Essay Instructions: Introduction to Project 1
Your first writing project will be an essay that employs the skill of analysis. The book, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, discusses this in terms of critiques, and I will be using the terms critiques and analysis interchangeably. From reading the section on critiques (particularly pages 57-58) you will see that a critique/analysis requires more than just saying you like or dislike something. You MUST have reasons that support your opinion. These reasons will come from the readings you are assigned to do for this project.
First, though, let''s talk about folktales. In the introduction to the section on "Cinderella" we learn that while we always refer to this story as a fairy tale, it is more accurately called a wonder tale since there are no fairies or small supernatural beings involved in the story. However, folktale, which refers to a story passed along in an oral fashion, also accurately describes the story and that is the term I will use.
So why study folktales? (Read Stith Thompson''s article on "Universality of the Folktale.") For starters, storytelling probably has been around as long as man has and every segment of society has participated in it. Not only does it continue today in the traditional oral form but also in the technological forms of television and movies. We enjoy television programs and movies for the same reasons the oral tradition of storytelling has been enjoyed for centuries: they entertain, inform, inspire or alleviate the monotony of our lives.
Folktales have been handed down orally for centuries and some actually make it into a written form. More likely, however, people are familiar with a version of a story they have heard rather than one they have read. You are all familiar with the story of Cinderella as it was told to you (or, perhaps, shown to you in the Disney cartoon or other versions). Many of you probably haven''t read it. But growing up in almost any culture in the world you would have heard a version of it. In fact, researchers claim there are more than 700 versions of the tale around the world. You''ll have the opportunity to read some of these as you prepare to write your first essay.
Thompson poses an interesting question: "How does the tale serve the needs of the social group?" There isn''t a one-sentence answer to this question. It is a question to ponder as you read the various versions of Cinderella and two other articles that have been assigned for this project.
Understanding Analysis
The first essay you will write will be an analysis piece based on the readings we are doing. You should have learned about analysis in your English Comp 1 class (English 161). For many of you, that was some time ago, so we''ll discuss these again.
An analysis is an investigation that you conduct by applying criteria to something. Analysis enables you to make interpretations.
Analysis is NOT summary (retelling what the essay is about) nor is it evaluating (giving your opinion). Many people mistake it for one of those. If you do, you will do poorly on your essay assignment.
Really, you conduct analysis in your life every day, you probably just didn''t know that''s what you were doing! You take criteria and you judge something else against that criteria. That''s analysis. Here''s some simple examples:
You know what ingredients makes a good spaghetti sauce that your family likes but price and brand is also important (the criteria--ingredients, price, brand), so at the grocery store you study the labels on the sauce jars to determine (analyze) which one will be the one your family likes the best. You have just applied criteria in doing an analysis.
A friend asks you to complete a craft project, say tole painting, that you have been trained to use certain products to complete in a certain way (that''s the criteria). But the friend supplies you with different products than those you have been taught to use and the project doesn''t turn out the same way as in the past. You decide (analysis going on here!) that using the different products is probably what caused the project to turn out differently.
Your boss asks you to find a company from which to buy all the office supplies. Using a list of the required supplies and the budget allotted (the criteria, again), you check with various suppliers to determine (analyze) who can offer the best deal over all.
You even used analysis when you set your alarm clock last night. You decided how much time you needed to get ready or to perform certain chores or activities before you left the house this morning (such as showering, eating breakfast, walking the dog) and how much time it takes to drive to work or school (all criteria). Then you determined what time you would have to get up in the morning (analysis!)
Most of these examples probably make sense to you. Yet many of you will have a hard time trying to figure out how to do the same thing in writing. So, let''s talk about it.
To be successful with your analysis for essay 1, you need to do the following:
Understand the criteria you will be measuring with.
Apply the criteria .
Offer some insight that is not found in the text.
