the story i chose is the open boat by stephen crane

1. Choose a short story that we have not read this semester and write an interpretation/analysis of it, focusing on showing how one (or more) of its narrative or figurative elements is important in the interpretation.

This is a traditional kind of essay involving the interpretation of literature. If you are already good at this sort of thing, then you certainly have this as an option this semester. In this case, your focus in the essay (which is still a persuasive/argumentative essay) is taking one or two of the figurative devices present in the story and showing the reader how an understanding of those things is necessary to understand the story (or, alternatively, how the presence of those elements affect the meaning of the story).

In BOTH of these kinds of essays, you should assume that the reader of YOUR essay is already familiar with the story that you are writing about so you are not obligated to summarize the plot of it…, unless you are summarizing parts of that plot to help support a point that you are trying to make. I always tell my students to imagine that the audience for this essay is one of your fellow classmates who, although they have read the story you are talking about, is having trouble understanding the point you are trying to make about the story.

The final copy of this essay should be three to five pages in length and should be MLA format (double-spaced, 1” margins, size 10 or 12 font).

(no outside research at ALL should be done for this essay)