Final Essay: Motive
Format: 6-8 pages, double-spaced, 12-point font, 1” margins, numbered pages, information at the top of the first page as it appears on this page, add a title to your essay that is relevant to your paper (Final Essay is not an acceptable title), use spell check and grammar check to make sure that your writing is as polished as possible, use direct quotations with parenthetical references in proper MLA format, and attach a Works Cited page in proper MLA format at the end of your paper.
Essay Questions: What motivates some of the characters in both Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare’s Othello? How might those 2 plays be connected in terms of the ways that specific characters are motivated to do what they do, and what is the significance of those connections?
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare’s Othello are the only 2 sources that can and must be used for this paper. You will need to use an effective amount of direct quotations from those 2 texts in order to support the claims that you make in your paper, and they must be cited and documented in correct MLA format. Be sure to be consistent with your use of direct quotations. Any claim that you make about a text needs to be supported with a direct quotation from that text. However, like all papers in this course, this writing project must be primarily based on your own opinions, ideas, and arguments. And related to that, I don’t want you just regurgitating the issues that we discussed in class. I welcome you to build on the issues that we covered, but be sure that you go far beyond what we discussed in class in terms of this essay and what you discuss in your paper. Please also keep in mind the context and purpose of this assignment. It is not a personal essay, and it is not a critical response paper. That implies that the personal pronoun ‘I’ will not be used in this essay, as this is more of an academic assignment. Also, be sure to avoid the use of contractions, and use language and academic conventions appropriate for a formal essay. Again, this paper should be based on your own opinions, ideas, and arguments, but those fundamental aspects should be effectively presented within an academic essay. As has been discussed in class, don’t just restate the essay topic as your central argument/thesis. Your central argument/thesis needs to go beyond the essay topic, and you must craft a more specific approach and central argument/thesis within those more broad essay questions. It’s not just about making connections between the texts within the scope of an answer to the essay questions—although that approach would at least be a good place to start when attempting to generate a more specific paper topic for this assignment—but it is also about what you do with those connections in relation to their significance, and how you discuss them within a more specific argument that addresses the essay questions. So be mindful of these issues as you prepare for and execute this assignment.