As you complete your revisions for your Lord of the Flies archetype essay, please consider the following:
DO: Include Golding’s full name and the name of the work in the first paragraph.
DON’T: Refer to Golding as “William” unless he’s your uncle or regularly comes to your house for dinner.
DO: Include a strong thesis in your first paragraph. It should be obvious which character, archetypal role, and theme/MOWAW you have chosen to explore.
DON’T: Summarize!
DO: Integrate appropriate quotations or examples into the essay to illustrate your points. For example, let’s say you wish to include the following quotation from Ralph on p. 54: “I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!”
AWKWARD:
“I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!” (54) This is what Ralph says when…
Don’t plop quotations in and expect the reader to connect the dots for you.
BETTER:
Ralph’s frustration with Jack’s focus on hunting boils over when he yells, “I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!” (54)
Reveal your thinking about why you chose the quotation or example and how it connects to what you’re developing in the writing.
Anything quoted directly from the book, whether dialogue or description, needs to be cited with a page number.
DO: Include the bibliographic citation for the work at the bottom of your last page:
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Perigee, 1954.