The Microessay

The purpose of the microessay is to give you practice in the fundamentals of writing arguments about literature. Follow these guidelines:

• The micro-essay should consist of a single paragraph of no more than one and a half pages double spaced.
• Give your essay a title which is specific enough to give the reader a sense of what the essay is about and as interesting as possible.
• Begin the essay with a specific claim which is about the meaning of the text (as opposed to the text's literary merit, your own views on the ideas and issues raised in the text, the characters in the text as if they were real people, etc.) and which answers one of the questions below. Don't waste space on introductory fluff.
• The claim should be argumentative rather than descriptive--that is, it should be a claim which could be disputed (as opposed to a claim which states an inarguable fact).
• Your argument should be original in some way; go beyond what was said in class.
• Support the claim with specific evidence from the text. Use quotes rather than paraphrases where possible--and even when a paraphrase is necessary (e.g. when your evidence is an event or series of events in the plot rather than a specific passage), try to bolster the paraphrase by including short quoted phrases.
• You do not need to provide a Works Cited list, but you should indicate the location of your evidence, whether it is quotes or summarized events, with a page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence in which the evidence is found, like so (253). If you are using a quote, "like so" (253).
• Be sure that your argument and its evidence is presented in a clear, organized fashion. The paragraph should be unified and coherent--that is, every part of the microessay should serve to support your central claim, and every sentence should follow clearly from the sentence before and lead clearly to the sentence after.

This assignment will be graded by the following criteria:

• Interpretation. Is the main claim argumentative rather than descriptive? Is your main claim about the meaning of the story (as opposed to, e.g., the story's literary merit, the real world, etc.)? How well does your argument take account of the subtleties and complexities of the story you are writing about, given the limits of the short microessay form?
• Argumentation. Is your argument logical? Is every claim in the body of the paragraph followed by good evidence from the text? In such a short essay you cannot take account of all the evidence relevant to your topic, but have you at least avoided claims against which there is directly contradictory evidence? Do you use quotes where possible and integrate them smoothly into your own language? If paraphrase is appropriate for some of your evidence, does your paraphrase reproduce the text accurately? Do you indicate the page number of every piece of evidence that you use?
• Structure. Is the micro-essay introduced by and focused around a clear, specific statement of the main idea? If the idea has more than one part, are the turns in the argument clearly signaled in the body of the paragraph? Does the paragraph flow, i.e. does every sentence follow clearly from the one before and lead clearly to the next?
• Control of language. Is your paper free of grammar and punctuation errors? Does the paper have a mature and articulate voice?

Choose one of the topics below:

1. After Olympia's true nature is revealed in "The Sandman," the narrator takes a few paragraphs (218-219) to describe the response of society at large to the imposture before going on to finish Nathaniel's story. There is surely a satiric edge to this section. But who or what is being satirized, and what is this paragraph saying about them or it?
2. After Clara tells Nathaniel to throw his poem in the fire, Nathaniel calls her an "inanimate, accursed automaton" (209). This is clearly ironic, as Nathaniel will later fall in love with a real automaton, Olympia. What is the point of this irony?
3. There are references to eyes throughout "The Sandman"--so many, in fact, that they almost have to be symbolic. Explain one of the meanings of eyes in the story. (A full discussion of eye imagery in "The Sandman" would require a lengthy paper, but you should be able to sketch out an argument about eyes and support it in a single paragraph; your claim doesn't have to cover all the meanings of eyes in the story, just one important one.)

An example of a micro-essay, with commentary, can be found here.