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Close Reading: Evaluating an Argument
"The Art of Persuasion"
Prerequisites: Students need to have some prior knowledge in close reading. Students also need to know how to use the writing process to complete a task.
Materials: Students will need the following: Access to a computer with internet; A Textbook on writing such as : Roberts, Edgar. Writing About Literature. New Jersey: Prentiss Hall, 1999.
Lesson Description: The student will write an essay that evaluates Henry David's argument for civil disobedience.
Lesson Procedure:
1. Read the the information
about Effective
Academic Writing: The Argument from The Writing Center.
2. Read the the information
about How to Evaluate Argument/Persuasion.
3. Read the Evaluate
an Argument Checklist that will be used as an assessment of the completed
essay. Use it as a guide to write an A paper.
3. Read Civil
Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau.
5. Use the Mnemonic
Device system to prepare for the writing of the essay.
6. Follow the steps in How
to Organize the Analysis Essay
to complete the writing process.
A. Read the essay closely to determine the shifts.
Draw lines showing where the major shifts occur.
B. Go to each section. Analyze how Thoreau
manipulates the language to convey the meaning
of that first section. Use Evaluating an Argument as a
reference. Discuss Thoreau's effective choices by
embedding quotes within your own natural explanations.
C. Write a thesis based on the results of the prewriting
completed in step 8 A and B. This thesis must include a:
1. Real Subject: What is the major
purpose of the essay?
2. Inference: What is your opinion
about the subject of the essay?
3. Causation: What are the sub-topics
discovered in each
shift designated in the prewriting?
D. Have your rough draft read and edited by other class members.
The Evaluate an Argument Checklist will be used as a guide.
E. Write a Final Draft.
Assessment:
The teacher will grade put a
mark out of 9 in the grade book, based on the Evaluate
an Argument Checklist.
Two students will read, comment,
and grade the essay based on the same checklist. Scores must equal
the teacher's score.
Enrichment: Check out the
Thoreau
Reader to find all kinds of online texts of other works written by
Henry David Thoreau.
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Modification:
An AP English Language and Composition Examination may test the student
in the following manner:
Option A: (Suggested Time--40 minutes)
Samuel
Johnson
"A
Free Inquiry Into the Nature and Origin of Evil"
In a philosophical work, an author named Soame Jenyns once tried to explain or justify human suffering by an analogy. In this analogy, Jenyns argued that just as human beings use animals for pleasure and profit, so higher order of beings may enjoy or benefit from our suffering. Samuel Johnson wrote a review of the philosophical work. This review can be read in its entirety by clicking on Review of Soame Jenyns, A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. He begins his review with the following preface:
This is a treatise, consisting of six letters, upon a very difficult and
important
question, which, I am afraid, this author's endeavours will not free from
the
perplexity which has entangled the speculatists of all ages, and which
must
always continue while we see but in part. He calls it a Free Enquiry, and,
indeed, his freedom is, I think, greater than his modesty. Though he is
far
from the contemptible arrogance, or the impious licentiousness of Bolingbroke,
yet he decides, too easily, upon questions out of the reach of human deter-
mination, with too little consideration of mortal weakness, and with too
much
vivacity for the necessary caution.
The following excerpt of Samuel Johnson's Review was included on the 1978 Advanced Placement Examination in English. Elipsis marks (. . . .) are used to indicate portions where parts of the textx was eliminated. The AP question, usued to prompt the writing of the 40 minute essay, asked the student to read the passage carefully and then write an essay that analyzes Johnson's treatment of Soame Jenyns argument and his attitude toward the author, Soame Jenyns.
Here is the excerpt of the essay:
I (Samuel Johnson) cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he (Soame Jenyns)might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown, that these "hunters, whose game is man," have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves, now and then, with sinking a ship . . . . As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. . . . Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diversions; for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which, undoubtedly, must make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend. Perhaps, now and then, a merry being may place himself in such a situation, as to enjoy, at once, all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain, exhibited together.
One sport the merry malice of
these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have nothing equal
or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered
either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice
of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head, thus prepared for the
reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily
fill with idle notions, till, in time, they make their plaything an author;
their first
diversion commonly begins with
an ode or an epistle, then rises, perhaps, to a political irony, and is,
at last, brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins
the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity,
to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which
himself confesses impossible to be understood. Sometimes, however, it happens,
that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain,
but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing
him out to one another, as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying
his own applause and that of his companions, and, perhaps, is elevated
with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect.
Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of (this) world. . . . The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it; and how will either of those be put more in our power, by him who tells us, that we are puppets, of which some creature, not much wiser than ourselves, manages the wires! That a set of beings, unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies, to see our limbs quiver; torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries; sometimes obstructing the bile, that they may see how a man looks, when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a traveller's bones, to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat, for the greater elegance of his hide. . . .
Thus, after having clambered, with great labour, from one step of argumentation to another, instead of rising into the light of knowledge, we are devolved back into dark ignorance; and all our effort ends in belief, and for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot be found.
END OF EXAMINATION
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