English 1020, Section 024

Instructor Julianne Newmark

Final Paper Assignment

Due: Friday 8 December

In this final five-page paper, you will be required to reflect on your understanding of the material we have covered this term. You are free to choose any one author and write a comprehensive investigation of the ways in which that author used writing as a means of advancing him or herself. This “advancement,” however, is a tricky term.

For Virginia Woolf, writing allowed her a certain liberty to explore intellectual ideas and creative impulses. Yet, she already had some of the financial resources necessary to accomplish her goals. Frederick Douglass, on the author hand, had no financial resources. All he had was his intellect and ambition. We have studied many authors other than Woolf and Douglass, including Zitkala-Sa, Anne Frank, Anton Chekhov, and D.H. Lawrence. I would like you to choose one author, or one text, in which writing, according to you, is the most important catalyst for change, either in the life of the author or in the circumstances discussed in the text (as would be the case in “The Letter”).

So, your job is to figure out how and why writing matters. By staying closely focussed on one text or one author, you should be able to draw from our discussions and craft a solid and coherent argument supporting a point you introduce at the beginning of your essay.

A draft of this five-page paper is due on Wednesday, 29 November. Please do not include a title page; the format is the same as all of your previous papers. Also, be sure to note that you will have to present a brief version of this paper to the class. These presentations will occur on Wednesday, 6 December and Friday, 8 December.

Good luck and start writing and thinking today!