Essay #5: Literary Reflection

Topics

You will select a narrative (story) that has had a significant impact in your life, or that reflects an aspect of your own life experience or personality. This can be a book, movie, TV show, album of songs, poems, etc.

Choose a particular scene, character, philosophy, concept, family dynamic, etc., and think about ways in which you find connection to it. It might be helpful to identify a theme in the text, and to consider the extent to which you agree with the idea, or how central the thought is to your life.

This essay should be a kind of hybrid- your personal reflections on your identity, synthesized with quotes and concepts from a text.

Some questions to consider:

What books have taught you something significant about life?
What books influenced you as a child?

Basically any narrative is acceptable for this essay...I don’t care if it’s Dr. Suess or Fifty Shades of Gray. The point of this assignment is to break out of our rigid essay writing that we’ve been doing for the past 12 weeks, & focus on something of meaning & importance to you. This is your chance to personalize your writing- let your own thoughts guide you.

Final Versions

Essay should be 3-4 double-spaced, typed pages in length. This essay is also more free-form, meaning you don’t need to follow the argumentative structure and organization that we’ve been using. You can almost use this essay as a free write. Explore what interests you & is significant in your life!

You need not quote from additional sources, as you may rely entirely on your chosen text; however, if you do refer to additional sources, you must include a Works Cited page.