Your Fiction Paper assignment should be 900+ words, and can contain maps, pictur

Your Fiction Paper assignment should be 900+ words, and can contain maps, pictures, photographs, drawings, sketches, artwork, etc. This paper should be written using MLA Format and Style, and use in-text citations in current, 9th Edition MLA, and possess an 8th or 9th Edition MLA Works Cited page (both are acceptable since the 9th edition has only recently begun to be “rolled out”).
For this paper, choose a creative, argumentative thesis you generate about a short story that is listed in the syllabus, and support this thesis using credible, reliable, authoritative sources.
Look over the stories, find a character, a setting, a plot, a theme, or any other element such as the dialogue within the story that intrigues you, then invent an all-new thesis which you then support (or “prove”) with evidence you get using professional journals or academic journals (from our Library, not just from Google); interviews with credible, authoritative people with work or hobby experience and/or college degrees; and university, government and/or research websites, arts websites, and professional websites.
In order to generate a topic, think about your major, or a major area of your own personal interest: History, Criminology, Politics, Sociology, Psychology, or even Art. Let your interests serve as guides for you, to general avenues of questioning you might want to delve into, to lead you to generate a theory that excites you and stimulates your mind and imagination.
Your thesis may be like one of the following:
The short story “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” should be taught in area schools as a tool to identify behaviors used by predators in order to help students protect themselves from psychological manipulation by predators.
The catacombs in “The Cask of Amontillado” represent Montresor’s twisted mind, and in their decay, show us how unreliable a narrator he really is.
The character of Ted Lavender in “The Things They Carried” was not actually shot by a Viet Cong sniper, but instead was killed by members of his own unit, and the story is an attempt to rewrite history and cover up the death.
For an example, take this thesis based on an appreciation of TV criminal investigation shows like Criminal Minds or Sherlock Holmes:
Montresor, in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” needed to take at least three years to plan and implement his plot to seal his victim, Fortunato, into the dug-out wall in the catacombs.
For this theory to be supported, the author of such a paper, actively involved in the research and writing process, could do the following:
–Consult psychology journals (or maybe education journals…or interview someone like a teacher who knows about learning and patterns) to show that the servants followed a learned pattern over at least three years, to know that as soon as they were told to stay all night by Montresor, they could leave a few minutes after he was out the door.
—Go online and find out what kind of stone is primarily beneath Rome, Italy, that catacombs were dug into and which produced the “nitre” mentioned in the story. Finding this out would help determine how long it would take to dig out a section big enough to imprison someone and hide their body.
—Tour the (still open, socially-distant) Mercer Museum in Bucks County, PA, which is filled with old tools from American history that could potentially have been used in mining, sculpture, or digging, to cite as sources for what Montresor could have used to mine out the area in which Fortunato was imprisioned and buried.
–After finding what kind of stone the catacombs were most likely made of, the writer could contact someone (like a geologist at a university) via email or phone or iMessenger; this person may be able to give an approximate number of hours it would take to carve out a human-sized indent into that type of rock/stone, by hand, using only hand tools found in the late 1700s. Given only a few hours a day that the narrator could be down in the basement/catacombs without getting his servants suspicious, the writer could determine how many weeks it would take to slowly carve out that area, per the sculptor’s authoritative, professional opinion.
—Next, the writer could look up an “Olde Tyme” iron worker who, say, still makes fences, railings, and other stuff for antique houses, etc. and email them about the metal “staple” stuck into the wall, the chain and the “belt” that holds Fortunato in place, and inquire as to how long it would take to make items like this. Remember, back then, you couldn’t just go to Lowe’s and pick up a length of chain. Alternately, the writer could try to find out if lengths of chain could be purchased at general stores back then—very possible if in a shipping community.
–In order to get the iron chain’s correct dimensions, Montresor most likely had to also be able to somehow know Fortunato’s tailor, and get the general measurements of Fortunato’s waist–otherwise the chain/belt might have slipped off. The writer could say how this added to the amount of time of the murder plot. It was also wondered in class about Fortunato gaining or losing weight, which means Montresor would probably have had to have some kind of contact with Fortunato regularly to ensure everything fit properly.
—Additionally, the author might contact a Vo-Tech instructor, a general contractor, or anyone else who has experience brick laying, to find out about the stone/brick wall Montresor made to trap Fortunato. Finding out how many bricks/stones it possibly took, and realizing they had to be smuggled in, would help the author add more days to the plot.
—A person formulating this paper could use Journals of Archaeology to find out what kind of mortar was used, and how much, and to figure out how long it would have taken to smuggle in the powder—maybe just by the pocketful rather than in buckets or burlap sacks (or however mortar was transported then).
–Finally, reading the text, a researcher could add that, as people are creatures of habit, Montresor had to stalk Fortunato at least for several outings, celebrations, or days of a multi-day Carnival in order to know what time and place to encounter Fortunato the next Carnival season. The plot to kill was clearly not fulfilled by random chance.
Those are general steps a research writer could take to support a theory (or thesis) proposing a general time it took Montresor to finish his plot.
Your thesis will be different, of course, but you should follow the same sort of creative, imaginative development of your support, go down similar research avenues, and employ numerous professional and academic sources–peer reviewed journals from our and, web sites, interviews with professionals who have knowledge you need, professors, and websites by the government, universities, or organizations.
I hope this assignment excites you, since you should be using your passion for whatever drives you to drive your paper. Again: you are to generate a creative theory regarding some aspect of one of the stories we read (or will read—you can read ahead, you know!), and write a thesis, supporting that thesis/theory with evidence, all written using MLA Format and Style and Citing all your sources in MLA format, with a full 8th/9th edition MLA Works Cited page.