Please carefully read this assignment on writing paper

The 3 page draft

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Length: 4-5 pages

MLA Format: 12 point font; 1 “ margins. Double space. Be sure to give your paper a title.

For your second literary Paper, you will be writing about either Tartuffe or Candide. Both of these texts are satires.  The structure of this essay will be in the form of a comparison/contrast essay. This means that you will need to compare and contrast two characters, themes, symbols, etc within the text, or compare and contrast the two texts that we have read. What you chose to compare/ contrast is up to you. You must make sure, however, that your comparisons and contrasts are parallel; for example, what you compare/contrast in one character, idea theme, you must compare or contrast in the other. You might begin by making lists of significant ideas in each of the texts, and then looking at the similarities and differences between them. For each of these texts you need to talk about ways they are similar (comparison) and ways they are different (contrast). In the body you can either begin the paper with the similarities between the texts, and then move to the contrasts, or have different topics (characters, ideas, symbols) that you compare and contrast in each paper.

Introduction: For the introduction, you will be establishing the particular stories you are writing about (don’t forget to include the author’s name).  You must first state that the text you are writing about is a satire. Be sure to give a solid definition of a satire. Then move to what you will be comparing and contrasting. You may want to focus on the theme, or character, or particular symbols, etc. You also want to include your thesis statement in your introduction. This is basically a single statement that says what you are proving. 

The second paragraph of the introduction includes background information about the time period and/or information about the authors. You will want to define the Enlightenment period. In order to get this I am asking you to get this from an outside source.  This is something that can easily be found either on the internet or from a Literary Terms book.

Body: For the body of the paper, you will be proving your thesis.  You especially want to use solid paragraph structure in your paper. In general, the 1st sentence of the paragraph is to write a topic sentence. Follow that sentence with further explanation of the topic. By the 3rd sentence, you need to include your support for the paragraph. This will include: quotes, examples, paraphrasing, facts, etc. Following your support sentence, you want to include 1 or 2 more sentences that explain how this support proves the point of this paragraph. End each paragraph with a transition sentence that links that paragraph to the following paragraph. Be sure to follow correct MLA format for your internal citations. For each quote that you use, be sure to include all three parts to the quote. This means: a) introduce the quote b) copy the quotation exactly and use quotation marks around it, and c) use the correct page number for the citation.

Conclusion. For this part of the paper, relate your topic to the audience in some way. Give them something deeper to think about. You might discuss the “so what” of your paper, or explain how the points that you are making are relevant to today.

Note: Be sure that you are NOT retelling the plot of the story.  Instead, you need to argue that your text fulfills your thesis.

Push yourself to do a superior job in writing this paper!  Do not settle for mediocre work. Be sure that you bring in a solid draft to revise on Friday, and make sure that you later take the time revise the paper carefully and slowly;  be sure to double and triple check your work so that you do not include any typos, misspellings, grammar problems, etc before you turn it in.