Because
this essay requires you to make some interpretations about how Chris
McCandless lived his life as is researched by Jon Krakauer, you will
need to rely heavily upon the two Thoreau essays "Civil Disobedience"
and "Life without Principle" as source material. As we previously
did in class, you should start with relevant quotes from Thoreau's
essays that you think had an influence on McCandless. Your
objective is to demonstrate through as many relevant examples as
possible how this quote or principle from Thoreau had an impact on
McCandless' life.
You will want to structure your
essay around 4-7 influences Thoreau's writings had on McCandless.
This range should provide you with enough evidence to support your
thesis that Thoreau's works did in fact influence McCandless. If
you offer too little evidence, your essay will not be convincing, so
each paragraph should focus on a single influence. And for each
influence, you need to find multiple examples.
In
this sample main body paragraph, study the comments in the left hand
column that describe how the paragraph is assembled. Use this as a
model for how all your main body paragraphs should be constructed.
Additionally, read
this
sample introductory paragraph, and note the commentary notes at the
bottom of the page. The paragraph is divided into color-coded
sections that the commentary notes reference, and we will briefly
discuss this in class this week.
Most of your work will involve
carefully re-reading your annotations for Thoreau's essays and
selecting well-chosen passages to demonstrate Thoreau's influence
on McCandless.
For peer critiques this week,
please remember to bring 3 copies of your rough draft (3 pages minimum)
and 2 copies of the peer critique worksheets for this assignment on the
essay assignments page.
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