Assignment: Write a 700-800-word essay in which you describe, analyze, and interpret a crucial problem, paradox, contradiction or discontinuity at work in one of the literary texts mentioned below, with evidence from the text to help illustrate and support your interpretation. Note that the word limits are firm ones. Write an essay in which you analyze and draw some conclusion about the role of this contradiction or problem in the text that helps to shed light on that text as a whole. § In Heaney’s “Digging,” the representation of the pen as both a weapon, resting “snug as a gun” between the fingers, and as a spade, a productive tool for literal as well as metaphorical digging Write a 700-800-word essay in which you tackle the following components of the assigned task: § Briefly identify the contradiction you are analyzing by describing it from each relevant perspective, revealing, with quotations from the text, the way in which the text supports each perspective. Offer an account of what makes this a problem or point of uncertainty in the text: what is it about this element that makes it uncertain, contradictory, or difficult to interpret and resolve? § Analyze the impact of the contradiction on the interpretation of the text in general. If we treat it as a kind of lens through which to view the text as a whole, how does our understanding of the text change? Why has the author chosen to incorporate this problematic element in the text in a way that leaves our interpretation of it uncertain? What impact does this have on our reading of other images, characters, conflicts, etc., in the text? Again, engage in this analysis with quotations from the text to support the claims you make. § Offer an overall interpretation of the role of this element in the text. Your interpretation can have one of a number of goals here: o You may strive for resolution by resolving the apparent contradiction and arguing in favour of one or another interpretation of the element with quotations from the text to support your claims. o You may strive for synthesis by arguing that the apparent contradiction or uncertainty is not there at all—that, in other words, the multiple perspectives on this element do not conflict but instead are essential and coherent parts of a larger point the author appears to be making, or that there is some other way to view them. Again, support your claims with quotations from the text . o You may ultimately argue that the conflict or problem is irresolvable and demonstrate, with quotations from the text, the essential and fundamental role of the conflict in the text. If you take this approach, though, you will need to account not just for the fact that the problem is irresolvable but why. How, in other words, does this shape our understanding of the text as a whole? Note: the goal here is literary analysis. A writer has left a contradiction for you to make sense of, and your task here is to do just that by analyzing what that contradiction seems to be doing in the text and then defending your analysis in a brief essay. The point of the exercise, then, is to draw an analytical conclusion about the text as a whole by focusing on the role of a particular aspect of it. Such a conclusion should be specific, clear and well stated, and it should help shed light on the text. It will not be enough simply to argue that the author has left this contradiction unresolved “to make the text more interesting to the reader,” as this does not actually shed any light on the text or teach your reader anything about it at all. Think about the particular point that the author seems to be making indirectly in the text, or the specific problem(s) of interpretation that the contradiction might create, and try to account for why this is how the author goes about things. Suggestions for pre-writing work, if you are having trouble getting started: Use the following three categories to unpack the element and the text that you have chosen. Make notes in each category and finish by writing a conflict statement to help focus your topic and the claim you intend to make about it. Static : Note what remains the same: the places where the problem you are interested in occurs. Look for frequency, for repeated patterns. Note your first impression of the text and of the element you are focusing on. Note every occurrence of the problem or paradox in the text; note also what this element is linked to. What is the problem you are focusing on, and how does the text construct it? Dynamic : Mark the transformations that the featured element goes through in the course of the text, and any changes of mind the reader undergoes in the course of trying to construct the work’s meaning. Here, you are interested in the ways in which the text revises itself as it goes along. How does the text wrestle with the problem it contains? What other interpretive problems does this contradiction present as the text proceeds? How does it complicate the text as it develops? Relative : Now consider this element as the instrument through which the text itself is revealed. What are the implications for the text of the contradiction you are discussing? Can we resolve it? Either way, how does the problem affect our reading of the text? What role does it play in interpreting other parts of the text, or of the text taken as a whole? Format – Follow the format guidelines in the Department of English Style Sheet, available here. Grading Emphases: – understanding of genre (analysis, argument) – clear assertion of conflict in opening move – analysis/interpretation/resolution which comments on the meaning of the story as a whole – use of textual evidence – proper citation and integration of quotations – understanding of academic audience – avoiding verb tense shifts and agreement errors. Comma splices, misused semicolons, sentence fragments, run-on sentences and apostrophe errors penalized at –1 each. Note: For this assignment, you MUST submit a Works Cited list that contains the entry in the Broadview anthology that you are referring to, and you MUST cite your quoted evidence from the text com