There is no one right analysis. If you use different criteria, you will get a different analysis. As an example, let''s look at The Wizard of Oz. If you were to analyze the story based on psychological theories about how people deal with insecurities, you could discuss how Dorothy is fearful about losing Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, her surrogate parents. You would have to explore and understand the theories about insecurities before you could explain how the story is an example of the theories. If you were to analyze the story based on political theories, you could discuss how the Tin Man would represent the industrial worker, the Scarecrow represents the farmer, and how the Wizard represents government, using its supposed power to control everyone. You would have to study and understand the political theories as you explain how the story is an example of those theories.
The criteria you will be applying in this first essay comes from one of three essays: "The Importance of Fairy Tales" by Bruno Bettelheim, or "''Cinderella'': A story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts," also by Bettelheim, or "Cinderella''s Stepsisters" by Toni Morrison. You will need to read these essays carefully. The Bettelheim pieces are some of the more difficult in this section, but you can handle them. As you read, underline the key points each author makes and make notations. These points will provide the criteria for the analysis. Sometimes it is helpful after each paragraph to stop and summarize that paragraph in your own words in one sentence.
Adapted from ?Importance of Fairy Tales?
By Bruno Bettelheim
To enrich a child?s life, a story must stimulate his imagination; help him to develop his intellect and to clarify his emotions; be attuned to his anxieties and aspirations; give full recognition to his difficulties, while at the same time suggesting solutions to the problems which perturb him. In short, it must...relate to aspects of his personality?and this without ever belittling but, on the contrary, giving full credence to the seriousness of the child?s predicaments, while simultaneously promoting confidence in himself and in his future....
Nothing can be as enriching to a child and adult alike as the folk fairy tale. More can be learned from it about the inner problems of human beings, and of the right solutions to their predicaments in any society, than from any other type of story within a child?s comprehension.
Because his life is often bewildering to him, the child needs to be given the chance to understand himself in this complex world with which he must learn to cope. The child must be helped to make some coherent sense out of the turmoil of his feelings. he needs a moral education which subtly, and by implication only, conveys to him the advantages of moral behavior, through that which seems tangibly right and therefore meaningful to him.
The child finds this kind of meaning through fairy tales. Like many other modern psychological insights, this was anticipated long ago by poets. The German poet Schiller wrote: ?Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life.?
In a much deeper sense than any other reading material, fairy tales start where the child really is in his psychological and emotional being. They speak about his severe inner pressures in a way that the child unconsciously understands, and ? without belittling the most serious inner struggles which growing up entails?offer examples of both temporary and permanent solutions to pressing difficulties.
This is the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence?but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and emerges victorious.
Many fairy stories begin with the death of a mother or father; in these tales the death of the parent creates the most agonizing problems, as it (or the fear of it) does in real life. Other stories tell about an aging parent who decides that the time has come to let the new generation take over. But before this can happen, the successor has to prove himself capable and worthy. The Brothers Grimm?s story ?The three Feathers? begins: ?There was once upon a time a king who had three sons...When the king had become old and weak, and was thinking of his end, he did not know which of his sons should inherit the kingdom after him.? In order to decide, the king sets all his sons a difficult task; the son who meets it best ?shall be king after my death.?
It is characteristic of fairy tales to state an existential dilemma briefly and pointedly. This permits the child to come to grips with the problem in its most essential form, where a more complex plot would confuse matters for him.
Contrary to what takes place in many modern children?s stories, in fairy tales
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evil is an omnipresent as virtue. In practically every fairy tale good and evil are given body in the form of some figures and their actions, as good and evil are omnipresent in life and the propensities for both are present in every man. It is this duality that poses the moral problem, and requires the struggle to solve it.
Evil is not without its attractions?symbolized by the mighty giant or dragon, the power of the witch, the cunning queen in ?Snow White??and often it is temporarily in the ascendancy. In many fairy tales a usurper succeeds for a time in seizing the place which rightfully belongs to the hero?as the wicked sisters do in ?Cinderella.? It is not that the evildoer is punished by the story?s end which makes immersing onself in fairy stories an experience in moral education, although this is part of it. In fairy tales, as in life, punishment or fear of it is only a limited deterrent to crime. The conviction that crime does not pay is a much more effective deterrent, and that is why in fairy tales the bad person always loses out. It is not the fact that virtue wins out at the end which promotes morality, but that the hero is most attractive to the child, who identifies with the hero in all his struggles.
