Secondary sources are not required or permitted for this assignment. It is worth 10% of your final grade in this course.
Choose one of the passages below and prepare an analysis of it. Your analysis should explore and explain the meaning and significance of the passage. Be careful not to impose on the passage, though.
Your analysis, or exegesis, should explain the passage, not pass moral judgment on it. Explain what you think the author means, not how you feel about the author’s meaning.
Consider the following questions:
What is the genre of the text (e.g., poetry, essay, novel, etc)? How does that genre affect the meaning?
What are the major themes and meanings of the work as a whole? How does this passage contribute to them? Does it complicate or refine those themes and meanings? How?
What does the passage tell us about the characters involved? If applicable, which characters are speaking?
What is the significance of this particular passage?
Does the passage contain allusions to other texts? How do those allusions contribute to our reading of the passage? Does it contain assumptions which influence our understanding of the themes and meaning of the larger work?
Your response should be not more than 2 pages in length (600-700 words), so you will have to consider carefully what the most important aspects of the passage are.
You cannot explain everything, so focus on what you see as the most significant aspects of its meaning, and explain them.
Although secondary sources are not permitted, please include a bibliography which identifies the edition of the text which you are using in Chicago Style.
