Lear paper
The assignment:
Write an essay that analyzes a speech from King Lear. What does the language of the speech reveal about the deeper themes or ideas of the play?
The process:
PRE-WRITE: We’ve been freewriting on particular lines and phrases. Keep doing that. See what is there. Have conversations with people about the interesting things you notice about the speech. Keep thinking and jotting notes and thoughts.
DRAFT: Hopefully, your pre-writing has generated some interesting ideas.
- What are the interesting words and images?
- What different things does each reveal about the character who is speaking, or other characters in the scene, or the world of the play?
- How does each relate to ideas in other parts of the play?
- What part does this moment play in the overall effect of the work?
- Write a paragraph at a time, each paragraph focusing on a word or an image or an idea or a rhetorical or poetic device, to see what you begin to discover. How does that idea connect to other moments in the play?
- Don’t worry about connecting the paragraphs—not yet—just write and see what is there.
REVISE YOUR DRAFT: By the end of this drafting process, you should start seeing a pattern emerging.
- What cool idea about the whole play has emerged from your deep study of this small part? This will become your thesis.
- As you develop that thesis, revise and streamline your paragraphs so that you are arguing as powerfully as possible about that specific idea.
- By this time, each paragraph should start with an IDEA that is somehow related to the thesis. If you start with a quote, you know you're still pre-writing.
- Each paragraph should end with a powerful "SO WHAT".
- When you've found your way through your argument, you're ready to write the rest of your introduction and your conclusion.
- Hopefully, at each step, you will have surprised yourself.