You must write a critical essay, approximately 550-750 words. This essay should address a literary topic, be typed according to MLA format, and will be graded for content, organization, correct grammatical expression, and adherence to conventions of usage, punctuation, and sentence structure. After reading the Poe stories and poems assigned, you need to choose a topic to examine for an analytical compare/contrast paper. All topics must be approved by the instructor.
Before choosing your topic, consider a few things first. What characters or plots appealed to you the most as you read them? Which themes most interested you? What were the similarities you found in Poe’s different works and what were the differences? Try freewriting about these topics. Then write about the topic that comes most easily to you and that you find the most interesting.
When writing this essay, the literature will be your primary sources, and you should use paraphrases, summaries, and/or direct quotations from them in your essay with correct documentation. You should find at least two secondary sources to use in this essay. Then be sure to follow MLA conventions.
