Fiction Analysis Assignment

ENGL 200C—MLA Works Cited Format for
Fiction Analysis Assignment

Since you will be incorporating specific words, phrases, sentences, or any combination of these from your chosen story to support your interpretation of its theme, you will need to include a Works Cited page.  Since we are using the MLA (Modern Language Association) documentation style, you will need to list your source on the “Works Cited” page in the correct way.  Because you will be referring to a short story within our textbook, your works cited entry should show that you are using a book, specifically, a “work in an anthology.”  Here is the example our textbook shows:

Walsh, Chad.  “The Reeducation of the Fearful Pilgrim.”  The Longing for a Form.  Ed.
Peter J. Schakel.  Kent, OH:  Kent State UP, 1977.  64 – 72.  Print.

What follows is the logic of this format and how you should think about the information you are including in this format:

Story Author.  Story Title Surrounded by Quotation Marks. Title of our Textbook in
Italics.  Me as Editor.  Place of Publication:   Name of Publisher, Year Published.  Page
Numbers of the Story.  Media Published in.

In other words, if you wrote a fiction analysis essay on “Greasy Lake” by T. C. Boyle, your works cited entry should look like this:

Boyle, T.C.  “Greasy Lake.”  Introduction to Literature: Pearson Custom Library.  Ed. J.

Rick Thompson.  Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014.  53 – 61.  Print.

For those of who are analyzing stories I sent to you without page numbers*, they are as follows:
“Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, pages 262 – 269
“Shiloh,” by Bobbie Ann Mason, pages 188-199
“Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., pages 245 – 250.
*The first page number in each above entry refers to the first page of the story, so they do not include the page numbers for the biographical details and critical thinking questions, which, of course, you will not need to refer to anyway.

Finally, make sure your entire Works Cited page includes nothing but bibliographic information.  That is, it must not contain any of your essay; instead, it should be its own sheet separate from any of your writing.  A mock example of first and last pages of an MLA formatted essay follows on pages 2, 3, and 4 of this document.

Thaddeus Q. Watermelon
Professor Thompson
English 200C, Section 12
27 October 2003
The Wingfields
Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie gives readers a look into a truly dysfunctional family.  At first it could seem as if their lives are anything but normal, but Amanda’s “impulse to preserve her single-parent family seems as familiar as the morning newspaper” (Presley 53).  The Wingfields are a typical family just struggling to get by.  Their problems, however, stem from their inability to effectively communicate with each other.  Instead of talking out their differences, they resort to desperate acts.  The desperation that the Wingfields embrace has led them to create illusions in their minds and in turn become deceptive.  Amanda, Tom, and Laura are caught up in a web of desperation, denial, and deception, and it is this entrapment that prevents them, as it would any family, from living productive and emotionally fulfilling lives together.
Amanda Wingfield’s life has not ended up as she would have wished.  She states, “I wasn’t prepared for what the future brought me” (Williams 720).  According to Elvis Presley, “If Amanda appears desperate, she certainly has a legitimate reason” (37).  First of all, she has a daughter, Laura, that is dependent upon her for everything.  She is afraid that Laura will end up a “little birdlike [woman] without any nest—eating the crust of humility” for the rest of her life (Williams 700). She also has a son, Tom, who goes to the movies almost every night, or so he says.  Amanda knows that the “movies don’t let out at two A.M.” (Williams 703).  When he finally does come home, Tom is “stumbling” and “muttering to [himself] like a  . . .


 

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