English 1010-025 Fall 2009 Formal Essay Assignment 4:

This is the End, My Friend

Objective: Successful completion of this essay assignment will result in 5-7 typed, double-spaced, well-thought-out pages of text that meet the requirements listed below. Do keep in mind that this paper will be graded, not marked pass/fail, which means that you may earn some, none, or all of the 20% of your grade that this is worth.

General Requirements: The paper must have a unique and appropriate title, one that fits the paper’s particular content and begins to point the reader in the direction the paper will go. An essay introduction that lacks some indication of the paper’s purpose, scope, and structure (see Swales) will significantly impact the grade the paper receives. An essay without suitable and substantial and carefully analyzed quotations from the text(s) you discuss will surely fail. Transitions between paragraphs should exist in some form as well. The conclusion should not repeat the intro, but point out what has been accomplished and perhaps what has not—and if you can think of any, suggestions for future research make for a nice closing point. Lastly, please be sure to number your pages.

Crafting the Essay: A few prompts are provided here to get you thinking about the paper. Please be sure to specify which option you select in the heading for your paper. Optionally, if you have an idea of your own for a paper, feel free to propose it to me.

Option 1: Lessig: “Free Culture!” Plato: “F--- that.”

Lawrence Lessig argues at numerous points throughout his book Free Culture for the importance and value of the public domain and of archives in terms of their relation to American culture and democracy. Plato, in The Republic (specifically, our excerpt from books II & III), argues that the perfect state should carefully manage culture to eliminate stories that are “bad” according to certain criteria. If you choose this option, your goal will be to discuss the cultural function of stories in terms of these two authors and make a point, ultimately, perhaps about the value/importance/danger of stories, or about the relationship between stories and forms of government, or, going very meta, about the role of telling stories (often about stories) for these two authors.

Option 2: Bake ______ at 450 for Two Hours, Top with Bouillier

As is hopefully evident (or at least believable) by now, all of the readings we’ve done this semester can be meaningfully connected one way or another. If you choose this option, your goal will be to establish a relationship between the writing of any one of our other authors and Bouillier. This means that you will have to make a good case for how that author develops some understanding or point that usefully leads us to reading Bouillier differently than someone might without that background. In short, you need to make what is essentially a good case for teaching another author and then Bouillier in sequence (though without actually talking about it in terms of teaching—I’m just putting it this way to get you thinking along the right lines). Put another way, it’s like the long written version of you explaining to your (insert parental unit/friend/random person here) why you were assigned The Mystery Guest.