Quote working definitions of the types of evolution (at least 4) you think are shown in the story and then apply the terms of the definitions to the events of the story, using quotations from the story to support your viewpoint. Make sure you Quote from Wilson when appropriate.
When writing about The Belonging Kind, you need to consider this passage:
“Sometimes, at dawn, perched on the edge of his unmade bed, drifting into sleep he never slept lying down, now he thought about her. Antoinette. And them. The belonging kind. Sometimes he speculated dreamily. . . . Perhaps they were like house mice, the sort of small animal evolved to live only in the walls of man-made structures.
“A kind of animal that lives only on alcoholic beverages. With peculiar metabolisms they convert the alcohol and the various proteins from mixed drinks and wine and beers into everything they need. And they can change outwardly, like a chameleon or a rockfish, for protection. So they can live among us. And maybe, Coretti thought, they grow in stages. In the early stages seeming like humans, eating the food humans eat, sensing their difference only in a vague disquiet of being an outsider.”
This explains the creatures’ evolution and of course Coretti’s….
Here are four types of evolution we’ve dealt with:
Natural Selection: the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring… believed to be the main process that brings about evolution. (OxfordDictionaries.com)
Sexual Selection: a mode of natural selection where members of one biological sex choose mates of the other sex to mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex (intrasexual selection).(Wikipedia)
Cultural Evolution: the idea that human cultural change––that is, changes in socially transmitted beliefs, knowledge, customs, skills, attitudes, languages, and so on––can be described as a Darwinian evolutionary process that is similar in key respects (but not identical) to biological/genetic evolution (Dictionary.com)
Artificial Selection: The breeding of plants and animals to produce desirable traits. Organisms with the desired traits, such as size or taste, are artificially mated or cross-pollinated with organisms with similar desired traits (Dictionary.com)
How to do this:
- Develop an introduction for your paper which states what story and what ideas you will discuss. (Depending on your own writing process, this can be either the first part you write, or even the last!)
- Summarize the stories paragraph
- Then show the evolutionary processes at work in the story, quoting from Wilson or others to define the processes, then using examples and direct quotations from the story to support your ideas.
- In one final paragraph, provide a final comment on the readings. Tell me what you found interesting or important.