The figures in fairy tales are not ambivalent?not good and bad at the same time, as we all are in reality. But since polarization dominates the child?s mind, it also dominates fairy tales. A person is either good or bad, nothing in between. One brother is stupid, the other is clever. One sister is virtuous and industrious, the others are vile and lazy. One is beautiful, the others are ugly. One parent is all good, the other evil. The juxtaposition of opposite characters is not for the purpose of stressing right behavior, as would be true for cautionary tales. (There are some amoral fairy tales where goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness play no role at all.) Presenting the polarities of character permits the child to comprehend easily the difference between the two, which he could not do as readily were the figures drawn more true to life, with all the complexities that characterize real people. Ambiguities must wait until a relatively firm personality has been established on the basis of positive identifications. Then the child has a basis for understanding that there are great differences between people, and that therefore one has to make choices about who one wants to be.
Furthermore, a child?s choices are based not so much on right versus wrong as on who arouses his sympathy and who his antipathy.
The more simple and straightforward a good character, the easier it is for a child to identify with it and to reject the bad other. The child identifies with the good hero not because of his goodness, but because the hero?s condition makes a deep positive appeal to him. The question for the child is not ?Do I want to be good?? but ?Who do I want to be like?? The child decides this on the basis of projecting himself wholeheartedly into one character. If this fairy-tale figure is a very good person, then the child decides that he wants to be good, too.
Today children no longer grow up within the security of an extended family or of a well-integrated community. Therefore, even more than at the times fairy tales were invented, it is important to provide the modern child with images of heroes who have to go out into the world all by themselves and who, although originally ignorant of the ultimate things, find secure places in the world by following their right way with deep inner confidence.
The fairy-tale hero proceeds for a time in isolation, as the modern child often feels isolated. The hero is helped by being in touch with primitive things?a tree, an animal, nature?as the child feels more in touch with those things than most adults do. The fate of these heroes convinces the child that, like them, he may feel outcast and abandoned in the world, groping in the dark, but, like them, in the course of his life he will be guided step by step, and given help when it is needed. Today, even more than in past times, the child needs the reassurance offered by the image of the isolated man who nevertheless is capable of achieving meaningful and rewarding relations with the world around him.
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The MLA citation for this article follows:
Bettelheim, Bruno. ?The Importance of Fairy Tales.? Instructor 86.1 (1976): 79-80.
I have marked the end of the page so you will know which pages the article was on in the original form.
JOURNAL-WRITING ASSIGNMENT: What points do you think Bettelheim made that will be useful in conducting the analysis? For your journal assignment, write a paragraph each on three main ideas from Bettelheim''s "Importance of Fairy Tales" piece. Turn this in on the due date specified on the weekly assignment page.
CLASS DISCUSSION: Talk about this Bettelheim piece. Some questions you may want to consider:
? How do you feel about Schiller''s quote that "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life"?
? Many people criticize fairy tales for being too violent, yet Bettelheim says they have many messages that can help children. How do you feel about this?
? Fairy/folk tales have characters who are either good or bad but not both. This is certainly not like "real" people are. Is there a problem, then, with how these characters are portrayed?
Reading Bettelheim
In order to do the critique/analysis, you need to understand the criteria (the reasons) you will use as you analyze. As you read "''Cinderella'': A story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts" by Bruno Bettelheim, you should have underlined important passages and made notations throughout. Let''s go over some of the key ones I want you to pay attention to since this may be the criteria you choose to use for the analysis.
Bettelheim points out that many people--both male and female--can identify with Cinderella because they feel that they have been mistreated by their siblings at some point in their lives. Also, many people have dreams that someone will come to save them from the circumstances of their lives just as Cinderella was saved.
Cinderella is really a story about sibling rivalry. From a psycho-analytic perspective, it is interesting to note that sibling rivalry is really based in the relationship the child has with the parent.The child is trying to earn his parent''s love and esteem and if he/she feels another sibling is getting more of that love and esteem or that he/she cannot win it, then the rivalry with that sibling begins. Children have a difficult time realizing that when they are more mature, they will probably be as successful as the siblings who they think are far better now.
