Instructions:
The existential ideas that you’ve been reading provide frameworks for thinking about life and ourselves. It’s time for you to delve deeper into some of these concepts. Your task is to write an argumentative essay that addresses the questions below:
Sartre’s existentialism was labeled by one critic “the philosophy of the graveyard,” and existentialism strikes many as dominated by depressing ideas and outlooks. Why would someone think this? And why might others disagree? In the ideas of some of the thinkers we’re reading, which tendencies might be considered depressing and which uplifting or inspiring? Is there hope for a meaningful life? And what do people have to do to get there?
You must use two course texts (excluding The Stranger and The Metamorphosis) as support for your answers.
Extra credit:
You can receive extra credit points if you strategically use a third secondary text or concept explored as support for your analysis, and bold the key term when you incorporate it.
Requirements:
Your essay should be a minimum of 1200 words.
Try to address the questions in a cohesive manner so that your ideas are logically organized and integrated through each page.
Your essay should be formatted as such:
Begin with an introduction paragraph that includes an engaging hook, several sentences of key information about the text/topic, and a clear thesis statement that demonstrates your position (and is a claim with no mention of “this essay will”).
Your body paragraphs should include support from your chosen texts, well-integrated and properly cited.
End with a conclusion paragraph that drives your argument home (and does not begin with “In conclusion”).
MLA format, typed, doubled-spaced, 1” margins, 12-point type, Times New Roman.
Creative title (not “Essay 2”).
Your name, course number, and due date should be in the top left corner, double-spaced. Your surname and page number should in the top right header. No big spaces between any of it. All the same size/font/spacing as the body. (This is relatively standard MLA formatting for first pages; OWL has an example if you need to see it.)
Your entire essay should be written entirely in the third person POV. This means that you will not include “I believe” or “when I was reading” or anything that looks like that, nor should you address the reader or include them in your writing with “you”, “we”, “our”, “us”, etc.
A Works Cited List is not required, however you should have parenthetical in-text citations in MLA format for every quotation and paraphrase that make it clear which text and author you’re citing. You should use these strategically for your analysis. Remember that MLA formatted in-text citations will look like this: (Sartre, “Being & Nothingness” 27).