Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles

Hound paper steps. Step this week: using your discussions and your worksheet to start constructing your own argument about the novella. “Your own argument” means the thing you would like to choose to look at closely to teach us something at work in the novel.
You have done the Hound worksheet and sent it to me so I can see that you did it. (If you haven’t, send it now.)
For this paper, you are working to develop your own complex idea (complex=more than one piece). In your worksheet, you chose one element of the novella and took it through the 5 steps to see all the ways you could talk about its importance to the novel.
In your great Haunting discussions (what is really haunting this text), you had terrific conversations that brought pieces together: “Oh, you’re right! Even Stapleton’s violence could be seen as a form of entitlement because…” This is the work of a good scholarly paper.
If you liked what you worked with in your Hound worksheet, keep that. That becomes a rough skeleton structure of your paper (with one more piece I’m about to throw in below, like the technical challenge on the Great British Baking Show or Project Runway).
If you don’t like what you chose to work with on your worksheet--if you realized it wouldn’t take you anywhere or if you just don’t want to write about, then choose a new element, but still realize that what you did is a paper outline of sections with real ideas in them and even a way to start to structure a thesis.
Starting to move toward designing your argument: this week and next.
Layer 1: Your piece you choose or chose
In any good essay, you are opening ideas up, showing us connections at work. So let’s say you are working with nature, showing us, for instance, how nature is contaminated by the haunted estate, which demonstrates the danger and destructive nature of the estate itself. First, notice that I had to choose what I was saying nature is doing in the novella. I believe images of nature demonstrate the contaminating power of the rotting estate. I could also say nature is shown to endure beyond the human, which emphasizes the way in which human social experiments are temporary, etc. So even though I chose “nature,” I still have to figure out all the things I think the presence of nature is doing in the text. Remember? Once we have to bring in verbs, or figure out how something is present in a text, what function it has, how it maps on to the ideas--then we are really creating an argument.
Layer 2: For everyone, here is the additional piece I want you to work with in this essay.
In any good argument with scaffolding and real ideas at work you are opening up ideas (like when we talked about Study in Scarlet even opening up the possibility that murdering two people was perhaps just. Right? And I said, that alone is a powerful thing to teach about this story). But you as a writer still want to feel you “land” somewhere. I emphasize opening your writing up to get you out of reductive templates. But if an argument feels too open, you don’t feel you are actually saying anything. Right? So now we put it back together and build strong complex argument that is your own. For this essay, as a helpful building block step and as a challenge, both, I give you your landing. And then you need to decide how you are getting there. This novella is about the violent nature of certain forms of entitlement in outdated systems of power. Period. This land is haunted by a rotting aristocracy that is meant to give way and die, but one character holds on it, and the particular presentation(s) of his violence(s) demonstrate(s) the danger of holding on to that belief system and trying to drag it, a ghost, into the modern. “Aristocracy,” “violent/old forms of entitlement,” “succession,” “bloodline”-- these ideas worked their way in to your excellent discussion (and I drew them out and amplified them).
So your work in this paper to create architecture and real scaffolding, is that you get to choose an element you are looking at closely and mapping and tracing (your worksheet, things like nature, marriage, etc.). Then you HAVE to decide and teach how it can be connected to those ideas in hot pink above. (You don’t have to name them all. Just the main idea of it. I am giving a lot of language there, all around the same idea).
Note: If you choose that main (hot pink) idea already for your worksheet, as a few of you did: great. That’s great. Just choose some ways you want to show that this is what is really being mapped through this story. Choose things you want to look at and think about how to bring that together.
IMPORTANT:
THIS, ITSELF, IS GOING TO FEEL VERY HARD. It is like a brainteaser. It is the jigsaw puzzle. You are seeing the pieces floating around over your head (or like the crazy flying keys in that Harry Potter scene), you are seeing the components all floating around, and you are choosing which you are going to choose and how you want to teach them as being connected. You will have to choose your main ideas, but remember that some of the most important work of good persuasive analytical writing is choosing the right TINY words. Those are the words that show the relationships between things.
So I want to make very clear, in a helpful, supportive way so that you don’t feel lost or crazy: this stage is confusing and should hurt your brain because you are figuring out how you want to work with these pieces. And because you will draft and still be finetuning and figuring out. We make room for process with this paper. It feels that way because of the brainwork of formulating ideas, even if we were in our normal setting. "Formulating" means figuring out what it is exactly that you want to say and then figuring out what words will hold that from your brain to give it others in a way they will be able to understand. THAT is the actual work of scholarship. That first piece. That is why we often write a very rough placeholder intro and then go back and write it for real once we know what we are saying.
When you are ready, you will start running thoughts and ideas by me and I will answer you and work with you on them to work on formulating your own ideas. (And I will have your worksheet to look at for reference if it is still relevant to what you want to do.)
So your Hound paper “assignment” is absorbing this. Then writing on your own, drafting, thinking, with these pieces in mind.

Idea Generator Worksheet  

for Hound of the Baskervilles (and for papers in general) 

INSTRUCTIONS. I only want you to look at one question at a time. I don’t want you to look ahead. So look at #1 (below) and write.  That one might be very direct and obvious; don't overthink it.  It might be like “a curse” or “a hellhound,” etc.  Then look at #2 and think for a bit and then write. Then #3 and write.

I want you to spend at least 40 minutes on it to give yourself time to think and come up with things you might not think of immediately.  #3, although it seems like a list, should be spelled out in full sentences and prose. It can be terrible prose! But really write your answers. (The one exception: your answer to #1 might be very short. I am not asking you to summarize the whole story. This can be the obvious answer.) Otherwise, give me some thoughtful stuff. This is not a test! It is for you. It’s fine to your use text.

I assume most of you will do this within the typed form and then save and send it back to me.  But you are also welcome to print and handwrite and then send me pictures of the pages.  If we did this all together as a class activity, I would hand it out and have you handwrite in our room or outside under a tree and then show me quickly.  And you would keep it.   Handwriting can open up brainstorming in a different way. But totally your choice. 

Note: I gave you all this room for #1 only so you couldn’t see #2.  #1 might be one superficial sentence, as I said.  Then you can scroll to the next page for the next question.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is about

[Ok, #2 can still be short, but this is a more in-depth idea/thing. Go down one layer.  If you feel you already got to something really good or important in #1, as opposed to “a family curse” or “demonic hell hound,” you can keep your #1 and bring it here.]

2.   But! It is also about this thing that doesn’t seem as obvious. It is about:

Question #3. This is where most of your time will go.

5 (FIVE) things I’d like to look at more closely in the novella to explore and teach my idea of one thing this novella is actually “about” (your #2).   And at least one of these five things below does not seem directly related, but I will explain how it feels related to me or it could be connected. 

For each of the five, you need two parts:

1. The thing (set of images, idea the text seems to express, representation of character, element of narration, pattern of language, etc.) or passage
2. How it helps teach my idea (what job will it do in my paper)

Do that 4 more times. Let me know which one/s you are using for your “does not seem obviously related” connection.  So sort of like a discussion: you will name an idea/place in the text.  Then under it, you will teach it and talk about how it relates to your idea.  Then you will go on to the second of those.

Example: Maybe in your #2 you said, “but it is also about the enduring power of nature.”  Now you will find five things that COULD be a part of explaining how that is a part of this novella.  This is brainstorming.  You aren’t contracted to then use the five things. 

Common question/answer: If you named more than one thing in question 2, choose one to follow through here in depth.

Common question/answer: If you feel you named something interesting already in question 1, feel free to choose that.