The second outcome focuses almost entirely on the proficient use of sources within a piece of writing. These sources include the primary text as well as a multitude of secondary sources, and the outcome expresses the expectation that an individual should be able to fully synthesize these sources in order to utilize them in conjunction with each other and to support the claims made in a piece of writing. In short assignment three, I analyzed Shannon Terry Wiley’s article “A Discourse Analysis of Darl’s Descent into Madness in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” The prompt for this assignment explicitly stated that it would be necessary to “read, analyze, and potentially utilize” our chosen secondary source – in my case Wiley’s article – in the context of preparing for the major paper.

In order to fulfill the criteria outlined for short assignment three, I absolutely had to have a thorough understanding of both the course text As I Lay Dying and Wiley’s article. I took many notes on As I Lay Dying throughout the quarter, without which I would have been far more lost than I actually was, and participated fully in class discussions. In fact, I found that class activities, particularly reading responses and discussions, undoubtedly had the greatest impact on my grasp of the novel. Reading responses forced me to really question the text and perform close readings that I might not have otherwise. The opinions and assumptions I made through that process were then at various times challenged, refined, reinforced, or completely overturned by the different perspectives articulated by my peers.

This deeper understanding absolutely helped me develop a more comprehensive view of the text that was then clearly demonstrated in my short assignment three. For instance, I was able to reference completely disparate chapters of As I Lay Dying as a part of an examination of Wiley’s methodological approach: “His [Darl’s] monologue on the subject of sleep and existence (Faulkner 80), insights into other characters’ personal lives (Faulkner 27, 136), and ability to omnisciently narrate a scene at which he is not present (Faulkner 47-52) all could be taken as greater evidence of Darl’s escalating madness throughout the entire novel” (SA3 Revised 2). Without this thorough grasp of the text, I would not have been able to make connections across hundreds of pages and vastly different contexts, and then tie it all back into a dialogue with Wiley’s article.

 As articulated above, this sentence highlights my “understanding of the course texts” but also is a clear example of my ability to use this understanding in a “strategic, focused way” (Outcome 2). In this situation, I reference diverse passages and then apply them to the argument that “…one could easily make the claim that Darl did not jump from seemingly completely sane at the beginning of the novel to purportedly entirely insane in his last passage” (SA3 Revised 2) to challenge aspects of Wiley’s method of analysis. I expanded upon this intertextual conversation by assessing which aspects of Wiley’s article I could use in my own paper, and which I would possibly work against. I thought that Wiley’s general framework of analyzing linguistic, rather than just content, changes would “be highly beneficial as I attempt to deduce whether or not Darl can be truly classified as insane” (SA3 Revised 3) but that her argument was diminished by its narrow focus on only two of Darl’s chapters within the primary text and that I would possibly argue in opposition to her absolute stance on Darl’s insanity. Chelsea and Seonu, my peer reviewers, agreed that I appropriately fostered dialogue between my ideas and the texts and then explained how this would support my own claims, respectively writing, “Summary and analysis is effectively balanced… Good organization of paper w/ summary 1^st, then analysis of argument & ending w/ how you will use this in your paper” and “She also made a very well-thought out connection between her writing and Wiley’s… Her intention on how to use Wiley’s evidence is very clear and easy to understand and logical.” Navid, too, found that I met the expectations of outcome two, stating, “You summarize Wiley’s approach to the analysis, the argument made, the scope invoked therein, then effectively evaluate the benefits and drawbacks to this approach, as well as place it in conversation with your forthcoming ideas as well as methodology.”

Finally, in keeping with MLA formatting my paper has a title, is double spaced throughout, employs correct in-text citations, and ends with a works cited page. I had to slightly edit this paper to make sure it was properly cited; initially, I had commas after the name of the work and before the page number in my in-text citations, when no such commas are required in MLA. For Wiley’s article, I verified that it was appropriate to not cite page numbers when no pages were given in an online article.