1. Choose a short story by one of the following authors that you will find in your textbook. See the list below.
2. Write a rhetorical analysis of the piece. This type of essay is not a book report. It is a close analysis of why the author makes the choices he/she does. For example, is the dialogue written with a certain dialect? Is the vocabulary formal and intellectual or more easily understandable? How does the author use characterization to further the plot? What type of figurative language does he/she choose. What is the tone, mood, style of the piece?
3. Choose two different modern day pieces of art (sculpture, painting, music, cartoon, advertisement, characters in movies/tv shows, etc.) that reflect the same rhetorical elements as your story. You must include three DIFFERENT media (for example, one short story, one song, and one ad).
4. Your essay will not only be a rhetorical analysis, but also a synthesis of all three different media. In other words, you will choose a short story and compare it to two different media like a film and a cartoon or piece of art and a poem. You may not choose to compare three short stories or a short story and two poems.
The texbook used is Literature to go: Second edition
Edgar Rice Burroughs (Excerpt of Tarzan of the Apes) Page 45
Junot Diaz Page 97
Charles Dickens Page 77
William Faulkner Page 52
Gail Godwin Page 36
Fay Weldon Page 140
Muriel Spark Page 147
David Updike Page 163
Tobias Wolff Page 176
Peter Meinke Page 192
Joyce Carol Oates Page 214
Dagoberto Gilb Page 218
Zora Neale Hurston Page 317
Annie Proulx Page 327 (Warning. . .Very dark!)
Mark Twain Page 329