Hello from The Land of Essays! I'm scaling a mountain of essays at the moment and haven't had much time to blog, unfortunately. I've been getting tons of e-mails about the research essays, though, mostly asking question about topics I've already covered in class. I've pasted my response to some of those questions below in the hope that it will save you and me, or somebody, some time. Meanwhile, I hope the essays are going well for you. I'm halfway through the latest batch (ready to give back the essays to my ten o'clock class on Monday--they were mostly quite good) and ready now to tackle the next bunch from my noon 1101 class. Hopefully, they'll be just as good. It's nearly 7 p.m. Saturday evening, so it's debatable how much more I can do tonight after grading essays and answering e-mails all day. But I'll give it the old college try. As for those research essays:

The essay should be primarily your opinion on the novels. That is, compare and contrast the novels based on one subject, whatever it is you choose to discuss. As I've said in class on numerous occasions, your voice needs to be the most prominent in the essays. Use other voices (critics and writers) to support your ideas.You just have to show (when possible) what other people have to say in comparison to what you say. If those other people agree with you, then use a brief quote or two as backup for what you're saying; if they disagree with you, then suggest why your opinion works better or is just as good, just different. Again, when possible, you're researching what other people say about the novels.

Another way to research is simply look up information on various sub-topics that need explanation (the kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily know unless you looked it up somewhere--historical details, stuff about Greek mythology, or geography, that sort of thing). Also, you can simply look up what other writers have said about certain characters, rather than about entire novels. A short quote or two would suffice. And again, show it fits in with what YOU are trying to prove.

Hope this clarifies some issues for some of you. I'll try to write more in the next day or so, as issues arise.

For now, back to the salt mines. Oh, and for more info on write a research paper, check out the posts I wrote earlier in the week.

GC