hello friends and welcome back to the channel uh in this uh video what we're going to be talking about is take home essay number one you know granted uh you know compared to a timed writing a take-home essay is significantly more in-depth than a timed writing in both length and complexity so i want to walk you through what i'm looking at or what i'm looking for you to write about um this text joaquin murrieta now one thing to keep in mind uh as you remember from the death of the author there's only so much we
know about john rollin ridge aka yellow bird he's dead we cannot talk to him we cannot ask him what his text means the best we can do is sort of guesstimate or postulate what his text means and so as i'm going to be asking you to make arguments about his text you're going to be making a case for the arguments that his text is making whether or not ridge ever really intended them or not so i really want you to think of the text itself as an argument and then you trying to dissect what that
argument means again completely independent of whether or not ridge ever intended these arguments because he's dead and we can't ask him so let me continue uh i'm asking also about theme so it's important to understand when it comes to writing about literature the difference between a topic and a theme so in this case one of the topics in joaquin marietta is racism all right there's tons and tons of racism in joaquin marietta in the sense that so the mexicans are discriminated against by the white people and then uh joaquin and his band discriminated against chinese
people and the everybody discriminates against the native american people there's all sorts of racism all throughout the text that's a topic what makes a theme is when you start looking at what is the text saying about racism so for instance i could argue because everybody in the text at one point or another ends up engaging in racially discriminatory behavior and cruelty i could say hey the text argues that racism is part of the human condition okay so instead of just saying hey joaquin marietta's about racism i'm now saying the text is making an argument that
racism is a part of every human being that's the difference between a topic and a theme topic is there's racism in the book theme is this book is saying x about racism savvy okay let's continue so in the context i say there's nothing or and i this i bring in this quote from ridge's text there's nothing so dangerous in its consequences as justice to individuals that are wrong done to one man is wrong done to society and to the world so i want to talk about all of these injustices this whole book is about crime
and punishment and injustice and so was the birth of the state of california so for this essay you will explore one of the complicated themes like i said themes is the argument the text is making about the topic in the text to see what the argument what argument can be gleaned from ridges pages more than 150 years later so here are the different prompts and again choose one if you want and one of these prompts doesn't really strike your fancy feel free to let me know and if you want to do sort of a choose
your own adventure prompt i'm down for it but otherwise i i'm trying to to strike the balance between a student approaching the text and being like dude i don't know what's right just tell me what's right and a student being like don't put my mind in a box man i want to write what i want to write all right if you're the kind of student who's like don't put my mind in a box let's talk and i want to see what your ideas are and how you want to approach the text if you're just one
if you're a little bit more like one of those students who's just like just kind of give me instructions i'll write the paper choose from one of these prompts so the five prompts that i have here um i i say joaquin is discriminated against for being mexican but he and his band are also very cruel to others based on their race write an essay in which you examine the argument the novel makes about race and or racism so back to my first example there about a theme what's there what's the novel saying about racism now
granted this argument may or may not be an argument that ridge intended to make he's dead we can't ask him so what we're going to do is let the text speak for itself what argument is it making about race all right now here's the other one the next idea many ways the book paints joaquin as part of the product of his environment and the injustice he suffers write an essay in which you argue the extent to which joaquin is responsible for his own actions versus being a product of his environment so you know the book
kind of insinuates that joaquin is a product of his environment but the book could be wrong argue with the book or agree with the book and explain why so this prompt would be saying you know how much is is joaquin responsible versus how much is he just sort of a product of the injustice that was given third prompt the book paints joaquin as guided by a moral code and or a noble cause despite engaging in acts of violence and cruelty write an essay in which you argue the extent to which joaquin and his band are
morally justified in their actions right so in this case you have to make an argument is he a good guy or is he a bad guy you know there's evidence for both and he and so i want you to sort of pick a side prompt four book features a number of characters suffering psychological trauma and exhibiting abnormal psychology is psychological behavior you know there's lots of death and destruction and cruelty and malice write an essay in which you attempt to diagnose the psychology of one or more characters and explore the significance of that diagnosis so
for instance you can make a good argument that three finger jack is a psychopath well maybe three finger jack is a psychopath if three finger jack's a psychopath what does that mean why is that important write an essay and explain it and then the book features a number of female characters with varying levels of depth and complexity write an essay in which you explore the book's argument about women women and their role in this in society what does the novel say about women and why does that matter um you know again this is a very
old text attitudes toward women 150 years ago are certainly different than they are now so and ridge's text is no different for that so in this prompt i'm asking you all right look at the female characters you know what argument about women is the text making and why is that important now again we don't know what argument ridge intended to make he's dead you can't ask him but we can take a look at what he left behind and see what the um text itself argues so these are sort of the examples of the prompts that
i want you to take a look at now again going through the prompt carefully uh we want to take a look at the thesis so i've said each essay must make a clear identifiable thesis statement both in the introduction and the conclusion make sure your thesis clearly answers the prompt in all of these prompts what i'm doing is i'm asking a specific question and so your thesis needs to answer that specific question so i've given two examples here the book argues that racism spreads like a disease as joaquin and three finger jack are discriminated against
but commit racist acts of cruelty throughout the book that would be an example of an argument that the text makes or the book has a complicated argument about women they aren't as important as men undeserving of names for half the novel but not to be underestimated as evidenced by guerra's murder so in this case notice how i said the book argues now you can say ridge argues too um you can kind of use that interchangeably but what i'm trying to do is explain all right here's what i think from my analysis of the text here's
