Writing the essay for “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Here’s what I want to see you write AFTER I approve your claim/thesis:
- You will begin with a short introductory paragraph leading into your theme/thesis sentence. The introductory paragraph should be brief–only a couple of sentences are necessary to state your thesis.
- Then you will use the three examples/supports you chose to elaborate on that theme/thesis. Explain your claim by citing those lines and explaining further how Thomas illustrates his theme. Put direct quotes (word-for-word) in “”.
- What details do Thomas use? Why these specific words or examples or whatever you chose? Do they create the meaning or lend to the tone/mood?
- Then create a short closing paragraph–a couple of sentences as most–tying up the essay and throwing in one more insight into the poem, if you can.
- This essay should be about 250-500 words, shared with me on Google docs.
- Essay is due FRIDAY, Jan. 31, before midnight.
This short essay is to give you practice creating a strong, solid (not vague or mushy) thesis/claim, then incorporating appropriate details from the text to back up your claim.
Below is some advice I gleaned from Cliff Notes on how to write essays for the AP Exam. We’re not to this level just yet, but will be very soon. Keep in mind the advice to be direct and create tight, clear essays.
The body paragraphs are the heart of the essay. Each should be guided by a topic sentence that is a relevant part of the introductory thesis statement. . . In your argument essays, provide appropriate and sufficient evidence from the passage(s) and your knowledge of the world. Prove that you are capable of intelligent “civil discourse,” a discussion of important ideas. However, always be sure to connect your ideas to the thesis. Explain exactly how the evidence presented leads to your thesis. Avoid obvious commentary. A medium- to low-scoring paper merely reports what’s in the passage. A high-scoring paper makes relevant, insightful, analytical points about the passage. Remember to stay on topic.
Your conclusion, like your introduction, shouldn’t be long-winded or elaborate. Do attempt, however, to provide more than mere summary; try to make a point beyond the obvious, which will indicate your essay’s superiority. In other words, try to address the essay’s greater importance in your conclusion. Of course, you should also keep in mind that a conclusion is not absolutely necessary in order to receive a high score. Never forget that your body paragraphs are more important than the conclusion, so don’t slight them merely to add a conclusion.
INTRODUCTION TO The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
This is our first major work, and we’re beginning with a play, which obviously doesn’t have description or narration in its text, but is almost wholly dialogue.
Victorian England plays a significant part in the SETTING of this play, as well as the CHARACTERIZATION. Here’s the era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NHIVFNGQX8
Our play is set in the later Victorian Era, when Britain is wealthy, fat, and quite ridiculous when it comes to clothing and manners. We need to understand the period to see what THEMES Wilde is trying to convey in his play.
Victorian rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvuwH2b34Kk
Victorian dress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXS09skBTqA
HANDOUT: A sampling of quotes from Wilde’s works. How would you label his style and attitude?
This play is a “Comedy of Manners” which uses:
- witty dialogue
- sarcasm and irony
- contrived situations
- portrayals of class differences
- contrasts between urban and rural lives
- AND a critique of society, especially marriage
Introduction to the CHARACTERS (from Sparknotes) http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/earnest/characters/
John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P. – The play’s protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. The initials after his name indicate that he is a Justice of the Peace.
Algernon Moncrieff – The play’s secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements. He has invented a fictional friend, “Bunbury,” an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations.
Gwendolen Fairfax – Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious. Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name.
Cecily Cardew – Jack’s ward, the granddaughter of the old gentlemen who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness. This idea, rather than the virtuous-sounding name, has prompted her to fall in love with Jack’s brother Ernest in her imagination and to invent an elaborate romance and courtship between them.
Lady Bracknell – Algernon’s snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen’s mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of “eligible young men” and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell’s speeches is unintentional. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as “a delicate exotic fruit.” When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play.
Miss Prism – Cecily’s governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. She highly approves of Jack’s presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his “unfortunate” brother. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism’s severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was “lost” or “abandoned.” Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. – The rector on Jack’s estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened “Ernest.” Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for “Doctor of Divinity.”
Lane – Algernon’s manservant. When the play opens, Lane is the only person who knows about Algernon’s practice of “Bunburying.” Lane appears only in Act I.
Merriman – The butler at the Manor House, Jack’s estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III.
(If you’re interested in Victorian slang–and really, how could you not be–here’s a link to 56 terms we, sadly, no longer have: https://flashbak.com/not-up-to-dick-100-wonderful-victorian-slang-words-you-should-be-using-9514/ I’d like to bring back, “Got the morbs?” or I might start calling someone a “Chuckaboo.”)
AS WE READ the play in class over the next couple of days, you have a task to complete. Choose 15 direct quotes (5 from each of the 3 acts) that are meaningful sentences or phrases that support any of the following themes within the play:
- The nature of marriage
- The constraints of morality
- The quest for truth and beauty
- Hypocrisy
Type each quote and organize the quotes based on Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3, and add a sentence of why you chose that quote:
- What appealed to you about it?
- Did you find it accurate? How?
- Funny? Why?
- Insightful? In what way?
This assignment will be due next week, but start marking lines right now. I can give you sticky notes.
HOMEWORK: Write your “Do not go gentle into that good night” essay and share it with me before FRIDAY at midnight.
AP Lit, Washington Academy 