3 pages. This paper represents the first significant step toward writing critical analysis. Compare and/or contrast any two short stories considered in class. For example, analyze a character, event, or a literary device employed by Tim O’Brien’s “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” (i.e., irony, foreshadowing, etc.) and compare and/or contrast that element with a similar (or dissimilar) element in another short story. This paper is somewhat a group exercise in that we have previously discussed these stories in class.
In addition to your own reading, you will cite at least one secondary source provided in class and an additional via the MCC databases. These secondary sources may address a social, political, and/or economic issue that casts light on your analysis of the short story. The purpose of this assignment is to engage specific detail, abstract thought, and formal structure guidelines developed during the writing of the first paper and apply those lessons toward explicit critical analysis of literary work. This assignment may undergo a number of drafts.