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4 pages/≈1100 words
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Literature & Language
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English (U.S.)
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Topic:

The Dangers of Blindly Following Traditions

Essay Instructions:

English 112 Final paper, Them analysis For your final paper, select ANY work that has been assigned in English 112 and write a 4-6 page (of at least 1000 words) analysis paper focusing on the theme of the work. A theme is the main message/claim/moral that an author is making about a work. In trying to find a work’s theme, ask yourself this key question: What is this story trying to teach readers? Remember: There is not a right or wrong answer to this question! A theme is a reader’s interpretation of the messages present in the story… This means there might be multiple lessons! Your job is to pick the one that you feel is most important and present an argument that shows how this theme exists in the story. You may use any material from the three short papers you have written thus far in class. In fact, I encourage you to do so, and frequently, I have made comments in the margins of your papers while I graded them, suggesting areas where you might add more, clarify, or fine tune your ideas if you were to turn that into your final paper. Obviously, this is a longer paper, so you should certainly aim to add a great deal more than just what your short paper said. Further to that though, this paper is an analysis of theme, so your focus will be slightly different than it was for any of the short papers. You should still be able to use what you have written already and simply add more and edit what you have to fit the goal here: to explore the theme of a literary work. A few things you will need to include for this paper… This is a formal essay, so you need a thesis statement that makes a claim about the theme of the literary work you will be discussing. You will also need to place this thesis in an introduction that grabs your reader’s attention, introduces your topic, and presents your thesis. You will support your thesis with 3-5 body paragraphs that do the following: • Make a statement that helps prove the thesis • Find 3-5 pieces of evidence from the text to support that claim • Explain why this evidence is significant. (This is where you analyze… this is where you answer the question: “so what?”) Your paper should also have a conclusion that sums up what you have written, restates your thesis, and leaves your reader thinking (answer this question: why does this paper matter?). When using outside source material, make sure you are citing using the proper MLA standards and including a Works Cited page (even if the only work you are citing is the poem or story you are writing about). Please consult the Purdue OWL for help with citation: https://owl(dot)english(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/resource/747/01/ While I have not been too picky about citations in your previous essays, I will be taking them into account on this final essay, so please make sure you are citing correctly. Other things to consider for this paper: Your job here is NOT to judge the story, its characters, or the lesson itself. If you are merely responding to the story (ie. “The Lottery” is barbaric, the mother in “Girl” is judgmental) that is not true analysis; that is response writing. Try to keep yourself from judging the work, and instead, focus on what it means and how it comes to mean this. How YOU personally have responded to the work – and by that I mean whether or not you liked it and what you thought of it – is not how others will likely find value in it. Think of when someone tells you whether you should or shouldn’t like something based on what they think of it. For example, if you ask someone how they liked a movie and they say “It was boring. You won’t like it”; that is making an assumption about your reaction. Now, depending on who is saying this, you might take their word for it. However, have you ever been told you wouldn’t like something only to find out that you did later? And weren’t you grateful that you still gave whatever it was a chance? Therefore, don’t tell your readers whether they should or shouldn’t like this work, and resist passing judgment on characters, plot, etc. Instead, show them what they can learn from the story. Give them something that they can’t get from just reading it themselves. Along those same lines, do not just summarize the work and call it a day. If all you are doing is repeating the events of the story, you are summarizing, NOT analyzing. You will need to do some summary throughout your paper, and you will be using facts, details, and quotes from the text itself, but you will use these details to support your own analysis and it will give you more material to work with. A good rule of thumb is to present multiple examples from various areas of the text in each paragraph as support. This way, you are focusing on the examples and what they mean rather than retelling the story itself. Assume your reader has already read the story; they already know the events of the story, the characters, etc. Tell your reader what the story and those events, characters, symbols, etc. mean. Also, something to keep in mind: make sure the bulk of the writing is your own. This means that you should aim to paraphrase details from the text rather than quote them. In most circumstances, quotes should be a sentence long or less (two sentences at most). If you have a quote that is longer, strongly consider paraphrasing (putting it into your own words) instead. The formatting for this paper is as follows: 4-6 pages (which roughly translates to 1000 words at the very minimum), double-spaced, with 12 point standard fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial, etc.), and standard 1 inch margins on all sides. Your name should be on every page. Remember to use spell check and grammar check before turning anything in. Reading aloud yourself, or having a friend (or writing tutor!) read your paper aloud is a fantastic way to catch small errors and edit for clarity. I would like this Them analysis to be done in a short story "The Lottery" By shierly Jackson. I will attach the analytical essay with the professors comment on the short story "The Lottery"

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The Dangers of Blindly Following Traditions
Each society has a conventional way of life. Traditions are a part of society and hence the need to pass them on to generations (Cooray). They give the community a unique identity because they have a symbolic meaning with significant importance. The essence of traditions is to ensure that the young people learn, enjoy and appreciate the society's way of life. Traditions have a special significance because they connect the present with the past (Cooray). However, it is vital to understand that, despite the significance of traditions, the society does not need to conform to outdated practices. As Cooray affirms, individuals must cherish their past, but they must never carry them as a burden into the future (Cooray). People need to do away with traditions that may be destructive for the humanity. Shirley Jackson illustrates the dangers of blindly following traditions in her short story The Lottery.
In The Lottery, the villagers had a tradition of playing lottery. They would perform the lottery every 27 June of every year. It is indeed a tradition since Old man Warner asserts Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery (Cassel)." From the onset, the reader anticipates that it is a typical game where there are winners and losers. The preparations seem harmless and the reader cannot help but conjecture what kind of lottery the villagers would play. The fact that the children are collecting stones does not raise eyebrows since it looks normal. Jackson stresses how the children were collecting stones that would shatter another person's life (Gahr). In this game of lottery, there are no conquerors only losers and the price is life. Only later does the reader realize that the stones are the weapons used for the execution. Thus, the village lottery culminates in murder that is a bizarre ritual. Jackson seems to suggest the dangers posed when people blindly follow traditions (Cassel). Jackson shows the hiccups in the reverence that people have for traditions. Although the villagers do not know the origin of the lottery tradition, they try to preserve it nevertheless without questioning. By blindly accepting the lottery, the villagers embrace ritual murders to comprise part of their town fabric. It is obvious that the villagers feel powerless to change yet no one is forcing them to remain the same. The author asserts, “no one liked to upset even as much tradition…(Cassel)” It is disheartening that Old Man Warner is scared of change since he feels that the villagers may return to a primitive era if they stop holding the lottery. It beats logic that the villagers have come from their work and homes to kill someone and then go back. Worse still, they do not know why they are killing; they are committing murder simply because it is a tradition and hence they find it justifiable.
Jackson seems to send on a message on the need to reason and question before acting. People should not follow traditions blindly (Cassel). The fact that the villagers persecute an individual only because he or she picks the wrong piece of paper shows the villagers' ignorance and one cannot help but question this behavior (Gahr). The elaborate ritual of the lottery is in such a way that all men, women and even children have the same chance of being victims. It implies is that nobody is safe since all families are at risk. The swiftness with which the persecution happens is chilling. Neighbors, friend a...
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