Write an essay about Maus and Maus II.
Write in four-page critical essay.
Essay Guidelines
Essay should be typed and double-spaced.
Your essay should meet the basic criteria for literary analysis:
• it should make interpretive claims
• that are supported with evidence from the text
• that together argue for a thesis about the text (i.e. there should be a clear focus and well-organized, sustained argument)
• and that explore the complexity of a text
Be sure to cite your sources in the text and provide a Works Cited page.
When quoting from the text, follow the conventions listed in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (see the examples below).
Some Reminders and Suggestions
1. The titles of books, plays, and films should be italicized. Titles of short stories, songs, or poems go within quotation marks.
2. Proofread and correct your work before turning it in. Papers littered with typos, spelling errors, and/or grammatical errors will receive a failing grade.
3. Contrary to popular belief, the apostrophe is not extinct. Remember to use it to indicate possession, e.g. "Rachel Kippur's essay on Jasmine has expanded my intellectual horizons. I also enjoyed reading Paul Bowles's novel, The Sheltering Sky."
4. Observe the standard conventions for punctuating a citation. There are two types, one for a brief citation and one for a longer citation. If you are quoting four lines or less, the citation will follow the closing quotation marks and, in turn, be followed by a period or comma, as in the following example:
Bowles describes Kit as being tormented by an inner struggle, a "war between reason and atavism" (36).
The conventions differ for a quotation longer than four lines:
Pretend that this paragraph you are reading is a quotation that is longer than four lines. In this case, do not use quotation marks. Instead, indent the entire quotation a full tab stop from the body of the paper. The parenthetical citation will follow the final period. (Lotz 5)
A good handbook for these rules is the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
5. Remember to provide a bibliography at the end of the paper, documenting your sources.
6. If you introduce an idea into your paper that you got from another source, you must cite that source, even if you are not quoting the source verbatim. Check with me if you are confused or uncertain about what sort of material needs to be documented in your paper.
7. The best search engine for literary criticism is the MLA Bibliography, which is available on-line through the UA Main Library's website, under Reference Works.