Hum 110: first extended paper
"To express oneself badly is not only a fault as far as language goes, but does some harm to the soul." Socrates in Plato's Phaedo 155e
In general
Remember that this first paper is simply that--your first, not last, and not only, Hum paper. Also remember that everything does not ride on this one essay, although it may well feel that way to you on Friday night or Saturday afternoon. The most important thing is for you to make a coherent argument, expressing some of the ideas you have about the Iliad, in a way that is interesting for your instructor and your conference colleagues to read.
Warming up
If you start making some notes every day, and try to sketch out an outline or a rough draft before the end of the week, you will be in much better shape than if you wait until Friday after classes are over to start thinking--and writing. You might note that it is, of course, both entirely legitimate and appropriate to use your daily reading notebook to make preliminary stabs at ideas for the essay, or simply to copy out and comment on passages you think are important to your thinking about the topic. The important thing is to write as well as to talk and to think: somehow, ideas look different in writing than they do transcribed in the evanescent medium of our speech and thought.
Building an Argument
As you write about the poem (you can also call it a work, or an epic, or a number of other things, but don't call it a novel or story: it isn't either), you will probably want to quote some particularly important lines from the work to back up your argument. Remember, though, that the quotations simply back up or illustrate your argument: they can't make it for you. If quotations could do that, we'd be able to point to some part of the Iliad (or any other text) and say, "See?" And we'd all nod blissfully. How boring. How much more exciting to try to explain what it is you see in the lines of the Iliad that you have to quote, because, no matter how hard you do try to explain what they mean and do, you can't quite express it all. That said about quotations, let me offer a mechanical pointer: if you're only quoting two lines, you can present them in the body of your text, with a slash between the two lines, like this: "They took position in the blossoming meadow of Skamandros, /thousands of them, as leaves and flowers appear in their season" (II.467-68). And that's how you would identify where the lines are found in the poem; note there are no page numbers, nothing but the book and line numbers, separated by a period.
Sometimes you'll have to quote more than two lines. To do so, you'll need to set the quotation off from the text of your argument, thus:
So he spoke, and stirred up passion in the breast of all those
who were within that multitude and listened to his counsel.
And the assembly was shaken as on the sea the big waves
in the main by Ikaria, when the south and south-east winds
driving down from the clouds of Zeus the father whip them.
As when the west wind moves across the grain deep standing,
boisterously, and shakes and sweeps it till the tassels lean, so
all of that assembly was shaken, and the men in tumult
swept to the ships, and underneath their feet the dust lifted
and rose high. ( II.142-51)
Note that when you cite longer passages this way, you indent, single rather than double space and do not use quotation marks. With the quote in place, you should make sure your reader knows why you're quoting such a long passage rather than simply summarizing it; I would quote all of this passage if I wanted to talk about how one simile slips into another, so that there two comparisons in the space of 10 lines, taken from the human, divine, and natural realms.
A Final Note on Style
Print the paper out and proofread the hard copy. A carefully proofread paper shows the reader that you care about it, and take pride in your work. I can't stress this more. A spate of spelling errors tends to irritate your reader, and no one benefits from an irritated reader. As a general rule, spelling and other grammatical or syntactical errors don't increase your credibility with any reader. Use the convention to increase your persuasiveness. And that's all that spelling really is, right? A rhetorical convention that we comply with to help convince our readers we do know what we're talking about. If you can't spell (or type), as a last resort use the spell checker, but remember that such a mechanical fool may overlook glaring errors (such as leaving "fool" for "tool" in this sentence.) Better yet, have a roommate or friend read over your paper. An outside reader offers an objective eye not only to mechanics but also to your ideas and arguments.
Your paper should have a meaningful title indicating what the reader may expect to find when reading it. Also, please do not write in what I warmly call "athlete font": 10-point font is ok, better yet use 12-point. Finally, you should include the following on a cover sheet or at the top of the first page:
Your name and Box number
Hum 110/instructor's name
due date
(9/96 adapted from a handout by Professor Gail Sherman & Minott Kerr)