Essay: Personal Interpretation For this first essay, I want you to choose a poem, story, or even work of history, and write a three- to four-page essay on it. The literary work can be any from a writer: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Blake, Robert Burns, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Clare, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I encourage you to explore the writers and find something new to analyze. In terms of content, you need to write on a theme, character, image (etc.) in a literary work, using mainly your personal perspective as your interpretative tool; this means that you will not rely exclusively on secondary sources, such as books or articles to make your point. I am interested in finding out how you personally find meaning and understanding in what you read. If you want to do research, you should limit it to the information you can find in the Broadview Anthology—the introduction, the materials you find at the start of the sections, and so on. Although I’m letting you use personal perspective, there are still some very specific things I am looking for. Here is a list: 

1. There must be an identifiable thesis, something you can argue and develop for three to four pages. Sometimes students get tripped up on the difference between theme and thesis. “The Ancient Mariner as antihero” is a theme; however, “The Ancient Mariner as Christ figure who redeems the sins of the past” is a thesis. A thesis requires you to explain your point in detail and find a few examples in the text that will back up your point. With this in mind. . . 

2. Your essay must offer evidence. Evidence in this kind of essay is quotes from the text you are analyzing. Be sure to offer substantial quotes that will help you prove the thesis you want to make. That said, don’t just provide a bunch of quotes and expect your reader to be able to make sense of your case. For every quote you offer, you need to explain how it supports the thesis you are making