You have a lot more freedom with this essay because there is no detailed prompt for you to address. Instead, you’ll be synthesizing several of the concepts and texts with outside research to support your ideas. Your synthesis should address at least one core idea about life’s meaning that have thus far been explored: existence, nothingness, absurdity, angst, freedom, and so on. You choose the core idea, you choose the texts. Hey, we’re practicing what some existentialism preaches, freedom of choice. Explore the ways in which our course philosophers have approached the core idea using course texts (The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka) and support your assertions with two outside sources.
Your essay should be a minimum of 1200 words.
You should have at least two outside, credible sources and reference as many course texts as you see fit. (If you have any questions on the credibility of your source, please ask.)
Try to synthesize your texts in a cohesive manner so that your ideas are logically organized and integrated through each page.
Your essay should be formatted as such:
Begin with an introduction paragraph that includes an engaging hook, several sentences of key information about the topic and introducing primary texts, and a clear thesis statement that demonstrates your position on the concept you’ve chosen.
Body paragraphs should synthesize quotation support from all your sources.
End with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes your main takeaways about the concept (and does not begin with “In conclusion”).
MLA format, typed, doubled-spaced, 1” margins, 12-point type, Times New Roman.
Creative title (not “Essay 3”).
Your name, course number, and due date should be in the top left corner, double-spaced. Your surname and page number should in the top right header. No big spaces between any of it. All the same size/font/spacing as the body. (This is relatively standard MLA formatting for first pages;
OWL has an example if you need to see it.)
Your textual analysis should be written entirely in the third person POV. This means that you will not include “I believe” or “when I was reading” or anything that looks like that, nor should you address the reader or include them in your writing with “you”, “we”, “our”, “us”, etc.
A Works Cited List IS required for all sources, and you should also have parenthetical in-text citations in MLA format for every quotation and paraphrase. You should use these strategically for your analysis. Remember that MLA formatted in-text citations will look like (Camus 35), or, if you using multiple works by the same author, like (Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” 2).