ENGL 2240/British Literature after 1789: Weaver Movie Review Essay
ENGL 2240/British Literature after 1789: Weaver
Writing Exercise 2: Explication (100 points)
Due: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 (See Syllabus for Late Penalties)
Exercise 2
What is explication?
As XJ Kennedy and Dana Gioia[1] explain, when you explicate, you focus on a short passage from a piece of literary writing and work through it carefully, “interpreting it line by line—perhaps even word by word, dwelling on details a casual reader might miss” (Literature, 1385). The goal is to use this careful analysis to make an argument about how a small passage contributes to the meaning of a larger work.
Any student of literature needs to learn how to explicate passages. I recommend that you read Kennedy and Gioia’s discussion of explication before completing this exercise (See Canvas). Then, you should have a good understanding of the basics.
Exercise Instructions:
Please type your answers to the following questions and format the exercise as you formatted exercise #1 (12-point font, etc).
Write in full sentences (where relevant) and be sure to proofread your final draft.
Keep in mind that questions 1-10 are worth 5 points each. Question 11 is worth 10 points. Question 12 is worth 40 points.
Choose a short passage (no more than 5 sentences) from any of the short stories we will have read by October 10. When selecting a passage, look for one that you find important or provocative or difficult. Consider choosing a key scene, an important conversation, or the opening or closing paragraphs of a story. Type and double space this passage.
First, pay attention to what the passage literally says.
Type a list of all the words you do not know. Look them up in The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (To access it, go to the Library homepage; choose “Indexes and Databases”; then, scroll down to the OED.) Type up a summary of the OED’s definition of each word. Focus only on relevant definitions.
Second, analyze how the passage makes this point.
Pay attention to the plot. At what point in the plot does the passage appear? How is it connected to other plot events? Explain.
Identify the characters. Which characters appear in the passage? How do they interact? Explain.
Think about point of view. Are you reading the words of the characters or a narrator? Is the narrator speaking for him/herself or for them? Explain.
Pay special attention to the passage’s style.
Examine word choice (diction): Does the writer use everyday language or something more elevated? Explain, giving examples.
Look for key words. Do any particular words stand out (perhaps because they are repeated or echoed by other words)? Explain, giving examples.
Examine each sentence structure. How many sentences are there in your passage? How many words are in each? Do the sentences seem simple or complicated? Explain.
Think about punctuation. Do you see any interesting punctuation—exclamation points, question marks, parentheses, ellipses, etc.?
Identify figurative language. Does the passage include similes, metaphors, imagery, or other literary devices? Explain, giving examples.
Third, connect this passage to the rest of the story.
Identify at least one other passage in your story the EITHER repeats elements of our passage OR contrasts it in some way. List the page number and the first few words of the passage. Explain the repetition or contrast.
Finally, come to conclusions about why the passage is important.
What larger issues does it illuminate? Does it help you understand why the point of view is effective, or how a character develops, or what the story is saying about its theme, for example? Explain in 250-300 words.
Be sure that you support your points with evidence—with the details that you noticed when you answered the questions above. Your explanation should incorporate quotes from your passage.
Instructor
Course
Date
Review
Introduction
Question 1
The passage appears at the point of the plot where the narrator describes how beautiful the towns and cities are, and then explains a horrifying scene that they saw. The narrator encountered the horrifying scene at the March-Feld where the bodies of horses and men laid dead (Carlyle & Thomas 1055). Further, the author describes the carcasses out of which life had been blown out of that scattered all over the place without being buried.
Question 2
The whole story explains how the government dupes its people by pretending to be building the city while at the same time it destroys the same town. There is a continuous power struggle within the government where it is passed within the same lineage, from father to son. Moreover, the narrator explains how the region under Napoleon that was green and had better dwellings was blown away by gunpowder. Specifically, the story is related to the idea of baptism in the Bible where absolution is granted to those who have been baptized. Therefore, the connection of the passage to the whole story is that irrespective of how the leaders previously deceived their people for personal gain, the same have changed over the years, and currently there is a democracy.
Question 3
The characters in the passage are the government and the public who are the people whom it controls. The relationship between the two characters is that the public depends on the government as it controls every activity within the nation. Contrarily, the government uses its power to manipulate the public for personal gain. Hence, the success of a nation depends on the characters of those who are in authority.
Question 4
The whole story shows the experience that the narrator had regarding the war and other illegal activities that occurred at its time. Therefore, I am reading the words of the narrator and not those of the characters. Further, the narrator speaks for himself since he uses the word ‘I’ throughout the story to show his personal experience of the events that occurred at the time.
Question 5
The narrator uses colloquial diction. The word choice is evident from the long and sophisticated sentence structures used as well as the vocabulary used that is only common in certain regions. For instance, the narrator uses the sentence “Journeyest thou wearing solely, in thy antiquarium fervor” to describe the feeling of people at the time about the problems that they were facing. The words are borrowed from Latin which relates to the language of the people in the region during the period.
Question 6
The key word in the passage is war or violence that was present at the time. The word is supported by the description of the area where the narrator saw the carcasses. Some of the words used to support the presence of war were ‘’dead men and horses,’’ ‘’carcasses on the desert,’’ and ‘’nursery where children would be throttled and tattled.’’ The words describe the horrifying scenes that are seen during the war where people die, and some are tortured (Johnston and John 210). Hence, the key word in the passage is war.
Question 7
The pas...
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