English 111
Dr. Newmark

Essay Two
Draft due: Friday, September 21st
Final draft due: Friday, September 28th

Following the assignment in your textbook on page 239, you will need to write a “position paper that takes a stand” on an issue. Drawing upon some of the discussions we’ve had in class recently, please develop the ideas that you began thinking about in Essay One. Use the background you developed in Essay One, on issues drawn from the either one of the essays “A Backward Glance” or “Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering,” and apply this analysis to Poe’s “The Balloon Hoax.” Choose the essay on which you wrote before. I will explain possible methods in class, so don’t fret if you can’t see any connections now. Your task is to decide upon a specific issue that unites two texts, either Whitman/Poe or Winsor/Poe. Then, you will build an argument.

So, you will begin by summarizing Poe. Next, you will identify a key issue that is significant in Poe’s essay, and for your purposes it must have something to do with:

a) The pertinence (or irrelevance) of American or ”foreign” literature to American culture (since Poe’s essay is an example of American writing). This will be your choice if you plan to refer to Whitman.

or

b) “Science,” or engineering, knowledge and the ways Americans value it as compared to “written” knowledge (if you are going to refer to Winsor). Poe’s essay has everything to do with communicating “science” through writing.

The body of your essay will argue something about what Poe’s essay does in light of one of the above themes. Your argument should make a clear statement, i.e., “Poe’s essay considers ______. Readers should recognize this because ______.” Or, “We can read Poe’s essay as an example of ______. This is significant because ______.” Throughout the body, following this statement, you will give examples to support these claims.

Please stick closely to the description of arguments in the classical style, as Chapter Ten discusses. Follow the instructions in the tan-colored box on page 239. For further information and guidelines on writing an argumentative essay in the classical style, consult pages 271-275.

This essay must be four pages in length. Please quote from your two primary texts in MLA style. Quote from each at least twice and be sure to introduce each one before you quote. Include a Works Cited page.