing quotation

(either from the text or from a critic’s analysis of the text) that seems to sum up

everything. Leave your reader with a good insight.

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SCAFFOLD/STRUCTURE ESSAY 2

Your paper should look at a single text and how it expresses “the culture and values of the time and place.”

Consider the following structure (in some ways):

The first paragraph

Give a historical gloss and/or identify a major concern/issue of the era.

Introduce your chosen author and text, and explain how they are related.

concern/issue. Does the author embody the values or work against them? Does

the author exemplify the culture or question it?

First body paragraph

Establish a relevant claim about how the text engages with “the culture and values of its

time and place.”

Think about a particular characteristic/idea/concern/issue of the age.

Find a relevant passage from the text and explore how it communicates with or engages

with the concern/issue

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