The essay should make a clear, specific analytical point/points, based on a close study of the work under discussion; they should be well organized, developed in detail (interpreting/commenting on specific details of settings, symbol, character interactions and dialogue, plot events, scenes, passages, images and patterns of images, lines, etc.), and grammatically competent. Unless notified otherwise, these entries should follow a set format: The first paragraph should contain a brief summary of one (or more, in the case of comparative studies) of the works read that week, including the author’s name and title of the story/poem/play; this paragraph should conclude with a specific thesis statement of the theme(s) and the analytical point(s) you will pursue in the remainder of the essay (i.e., you may decide to focus closely on one passage, scene, image, symbol, or a group of images, etc., that expresses the theme, or a particular aspect of the theme). The second paragraph should be a detailed analysis of your analytical point(s), as noted in the thesis at the end of the first par., indicating how the story’s/poem’s/play’s details (details of a setting, symbol, character interaction and dialogue, plot event, scene, passage, image and image patterns, word sound, language rhythm, etc.) express the overall theme/meaning of the story and/or your particular analytical point. You must quote from the work and comment on particular lines, images, and other details (if you think a work communicates a particular feeling or idea, for example, you should be able to point out how several details of the above-listed elements express this idea or feeling). Following the same format, you may also compare/contrast 2 stories/poems/plays, or compare the work you are analyzing to work from a different genre (such as a poem to a story read previously). I may also assign exercises (usually requiring a one or two paragraph response), which should be submitted separately but may also be incorporated into the journal/essays You may also include an optional “personal connection” to the work in this paragraph, or an additional one, indicating the relevance of key themes or issues to your life (things that have happened to you, your family, others you know), observations you’ve made (about yourself, the world at large), its relation to something else you’ve read, films you’ve seen, etc., or any combination of these things. The third paragraph (or fourth, if you decide to split the discussion of paragraph 2 into two parts, as suggested above) should review and evaluate on one or more secondary sources; quote from one or more of the secondary sources you’ve found online, or in the library, and apply what the critics say to details of the work that you’ve observed; you may find that the work’s details either support or challenge the critics’ points—i.e., do you agree or disagree with their findings or a combination of the two? Why or why not, based on your own observations? Make sure that you carefully consider what these critics are saying before you provide your own opinion, and make sure to base your evaluation on the facts of the work. You may select quotes from professional critical articles written about the particular work or the author’s work in general, which you then apply to the story/poem/play at hand (again, these “secondary” sources are found primarily online. You may, optionally, integrate secondary sources into your second paragraph analysis; in either case, you should introduce the secondary source (noting author, title, and source of article or articles), the quote from the article(s), then follow up the quote with a comment relating the secondary source(s) to specific aspects of the story/poem/play you are analyzing.