For your first major writing project of the term you will write a 4-6 page analysis of one of the texts we cover before mid-term. The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to more deeply engage with a text and explore it as a literary work. Choose one of the stories we’ve read for class and one of the literary elements we’ve discussed in class (plot, characterization, setting, etc.) and discuss how that literary element helps you construct meaning and significance in the story. Specifically, your paper needs to make specific point/argument about interpreting, understanding, or reading a text by considering how the text you choose operates as a piece of literature. You should develop a reading of the story (which may not be the only reading possible) and use the element you’ve chosen to help construct your interpretation. No matter what reading you develop, be sure to ground your discussion in what you see in the text and be sure to provide specific support from the text for your interpretation.

Regardless of what you focus on or how you structure your analysis, the emphasis here is on making an argument about how we can understand, interpret, and make meaning in one of the texts we've read in the first half of this term. You will be graded on how well you root both your point and your evidence in the specific language and construction of the text you consider.
At issue here is not whether your point is correct or not but rather whether