Essay ( 2 page and half )

Grendel Essay Directions: Grendel Synthesis Paper for English IV, Most or all chapters

Requirements: 2 or more pages (single or 1.5 spaced) about a central idea making thoughtful connections to 2 or more texts both explicitly in the form of short quotes and implicitly.

Your paper must have a question that is discussed.
Your paper upon the first draft will have a claim.
Think of claims the way you think of passwords. There are weak, moderate, and strong ones. You would ultimately like a strong claim, that may or may not answer your question, but rather examines multiple possibilities.

You may want to consider an argument structure that is attributed to Hegel:
THESIS
ANTITHESIS
SYNTHESIS
More on this later, or feel free to ask Google.

Grading Criteria: See English IV Assessment Standards for gradients, but the topics are as follows:
*Analysis of Text
*Evaluation of Text
*Employment of language to further meaning
*Personal connections (actual personal ones or in the abstract)
*Connections among texts

Texts used so far can include but are not limited to:
“Constantly Risking Absurdity” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“Thesaurus” by Billy Collins
Grendel Chapter 1-12
“Things”
What is Truth video clip (Next week)
Poems and actual speech from Stephen Burt’s TED Talk “Why People Need Poetry”
Poems and speech from Billy Collins’ TED Talk “Everyday Moments Caught in Time”
“Liberal Education and the Art of Becoming Unstuck” by Christopher Nelson
Letter to Susie West by John Gardner
Myth of Sisyphus (coming up)
Any works you read by any philosophers including Allegory of the Cave by Plato

Thoughts about topics
You may choose any question that has been raised, or:
What are the larger questions that we are asked to consider by Gardner, Ferlinghetti, and the other poets so far?

Also-think of the questions asked on the sheet: “Of Monsters and Men” about monsters, risk, art, the power we have or do not have over our own lives, and if life is like a circle or not.