Function Outline Worksheet

As I have emphasized, expository writing at this level must have an open organizational scheme capable of dealing with the complexities of the kind of analysis we have been performing.  Instead of shoehorning our ideas into a static and generally unforgiving structure, we need to think of the GOALS of each part or section of our essay and then organize them accordingly.  This exercise intends to have you test the organizational structure of your essay to make sure it is responsive to the LOGIC of your thesis and not simply a structure searching for appropriate ideas (think of a Christmas tree waiting for ornamentation).   

Using the logic of your THESIS as a guide, fill out the rest of this form:

Section One (Introduction).

Contextualizing claims (not your thesis, but the ideas that need to be established BEFORE you introduce your main claim):

#1

#2

#3

Etc.

Section Two (The Body; the most elaborate and detailed section of the essay)

Supportive Point #1:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Supportive Point #2:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Supportive Point #3:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Supportive Point #4:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Supportive Point #5:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Supportive Point #6:

How does this point relate to your thesis, i.e. what does it contribute to your overall analysis?

Etc.

Section Three (The conclusion):

What might we say about your thesis that has not already been said?

How might we anticipate the next set of BIG IDEAS related to your thesis?

How might we apply your analysis to another relevant set of topics?

Annotated Bibliography Goals

 It is the goal of this annotated bibliography first to establish your control over the sources and then to show me (and yourself) how you intend to employ their information.  A good annotation provides a succinct summary of the article, and it should give some insight into the article’s relevance to your own agenda.  This is first step in establishing the “because” explanation (the warrant) upon which the Toulmin supportive approach turns.  Please note that the more relevant information you pack into the annotation, the more your own argument is going to take form before you start writing.  You will also find that beyond helping to sculpt the contours of your own analysis and approach, the annotated bibliography easily becomes your works cited page (bonus!).

Example:

Grant, Barry Keith (1996).  Rich and Strange: The Yuppie Horror Film [Electronic

Version].  Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 48, No. ½ (Spring-Summer 1996): pp. 4-16. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688090

Grant examines a subgenre of the contemporary horror film, the “Yuppie Horror film,” focusing on the way that this subgenre employs the same elements of traditional horror films but shifted to exploit the 1980’s-early-1990’s social and cultural preoccupation with material success.  Using a wide variety of films as his support, Grant demonstrates the way that Yuppie horror replaces monsters and the supernatural with financial horrors such as losing one’s livelihood, social standing and/or material possessions.  This essay will provide material for my analysis of the salient economic anxieties and cultural tropes that motivate the affluent villains in Bret Easton Ellis’ short stories, the Devil Wears Prada (1989) and Let Them Eat Stake (1990).    

A3 Topic and Provisional Thesis

A1 Reading Response Question

Hey folks,

In a comment to this post, please list at least FIVE claims from the Foucault reading that you believe will be useful in your analysis of the stories.  A good way to do this is to read the Foucault, then read some stories, and then return to the Foucault and try to apply the theory to the examples presented in the narratives.

Before the Law by Franz Kafka

Before the Law

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things considerably to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”