This is your fifth and final essay for Honors English 112. By now, you should have some idea of what I consider to be engaging, argumentative issues dealing with the works we have read for class. For your fifth essay, you should create your own topic. However, for those of you who need more guidance, I have topics listed below.

I want that topic to be argumentative. That is, a reasonable, intelligent person who has read the novel and who reads your paper should be able to say, "I disagree with that." And that person should be able to provide an equally compelling argument refuting your findings. It goes without saying, I hope, that I want the essay to go further than we have in our class discussions.

If you don't choose one of the topics below, please be sure to clear your topic with me before you begin to write.

Once again, for this essay, I want you to do scholarly research to support your views; however, this time, I want you to incorporate four outside sources--plus the novel-- into your text and works cited page. Therefore, your works cited should have five entries. Do not use more than that. I emphasize that I want these to be scholarly sources: material taken from books of criticism, literary journals, reputable magazines, newspaper reviews, or an interview with Tim O'Brien. Do not use other pieces of fiction from either Tim O'Brien or another writer of Vietnam War fiction. Do not use Wikipedia, encyclopedias, dictionaries, or the Bible. Of these four sources, you may use one historical source about the war; however, I don't want this to be an historical paper. It is to be an argument, based on literary analysis of the text, corroborated or disputed by your sources.

Document according to the MLA format. Remember that for the most part, all that is necessary for an in-text citation is the author's name and page reference: (O'Brien 29). If you introduce the source, then usually include the full name: According to the literary critic Richard Bausch, . . . then simply place the page reference in parenthesis: (29).

If there is no author's name, then put the title of the article or the name of the website in quotations and parenthesis, plus the page number if it's given: ("The Fiction of Vietnam" 49). Whatever appears in the in-text citation should match the beginning of the works cited page. Therefore, for the first example I gave you, I will look for O'Brien, Tim in the works cited, plus the name of the novel and so on. In the second example, without an author's name, I will look for "The Fiction of Vietnam." This should be alphabetized under "F," not under "T." Remember that everything in the works cited is alphabetized according to the writer's last name--or if there is no writer given, the first significant word of the title of the article or website. For a sample works cited page, see page 665 in your Hacker Handbook. For further documentation help, see your Hacker Handbook, beginning on page 609 for in-text citations and on page 621 for works cited.

Proofread your work scrupulously; there is no sense in putting hours into reading the novel and your sources and then turning in a poorly written essay, one that has misspellings, fragments, dangling modifiers, comma splices, and misplaced modifiers. Such an essay tells the reader that you don't care about accuracy. What reader wants to waste his time reading a work in which the writer doesn't care?

Hold your quotations (including all your secondary sources) to no more than fifteen percent of the paper. Given the sources I'm asking you to use, you should think in terms of at least twelve hundred to fifteen hundred words. The deadline for the essay is on the syllabus.

For those of you who need some more guidelines for topics, consider the ones below:

1. One of Tim O'Brien's topics in this novel is the influence of the past on the characters' lives, for instance John Wade: Mr. Wade's influence over John, Mr. Wade's death, John's involvement in the Thuan Yen massacre, and his loss of the U. S. Senate primary in Minnesota, among other things. What is O'Brien saying about the effects of the past on a character's life?

2. Like many a writer in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, O'Brien focuses on the theme of identity. He uses mirror images, imagery of snakes' devouring each other, nicknames, and so on. What is O'Brien's point about identity?

3. O'Brien's narrator says that "this is a love story." What is O'Brien saying about the nature of love in this novel?

4. The novel, of course, ends with the mystery, the enigma about what happened to Kathy Wade. Using logical evidence from the text, argue that John Wade did or did not kill Kathy Wade.

5. O'Brien incorporates into this novel a number of historical personalities and events. Clearly, he is trying to say something about the nature of history. What is his implication about history?

Good Luck!