Octavia E. Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower
Order Instructions
Instructions
Write a 1750-2500 word research essay on a particular topic of your choice in Parable of the Sower. Sample topics from the novel are religion, community, racism, slavery, disability, motherhood, feminism, climate change, ecocriticism, utopia, and dystopia. (You may chose other topics besides these ones.)
Based on your research of secondary sources, write a specific and arguable thesis statement that presents your central argument about the novel.
Develop and support your thesis by discussing quotations from the novel (the primary source) and from at least five secondary sources. (The five sources can include the five sources from your Annotated Bibliography, but this is not mandatory.) The sources should preferably be articles from academic (i.e., scholarly) journals or full-length academic texts (or chapters/articles in full-length texts). However, articles from newspapers and magazines are also acceptable. I highly recommend searching for all sources through the library catalog Links to an external site.or databases.
I recommend the following databases, which focus on academic texts:
JSTOR
Project MUSE
Proquest Links to an external site.is a useful database if you’re looking in particular for newspaper and magazine articles related to Butler’s novel and your chosen topic.
Google Scholar Links to an external site.can also be a good resource since it can help you to locate both 1) open-access academic texts that may not be in our library and 2) articles via the PCC Library—the following video explains how to set up Google Scholar to do this:
For help with any of these tools, you may ask a PCC librarian for research assistance 24/7.
Include a Works Cited page with bibliographic citations for your primary and secondary sources listed in alphabetical order. (Annotations do not need to be included on the Works Cited page.)
Title
Come up with your own creative and specific title for the essay. Use the titles of secondary texts as examples, such as the title, “Violence and/or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement: The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus” by August H. Nimtz. Note that Byerman uses a catchy title (“Violence and/or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement”) and a more specific subtitle (“The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus”).
According to MLA format, your own title should be in a normal 12-point font with no underline, italics, bold, or quotation marks (except for titles of works within your title, such as the title of the chapter “Octavia Butler’s Parables,” which would be in quotation marks, or titles of full-length texts like Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia or Parable of the Sower, which would be italicized).
Thesis
Your thesis statement should respond to the general question:
Based on the research of your secondary sources—ideally, these are the (at least) five sources you have annotated for Assignment: Annotated Bibliography, but it is all right to use different sources—what is the significance of the topic you have chosen to research in Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower?
So, if you (for example) choose to research the topic of religion in Butler’s novel, your thesis statement should answer the question:
According to your research, what is the significance of religion in Parable of the Sower?
In addition, the thesis statement (which can be longer than one sentence) should . . .
Be arguable: a claim with which someone could agree or disagree
Be specific: state both your claim (what you believe) and your reason(s) (why you believe it)
Here is a sample thesis statement if I were researching religion in Parable of the Sower . . .
According to my research, religion is the key to understanding Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower because religion helps the novel’s protagonist and central characters rebuild their lives and communities in the aftermath of widespread social collapse.
Claim: religion is the key to understanding Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower
Reason: religion helps the novel’s protagonist and central characters rebuild their lives and communities in the aftermath of widespread social collapse
Supporting your Thesis
The strength of your paper will depend on how well you support your thesis and topic statements. The essay should include analysis of multiple quotations from the primary text and from at least five secondary texts. Furthermore, each body paragraph (not including the introduction or conclusion) should include at least one quoted passage from the primary or a secondary text. In order to ensure that this textual evidence is well integrated into your essay, you should introduce (with a signal phrase), closely analyze, and correctly cite the quotation. It should be clear how exactly the textual evidence supports your thesis and topic statements.
Organization
Your thesis and topic statements should make arguable claims about specific aspects of the texts. Your essay should also include logical and smooth transitions between paragraphs, and the conclusion should not simply repeat your thesis or topic statements. Instead, in the conclusion, briefly examine the wider significance of the texts themselves and/or your critique of them.
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