Choosing a Topic - Outsiders Essay

If you are asked to write a literary essay after reading a novel, there are a few different ways you can go about selecting a topic.  The main thing to remember is that whatever you decide to write about, you should have plenty of textual evidence to prove it.  Here are the methods for choosing a topic:

Method 1:  If you annotated, flip through your book and look for any ideas, patterns, quotes, or characters that stand out to you. Think about what claim you would make about the text.  Can you make a claim about the author’s development of a certain theme or symbol?  Can you make a claim about a character’s motives or actions and what they show us about life?

Method 2:  Look at any prompts provided to you (--->), and consider which one would play to your strengths the most.  Do you have a strong understanding of the theme?  Or a specific symbol or character?  Do you know you have plenty of textual evidence (annotations) to respond to a specific prompt? 

Method 3:  If you have the option to choose your topic, consider using the provided prompts to inspire a different, more complex or interesting topic. Just remember that you need plenty of textual evidence to prove your ideas.  

Essay HACK: While they do recognize its importance and purpose, Mr. Sanders & Mr. Crandall are not huge fans of the standard essay format because it is something that has been overdone and overused in education. Therefore, they are encouraging you to "hack" your literary essay. "Hack" means to look at something in a new way in order to make it better. If you are interested, you may try this with your literary essay. Your challenge is to make your essay more interesting to read. Try to connect it with real, relevant ideas from your life or the world around you. What's required? Produce some form of writing that somewhere/somehow makes a complex claim(s) about the novel, The Outsiders. Then, back it up with some type of textual evidence. Simple as that!