The Namesake Essay

This essay is a culmination of our many hours of reading, writing about and discussing Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake. The essay you produce should be both evaluative and argumentative: “argumentative” means your essay will persuade its reader of a specific thesis-driven argument, and “evaluative” means this argument also ultimately assesses the value of Butler’s novel and its purpose for its readers. This third essay is worth 20% of your overall course grade.

ESSAY PROMPT: Unlike the other major writing assignments, this will be a “take-home” essay. The quote for the prompt will be released at 8am on Wednesday 11/22, and you will have until 11:59pm on Friday, 11/24 to respond by submitting a completed essay via the Assignments section of Canvas. Instead of having an in-class essay that you are seeing for the first time and responding to in the same class period on Wednesday, we’ll use that time as a workshop session for you to work on the essay: responding to the quote, gathering thoughts and formulating the argument you want to make.

On Wednesday morning, you will be given a key passage from the novel through which you’ll need to make a claim about both the quote’s significance and how that relates to the overall message or importance of the book. The prompt is as follows:

The themes, context and content relevant to this excerpt involve much of what transpires throughout the novel. Write a 3-4 page essay that uses this quote to interpret one of the characters or the story as a whole. Be sure to mention at least two other textual moments via quotes that support your points.

Using your interpretation of the given quote as a main focus and piece of supporting evidence, you’ll need to create an arguable thesis to prove with the help of at least two other quotes. A strong essay will critically analyze Lahiri’s novel with this carefully-selected, textual evidence in order to prove a lucid, insightful argument about one specific character or the novel as a whole.

EXPECTATIONS: • You must thoughtfully integrate The Namesake into your essay. Quotes should be introduced,

integrated into your writing, cited parenthetically, and analyzed or explained fully before moving on. You must provide enough evidence to show your deep engagement with the novel and reflection on the argument you want to make. Outside texts are welcome as long as they are scholarly or peer- reviewed.

• Your essay should be a cohesive, coherent whole paper. This means including identifiable introductions, body paragraphs and conclusions that together meet the minimum page requirements.

• Analyze and interpret the text rather than relying on summary to fill your essay. You should consider your audience someone who has read the book but has not considered its wider significance or implications. This means you don’t need to spend time on too much summary, and your focus should be contextualizing as necessary to argue your own unique, original take on the novel’s importance.

• I advise that you begin with plenty of brainstorming, listing or any other free writing to generate plenty of material and collect all your thoughts. You might work on creating a shitty first draft, then organizing ideas coherently as you go. Refine and demonstrate careful editing in the revision stages to make your paper appropriately academic.

• Consider the feedback from the Critical Autobiography, the Kindred Essay and your responses to that feedback. Transfer lessons learned from previous writings, and keep these in mind, especially during your revision process.

• Follow the formatting conventions that are listed in the syllabus, and refer to Purdue OWL for MLA standards.

TIPS TO CONSIDER FOR DRAFTING: • You should review your notes from class discussions and your annotations. Review the phrases or

excerpts that stood out to you towards responding to the prompt. • Refer back to and reread Chapter 3 on “How to Make Arguments About Literature.” This chapter

provides many excellent points about what a strong argument entails and must consider.