Essay Assignment #1: Summary-Analysis Essay

FYS Winter 2015

Once you understand the literal or surface meaning of a text, dig deeper by analyzing
and interpreting it. To analyze a text is to break it down into significant parts and
examine how those parts relate to each other. We analyze a text in order to interpret it
and come to a fuller understanding of its meaning.
Maimon, Peritz, and Yancey, A Writers Resource 31)
Assignment: This assignment asks you first to follow the process of analyzing a text in the way
the quoted passage describes in order to reach a fuller understanding of its meaning. It then
asks you to write an essay which explains that meaning carefully, fully, and accurately to a
reader who has not read the original text. This essay should consider both what the author of
that text says (the literal meaning) and the ways in which he makes and supports his
argument. This essay should discuss not only the facts of the piece under consideration, but
also the various nuances of meaning, patterns of organization, types of evidence and reasoning,
points of view, and other methods it employs in developing an argument.
Where to Begin: For this assignment, summarize and analyze Martin Luther King, Jr.s Letter
from Birmingham Jail. This assignment will build on skills weve already practiced in class,
particularly the skills of close reading, thinking, and writing about texts. Youve now read
demanding essays for First-Year Seminar using these strategies, discussed the essays in class,
determined their central ideas, and written about them informally. This assignment allows you to
take the next step and write formally about the ideas contained in one essay and the ways in
which theyre conveyed to the reader.
Your articulation of the main point of Letter from Birmingham Jailas you see it and
expressed in your own wordswill form the thesis of your essay. The body of your essay will
explain what King says or implies (literal meaning) and how he says it (narrative strategies) in
support of your thesis. The information included should be based on a consideration of what the
reader needs to know in order to understand the original letter. Each detail will not be given the
same significance.
How you choose to structure your summary-analysis essay should be based on logical thinking:
what does the reader need to know in order to understand the essay? Writers choose the
language in which to articulate the ideas of the original text, the order in which to present those
ideas, and the pertinent examples which illustrate them. Writing in your own voice, explain to
someone else what the author argues.
In the final analysis, your essay should make a reader want to read Letter from Birmingham
Jail, and it should be written with a sense of purpose and passion. However, the paper should
also provide enough explanation and information that a reader doesnt have to read Letter from
Birmingham Jail in order to grasp the letters primary argument and how King makes it.
Audience: Think of your reader as a student in another section of FYS who is not studying
Letter from Birmingham Jail. How would you explain to him, in your own words, Kings letter?
How could you give him enough information so that he could grasp his ideas without reading the
letter, and thus enrich his understanding of the letters message about civil rights, nonviolent
resistance, freedom, racial harmony, and the human spirit? And how could you make the
student want to read the original text?

Writing Process: SWAs #1-3 are crucial to your drafting process for this assignment. Make
sure to complete all of them fully and on time.
Attend your small writing group session. Without completing this session, you cannot earn full
credit for the assignment. These sessions are a chance for you to read and learn from your
classmates work and to get essential feedback for your revision of the essay.
Im always available for optional conferences. Talk to me about meeting in my office to discuss
your work!
Visit the Writing Center as part of your entire drafting process. The consultants can help you
with your SWAs, brainstorming ideas, revision, and grammar/mechanics. The Writing Center is
located in Haupt Humanities 12 and 15. Please schedule an appointment by contacting Becky
Mills by email at bmills@transy.edu, or consider visiting her at the Center to schedule your
appointment. You may also arrive without an appointment for a walk-in session, but remember
the Center is a busy place. So, always schedule an appointment to secure time with a writing
consultant. If you have any questions, please call (859) 281-3594, visit Becky, or see the Writing
Centers webpage: http://transy.edu/academics/writing.htm.
Format: Be sure to introduce all direct quotations, to make sure they are absolutely true to the
original, and to punctuate them correctly. (See pages 261-265 and 529-530 of A Writers
Resource for a discussion of proper handling of quotations, paraphrase, and summary, as well
as the use of signal phrases.)
Also, all direct reference to the text (quotation, paraphrase, and summary) should be marked by
an internal citation (MLA style). The paper should also include works cited entries. Well
discuss this in class, but please review Chapter 6 of A Writers Resource for an overview of
MLA citation form.
Your essay must be at least 4 full pages in length (not 3.5 or 3.75 pages).
Reflective Letter: Write a 1-2-page letter to your readers (not just Mr. Wright) in which you
reflect on the process of writing your summary. Your goal is a kind of reflection-in-practice, in
which you tell and show what you have learned both to yourself and to an audience beyond
yourself (Yancey 89).
Write this letter as a detailed expression of your own experience as a writer summarizing and
analyzing Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Develop your letter to explain
to yourself and the audience the larger significance of this processespecially the choices you
made in revision and the experience of discovering King, Jr.s text. What does the text mean to
you? What does it teach? Why should we care? How do you see that youre notions of race,
justice, and wellbeing have been influenced by the letter? As you wrote and revised your
summary-analysis essay, what choices did you make in order to make the readerswho have
never read King Jr.s letter, want to read it? Why did you make these choices?
Deadline: Your summary-analysis essay and accompanying letter is due on Wednesday,
January 28. You will submit your draft in a appropriate folder on the class blog.