Thursday, November 19: LIBRARY TONIGHT, 7 PM

Be at the library by 7 pm tonight, for a research tutorial, focusing on Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, the subject of your final paper.

See you there.

Prompt Research Paper: The Pentagon Papers

Prompt Research Paper: The Pentagon Papers

In June 1971, the New York Times began publishing material from what came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers.” The material was part of a 47-volume study by the Department of Defense that was labeled Top Secret, and related to American’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The papers were given to the newspaper by a man named Daniel Ellsberg, who had as a civilian employee of the DoD had worked on the research for the study in 1967, when it was compiled.

Ellsberg said his expose was a matter of conscience; that he could no longer know about the lies and not do something about the situation. The impact on the country of Ellsberg’s leak was sensational. The nation was tired and injured by the war. Thousands of Americans had been killed and millions of Vietnamese lives had been sacrificed. Billions of dollars had been poured into the fight. The Papers showed that most of the stated reasons for US involvement were lies.

The Papers revealed that the U.S. had expanded its war with bombing of Cambodia and Laos and made unauthorized coastal raids on North Vietnam. None of this had been acknowledged by the government or reported by media in the US. The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions regarding Vietnam. The U.S. wanted to exploit Southeast Asian resources, and to contain China and Russia from influencing the region. The administration challenged the publication of the papers. Eventually a US Senator opposed to the war read 4,100 pages into the Congressional Record to make sure they could not be missed, and Times went ahead with publication.

After a government challenge was defeated by the Supreme Court - a crucial victory for freedom of the press - the Times went public. As a result, Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy, and theft, and faced 115 years in jail if convicted. In 1973, after the government’s lies were thoroughly exposed, the charges against Ellsberg were dropped.

In this paper, you must research the Pentagon Papers. What were they? Discover what they exposed, and why was the information so controversial. Then, based on what your research tells you, decide if you think Ellsberg did the right thing. You must base your opinion on your research.Keep in mind that recently an NSA contractor named Edward Snowden did essentially the same thing with respect to government spying on citizens around the world and at home. He is currently in exile in Russia, because he'll be arrested and tried if he comes home to the U.S.

Facts about your research paper:

1. This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.   You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.  
2. You need to research and cite from at least five sources.  You must use at least 3 different types of sources.  At least one source must be from a library database. At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook. At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
3. The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
4. This paper will be approximately 2000 words in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required.  (use the word count function to check the length) The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.  
5. You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
6. You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.  
7. You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
8. our paper must be logically organized and focused.

For Thursday, Nov. 12

Students,

Please come to class with a rough draft of composition 2 on Thursday night. We'll do a peer review of your papers in class. We'll work on your thesis statements and your opening paragraph.

Roughly speaking the agenda will be:
a. Presentations
b. Peer review (workshop) rough draft
c. Thesis statement exercise
d. Work on opening paragraph
e. Peer review opening paragraph

Thesis statement review

The thesis is the ONE sentence that contains

the foundation, the premise, the argument

you are presenting to your readers.

It is the core of the essay.

Strive to make it strong and clear.

ELEMENTS OF THESIS:

• It must be ARGUABLE.

This means it presents an opinion, an argument, or an illustration of a view or experience.  It is not a mere statement of fact. 

• It must ADDRESS the TOPIC.

While this element seems obvious too, writers often get going and one thought leads to another and another and the topic gets left behind. Re-read the prompt several times to make sure you haven’t gone off topic beyond the parameters of the assignment. 

• It must be specific enough to be covered in the paper.

What is the length of the assignment: two pages? ten pages? The length determines how broad or narrow the scope of your thesis will be. Adjust accordingly. 

• It must MAKE SENSE.

This is the catch-all element that asks you to re-consider your wording, syntax, diction, and grammar. Make changes as you see fit.

Prompt for essay 2

English 101

Prompt for composition 2

November 5, 2015

The Things They Carried is a work of fiction set during the Vietnam War. It’s a war story, one that’s so believable that a reader unconsciously reads it as a piece of non-fiction. The chapter “How To Tell a True War Story” - despite its title - is definitely not a by-the-book explanation of how to share the facts of wartime experience. Instead, it creates a company of young American soldiers who remember examine, bend, boast, invent, mourn, worry, and argue about their experiences. The stories they share are entertaining, ambiguous, heartbreaking, bitter, and bursting with life. Truth and lies and right and wrong turn out to be as elusive as the relationship between feelings and facts. 

Near the end of the chapter, you’ll find the following paragraphs: 

“To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life…

“Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel - the spiritual texture - of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are, or why you're there, and the only certainty is the absolute ambiguity. 

In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story, nothing much is ever very true.”

Write a 700-1000 word essay, using “How To Tell a True War Story” to examine the role of storytelling in The Things They Carried. Use the section quoted above as the launching pad for your paper. With those paragraphs in mind, ask yourself what we learn about war from the chapter’s stories: 

-Rat Kiley’s letter to Lemon’s sister

-Mitchell Sanders’s story - second-hand, since he wasn’t there - about the six-man patrol into the mountains

-Sanders’s additions to the story.

-The “drop dead” moral of the story: nobody’s listens (ask yourself: was there anyone in the world more isolated and insignificant than a grunt in the jungle of Vietnam) 

-The death of Curt Lemon - the narrator admits he’s told it many times with many different versions - a story about two boys playing catch in the sunlight, followed by sadistic, cruel payback. 

Use MLA formatting and citation standards.