Essay 2

What follows is your prompt for Essay 2: 

Ruminate on the presence of the Devil in "Young Goodman Brown," which can be found on pg. 99.  Then, examine additional texts with the purpose of making connections between “Young Goodman Brown” and the new texts that you have chosen to examine.  Such texts might include songs, like Mike Barnet’s “A Devil’s Dream,” or they might include cartoons, like Gary Larson’s portrayal of Hell—where we see a line of people entering Hell and looking up toward a sign on the cavernous walls that reads:  “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”  In addition to songs and cartoons, you might examine films, like The Devil’s Advocate and The Usual Suspects.  Or perhaps you wish to examine additional written texts, like Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger or Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Finally, you may wish to examine sculptures and paintings, like Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell” or Blake’s “Last Judgment.”  In essence, you may examine as many texts as you wish, but for this essay, you must employ at least five sources in addition to “Young Goodman Brown.”  And do remember:  your fundamental task in this essay is to connect the presence of the Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" to the presence of the Devil in at least five other texts.

Make sure that each source is connected to "Young Goodman Brown."  In other words, if you were to have five body paragraphs, each one would connect the presence of the devil in one source TO the presence of the devil in "Young Goodman Brown."  Specifically, connections to the presence of the devil in "Young Goodman Brown" should be made in EACH paragraph.

Regarding Essay 2, you may wish to address the prompt in seven paragraphs.  In doing so, you would have an Introduction, five Body Paragraphs, and a Conclusion.  Models of similarly-structured essays can be found in your book on pg. 301-358.  Furthermore, while many of you should continue adhering to the Point/Example/Commentary format for your Body Paragraphs, some of you are really serious about taking your writing to the next level.  Thus, for ye few, ye happy few, please examine the essay written by Jim Thomas, a professional essayist, which can be found on pg. 371-385.  You'll notice that he still uses Points, Examples, and Commentaries, but he flirts with the order of each.  But again, many of you should simply adhere to the structure found on the Announcements page and/or the structure modeled in our class lecture.  If you adhere to the traditional structure, the crux of your creativity will find itself in your Introduction, your Conclusion, and in your Commentary.  Simply make sure to end your Introduction with your thesis statement, and please do not repeat in your Conclusion what you wrote in your Introduction or in your Body Paragraphs.    

Please compose a Works Cited page.  Make sure to examine the Grammar Manual before submitting your Works Cited page.

You may wish to use Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger.  It can be found online or at a library/bookstore.

*Make sure to compose a Works Cited page for this assignment.  

**Essay II is an in-class essay.  Make sure to bring two LARGE bluebooks to class.  Make sure to bring a typed Works Cited Page.  And you may bring up to fifteen typed quotations.  (Of course, these are the quotations you'll likely use in your body paragraphs, and these quotations cannot be longer than three typed lines each--Times New Roman, .12).

***You may use the Bible as one text.  An argument can be made that the Bible consists of many books, and thus, all five texts might come from the Bible.  However, please note that for this essay's purposes, the Bible can only count as one of your five texts.