Outline

Your outline is the framework on which you will build your paper. It should begin with the proper heading, the title and the introduction. After that you should have topic sentences for each of your body paragraphs, followed by a quote from the primary source and a quote from the secondary source. I will be checking to make sure that:

1. Your topic sentence contains analysis, rather than summary or commentary.

2. Your primary and secondary quotes make sense with the topic sentence.

Heading

Title

Intro

BP1 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

BP2 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

BP3 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

BP4 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

BP5 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

BP6 - Main idea (or topic sentence)

Evidence from primary source

Analysis from secondary source

Below is an example based on The Catcher in the Rye:

BP 1. Salinger uses Allie’s baseball mitt as a symbol of his protagonist’s inner conflict.

Primary:

"It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist any more – not a tight one, I mean – but outside of that I don't care much. I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.

Anyway, that's what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. Old Allie's baseball mitt. I happened to have it with me, in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied down the poems that were written on it. "(Salinger 38)

Secondary:

"Unable to write about a "room or a house" Holden writes about Allie's baseball mitt--an object which is a complex version of a child's security blanket, a sacred relic of the living dead, at the same time that it reminds Holden of betrayal. And thus as he writes about the mitt, we learn directly for the first time of Allie's death and of Holden's self-punishing rage."