Questions:
- What makes Night an important book?
- What is the significance of the book's title?
- What is the importance of faith for Elie and the inmates of these camps?
- What is the process by which Elie loses his innocence? Does he gain anything in the process?
- What is the importance of Elie's relationship with his father?
- What methods do the Nazis use to make Jews seem less human? What methods do the inmates use to preserve their humanity?
- Is this book essentially hopeful or hopeless about humanity?
Process:
1. Use your annotations to find 15 quotes that have something to do with your question. Write page number and brief explanation on the sticky note.
2. Sort your relevant quotes. Which ones have to do with each other? You are aiming to have 3 to 5 piles of sticky notes.
3. Each little pile of quotes is a paragraph. Remember how to write a body paragraph?
- Topic sentence (main idea)
- Support (explain the main idea with details from the text. Each time you use a quote, introduce it, fit the quote, cite, and explain the quote's relationship to the topic sentence).
- "So what?" sentence (what did all that add up to?)
You'll have as many body paragraphs as you have piles of sticky notes.
4. Then consider: what do these body paragraphs say? Ready to write your introduction?
- End with your thesis, your one sentence answer to the essay question.
- Before your thesis, give information about the literature your paper is about.
- First of all, write a lead, a hook, that makes us think about the theme, the general subject of your paper.
5. Finally, you're ready to write your conclusion.
- Rephrase your thesis.
- In 2 to 4 sentences, answer the question SO WHAT? Why are these ideas important? What do they imply about humanity?
- In your last sentence, apply your ideas to the lead you wrote in your introduction.