what i think the book is arguing whether or not ridge intended it the book that he left behind what's the argument it's making both of these would be good examples where they're arguable thesis statements like i could say hey that's not what the book is saying about women at all or that's not what the book is saying about racism at all i can make it an argument that it's saying something totally different that's fine so that's just another example of what a thesis statement about a you know an argumentative literature literary thesis statement that's a
good example of what it means all right some more fine print um the essay is gonna be 1200 words so that's four pages double spaced just about rough draft has to be three or nine hundred words which is approximately three pages doubles based more or less this is a short essay i'm not asking for a gargantuan essay here i'd rather you get sort of straight to the point and i'm really looking for quality over quantity furthermore essay each essay must make reference to at least two outside sources in addition to the novel um so in
this case uh i want you to do your research outside of the novel now what can you do your research on there's not that much material on joaquin marietta however take a look at the topics he's discriminated against for being mexican but then he also discriminates against other people so you could find an article about racism this this paper paragraph or this prompt is more about nature nurture environment or uh you know or his own personal responsibility well you could find an article about that phenomenon um this is about how he has a moral code
even though he's a criminal you could find an article about honor amongst thieves all right you don't even have to find something specifically about joaquin marietta or specifically about california history you can find articles about that kind of topic in literature or in any arena psychological trauma so you could find a psychology article that talks about uh you know i mentioned the idea of maybe debriefing your jack as a psychopath find an article about psychopaths see if you can apply some of those some of that material or here this one's about women so you could
find an article about women in literature so even if you can't find something specifically about joaquin marietta um you know because there are a limited number of articles that were written about the book because it's kind of a deep cut you can find outside research about one of these topics that you will be able to use to help strengthen your argument i would prefer you not to use wikipedia study aids spark notes online student essays quote aggregating websites uh and then if i've provided you uh materials there's a couple articles that i'm going to be
providing for the joaquin marietta essay but um you're allowed to consult that material but it doesn't count for your sources because i already found it for you and you going and finding it is part of what i'm asking you to do um i've already mentioned some of this and then i will be judging it on mla citation um if you need help with this please let me know please go to the writing center we can help with it um a lot of times uh mla citation it's all about just sitting down and doing it and
it's a pain in the butt but once you do it a couple times you kind of can figure it out and make it work for you all right a few more things your audience is the general academic audience however imagine they are familiar with joaquin marietta so you don't have to explain the plot to them imagine they already read it you don't need to say okay well this is this book is about this that the other thing and this happens and then this happens you do not need to waste your time with that basically imagine
they've read the book but maybe it's been a while or maybe they don't remember all the details so what you'll need is to bring in specific examples but you don't have to tell the the the um you don't have to summarize the plot that is not something that you need to waste your time doing but you need to bring in specific examples so hey in this particular part of the book this happens now when this happens here's what it means that i want to see but you don't need to be like this is a book
about joaquin marietta this is what happened to him and this is i don't need any of that um using imei or my not really appropriate but you can use it occasionally if you need to um don't use you avoid at all costs and here i have um some more structure in miscellaneous followed by an example a sample outline so what i've done in your in in the body paragraphs is i've sort of explained kind of a structure a good literary analysis essay will follow the following structure of a body paragraph so you're going to state
one main point supporting your thesis so like for instance let's go back to the thesis here i say racism is like a disease okay so maybe what i will say is i will say all right here's one way that racism is like a disease then i'm going to find a quote from the book to support your point or support my point so maybe maybe this paragraph will be all about joaquin so racism is like a disease for joaquin so then i'm going to provide a quote from joaquin murietta the text uh about that find a
good example in the text where uh you know the where joaquin is discriminated against and then he commits discrimination then i'm going to explain that quote and how it supports my main point now then i'm going to bring in a quote from an outside source so maybe i found an article about joaquin marietta that i want to bring in or maybe i found an article about racism that i want to bring in i'm going to bring in a quote from there and then explain how that point or how that uh that quote explains the main
point so my point is all right joaquin marietta in his in this particular character racism is like a disease then i have to show a quote from the book and explain it and then quote from an outside source and explain it and then i tie it all together so think of your sort of checklist in each body paragraph each body paragraph should have like one quote that you explain from the book and one quote from an outside source that you explain that's a good rule of thumb you don't necessarily have to follow that structure in
every single paragraph but it's certainly a good rule of thumb all right and so in this next body paragraph what i might do is maybe i'll take another character so maybe i'll look at three finger jack and i'll do sort of the same thing where i'm going to look at you know a quote from the book and explain it and then a quote from an outside source and explain that now i could use multiple quotes from the same outside source as long as i have two total that's fine um but you're allowed to use more
than one quote from the same outside source all right maybe i have a third point all right maybe maybe what i want to do is maybe there's a third character maybe i'll use one of the us government characters and i will do a third body paragraph that sort of shows from sort of the more uh kind of the white american point of view of how racism functions like a disease or maybe what i'll do is i will reshuffle the way i'm looking at maybe i need two body paragraphs to talk about joaquin and two body
paragraphs to talk about three finger jack and that's all i want to do it really depends on how you want to approach the topic but the idea is the same thing try to get a good quote from the text and good quote from an outside source and then wrap it all up and explain it together that is sort of what i'm looking for from a literary analysis paper and that's sort of what you can learn for how to put this paper together as always let me know if you have questions i'm willing to meet with
you i am folks in the writing center are willing to meet with you to help you figure out how to put this essay together but hopefully this overview has given you a little bit of insight into what i'm asking for and why um so i'm going to leave it here and you all take care