Bettelheim says the story of Cinderella has some hidden meanings that will form the criteria we need for the analysis. First, sometimes the children who feel they are being degraded also feel they deserve it because they are not perfect. The child who feels unworthy (perhaps even feels evil because he/she is not perfect) fears that others will discover his flaws and demean him as the stepsisters demeaned Cinderella. The hopeful part is that Cinderella was a good person and since the child identifies with Cinderella, he/she has hope for him/herself.
The story of Cinderella can help a child rationalize his anger toward his own siblings. After all, Cinderella''s stepsisters and stepmother were so awful that they deserve to be hated.
And besides, no matter how bad the child has it, Cinderella had it worse! And then in the end it worked out beautifully for her. The Cinderella child believes that she/he is really the better and more beautiful child and that the others are really jealous of her/him. One day, the child believes, the prince or princess will come along and realize this!
JOURNAL-WRITING ASSIGNMENT: What other points do you think Bettelheim made that will be useful in conducting the analysis? For your journal assignment, write a paragraph each on three main ideas from Bettelheim''s Cinderella piece. These may include some the ideas summarized here or others in the article. Turn this in on the due date specified on the weekly assignment page.
Analysis review
Ok, let''s review analysis to make sure you understand what you need to do.
Remember, analysis occurs when you apply criteria. It is important, therefore, to identify the criteria you need for the analysis. In this case, you need to think about the ideas that were presented by Bettelheim in the two pieces you read.
Here''s some of the criteria that could be gleaned from the readings:
1. Fairy/folk tales help children make sense of the world and provide meaning for their lives.
2. Fairy/folk tales help children figure out ways to handle their problems.
3. Fairy/folk tales state the dilemma in a simple way so the child can quickly understand the problem.
4. Good and evil are easily identified in a fairy/folk tale. Characters are either good or bad. While this is not what people are like in real life, it makes it easy for children to understand.
5. Evil is often portrayed as attractive in these stories, but only to teach a lesson about how people can be seduced by it. The consequences are often graphic.
6. Fairy/folk tales provide children today with with heroes that are able to survive in a harsh world, a world much like the world has become today.
7. Fairy/folk tales teach morals and lessons.
8. Fairy/folk tales arouse a curiosity that stimulates imagination.
9. Fairy/folk tales confront basic human predicaments such as death, which other modern children''s stories avoid.
10. Fairy/folk tales provide children with hope that even they, like the meekest in the stories, can prevail.
11. Fairy/ folk tales can be examples of how people should NOT live their lives.
These are certainly NOT all the ideas you could have gotten from the reading but these are some.
Now for the analysis. Apply the criteria. To do that you need to think about the story of Cinderella. How does it meet some of the criteria? For instance, how does it arouse a curiosity that stimulates imagination? Why would that be important for a child in today''s society?
Can you see how that works? Now on to writing your essay!
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this essay is to demonstrate that you can apply analysis skills in writing an essay.
You will write an essay of 600-750 words in length that analyzes the folk tale of Cinderella--any of the versions found in WRAC. The criteria for the analysis will come from "''Cinderella'': A story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts" by Bruno Bettelheim, page 638, or "The Importance of Fairy Tales," also by Bettelheim. You will use the criteria from only ONE piece in doing the analysis. You will identify this criteria in a journal-writing exercise.
Your Works Cited will include two items: one of the two articles named here and one of the Cinderella stories. The lectures, journals, and class discussion should help you formulate your ideas. The discussion questions at the end of the pieces in WRAC will also help you formulate your ideas.
Answer this question: How does the story of Cinderella serve the needs of society? (Remember, I asked you to think about the larger interpretation of the classic tale!) Now, using the criteria from one of the pieces, write your essay.
The paper should include a little summary, but DO NOT just summarize the articles. Follow the guidelines provided for organizing the piece and make at least three main points (more if you want to do so).
You must include a Works Cited page. You must follow correct MLA citation rules.
Follow the essay guidelines as you type your essay.
DELIVERY - WORD DOC FORMAT
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