ENL 121
October 1,1998

1      The theme of “The Story of an Hour” is do not believe everything that is told to you until you see it yourself.  This story is understood better when you focus on these three critical concepts, characterization, tone and setting.

2      First off is characterization, which is important for what is upcoming at the end of the story.  To understand this you must understand the character of Louise Mallard.  Louise was young looking with fair skin and a calm face, who spoke repression and some strength. [?]  She also has a heart problem, which means the death of her husband has to be broken to her as gently as possible.  But now [?] there is nothing but a dull stare gazing into the patches of blue sky as if she was in intelligent thought.

3     The second of the three critical concepts I am using is tone.  Tone is the prevailing attitude as perceived by the reader.  Attitudes I got from reading this story were sad and shocked.  The sad part is when her husband had died in a railroad disaster.  It was her sister who had, with broken sentences, slowly told her that he had died.  Mr. m[M]allard's friend Richard was also there at the time to assist Josephine in breaking the bad news.  After they had told her, she had looked [?] herself in her room and stared out the window.  The second attitude was shocked this was how I felt at the end of the story.  [CS - 1] The reason I did is when Josephine finally got Louise to come out of her room and come back downstairs.  [Frag -1] On the way downstairs the front door opened and in walked Mr. Mallard who was supposedly dead.  The sight of him shocked Louise so much that it had caused her to have a heart attack and die.  This was shocking to me because they had said that he had died in a railroad accident and the second telegram confirmed it.  But Mr. Mallard had said that he was now were [nowhere; Hostage 50]  near the supposed accident even though [?] he did not even hear about one.

4      The third and final concept is setting.  Setting is the time and place that a story takes place.  This story takes place in the 1900’s in Mrs. Mallard's house with Louise, Josephine and Richard.  The majority of the story takes place in a specific part of the house, Louis’s bedroom.[Relevance to your thesis?]

5     My feeling toward this story is that it was a pretty short story with some detail. Although the store [sic] could have been expanded a little more with more description and detail.

     Although the writer dealt with three concepts, not one of them is related to the writer's thesis. The thesis itself is poor because there is not much in the story to support it. This does not mean that the thesis statement is not true. Obviously, in this story, seeing is believing. But that is just the trouble -- the thesis is obvious. As a result, no discussion of characterization, tone, or setting can be used to support it. The writer of this essay is perfectly capable of doing acceptable work, but simply did not put in the time and effort. (See the log below -- and remember that I graded the paper before I looked at the log.)
     Many students have trouble with papers in this course because they make the assignments much harder than they actually are. As a result, they put in long hours but get tied up in details and miss the point. A major reason for my taking the time to put these sets of graded papers on the web is to show average students what other students are (and are not) doing. In this case, I hope that students will see how little some students do -- and how their papers reflect that. The two greatest barriers to academic success are lack of confidence and lack of effort. Unfortunately, those students who lack confidence often put in great effort and do not realize what other students are handing in. This paper should give students confidence. Any student in the course is capable of writing an essay better than this one. But not all students will, simply because some don't put in the effort. If you are willing to work, relax. Start early. Work with the Tutoring Center. Work with me. You'll probably do much better than you thought you could.

Student's Comments: (You can also use the back of either page.)

Codes: B = Brainstorming; RR = Reading/Research; O =Outlining; TC = Tutoring Center;
D = Drafting; RV = Revising; E =Editing; G = Grading; T =Typing

NOTE: Revising = RV. Remember: use only one code per entry. (See Instructions.)

I used a word-processor _____while drafting _____ while revising _____ to type my paper.