Document analysis

Paper Three: Document Analysis

We have read several documents for Theme Three. Many of these documents are just like the papers you yourselves have been writing for class in the sense that they have a main point (i.e. a thesis or central argument) and the authors explain their position and then try to provide evidence to help convince their readers that they are right. For this assignment, I want you analyze one of two documents (Boudinot “An Address to the Whites” or David Walker “Appeal in Four Articles”) and I want you to break down their arguments into parts and tell me if you think they made a convincing case. This assignment is all about close textual analysis – these documents are not overly long but they are intelligent and complex. You cannot do well on this assignment unless you spend the time needed to go through the document of your choice carefully.
The paper should be 2 to 3 pages. No work cited is necessary.

This paper should have three distinct parts:
Part 1 (One Paragraph) – Summarize as succinctly as possible the main argument or thesis of the reading. This task may not be as easy as it seems. These authors have written long essays with thousands of words; they obviously think what they are trying to say is complicated enough to warrant a lengthy essay. This means that the main idea is not something that they believe is a particularly easy thing to capture in a few words. This is the challenge that every author faces though, you as well as me. What I want you do, then, is to identify what you think the author’s most important argument is. After I grade the assignment, we will compare responses and see how similar (or different) your interpretations were and what that means for the authors’ arguments.
Part 2 (Two to Three Paragraphs) – After indentifying the major argument, try to isolate two or three subsidiary arguments. Authors often make one larger argument based on several smaller arguments that they feel, together, make the larger point. I want you to highlight two or three of those subordinate arguments and describe (using quotations if appropriate) the evidence that the author used in support of that point. Use one paragraph for each subordinate argument that you identify.
Part 3 (One paragraph) – Comment on what you think about the effectiveness of the argument. Do you think it worked? Did it have any weak spots? Could you think of anything that the writer could have done to make his argument stronger? And finally, do you think the main point the author was making was made sufficiently clear or did you have to work too hard to understand what he was trying to say?