Before attempting this assignment, make sure you have completed the readings of “Good Country People” In Journal #1, practice using a thesis statement to make an assertion about one of the characters. After your thesis statement, you should have paragraphs which use topic sentences. Under each topic sentence should be evidence examples, quotes, etc.to support the topic sentence and ultimately the thesis statement. Here are some things to think about when analyzing a character: What are the character’s main personality traits? Why did the author give him/her those traits? What is the character’s role in the story? Is he/she
the narrator? The hero? The antagonist? etc. What is the character’s relationship to the other characters? An example of an assertion/thesis statement about a character might look something like this: “The older waiter in Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place” understands the universal need for human compassion and demonstrates his caring response throughout the course of the story.” The rest of the paper would prove, or give evidence, from Hemingway’s story to show exactly how the older waiter understands the need for human compassion and how he demonstrates it in the story. Word count should be posted at the end of the document; you should have at least 300 words. Practice using MLA documentation style by using parenthetical intext citations and a Works Cited page. To cite a story from the Kennedy & Gioia textbook, you’ll treat it as a work in an anthology, which is pattern #36 in the MLA documentation listings in Quick Access. Some sample thesis statements can be found in the Model Essays handout (under Writing About Lit tab). The thesis statements and the topic sentences are italicized in the examples. You will not italicize yours; those are italicized to emphasize what they are