Assignment #2: Close Reading Chip Kidd's "The Cheese Monkeys"

The Cheese Monkeys, as we have seen, plays with ideas of form and content, power dynamics, genre categorization, and more. For this assignment you will choose one of the passages below, and write an argumentative paper that makes and defends a debatable claim about what the passage does, for itself and for the greater narrative, how the passage does it, as well as why that matters.

One example argument might be as follows: "Passage X refocuses the narrative on the development of the protagonist's free will by using dramatic irony and a third-person limited narration to highlight the difference between his priorities and the other characters'. This forces the reader to recognize the power differential between the protagonist and the other characters, changing the narrative from one about romance to one about politics."

In this example, "refocuses the narrative on the development of the protagonist's free will" is what the passage does, "by using dramatic irony and a third-person limited narration to highlight the difference between his priorities and the other characters'" is how it does it, and "This forces the reader to recognize the power differential between the protagonist and the other characters, changing the narrative from one about romance to one about politics" is why that matters -- the significance to the reader.

The most successful papers for the last assignment were those that related form to content while talking about function; keep that in mind when choosing your central claim.

Your paper will:

Have a one- or two-sentence thesis which makes a debatable claim as outlined above.

Make many explicit, cited quotations of the text to support your analysis. We're all using the same edition, so just cite the page number.

Make no block quotations.

Be 5 pages in length (more than four complete pages and no more than five), double-spaced, size 12 Times New Roman font, with your name and page numbers in the header.

Have "Passage #X," as its title (where X is the number of the passage you choose) and start at the top of the page.

Have a filename on the pattern (Surname)-(Given Name)-(Assignment2).(doc/docx), like so: FordBurley-Richard-Assignment2.doc.

Be e-mailed to me at richard.burley@bc.edu no later than 11:59pm on Monday, March 3.

Pick ONE of the following passages

#1. Page 81 from the second break (beginning "At around eleven...") to the bottom of page 84.

#2. Page 183 from the second to last paragraph (beginning "Up went her poster...") to the first break on page 186 (ending "'Do you SEE?'").

#3. Page 204 from the break (beginning at "I finally found the house...") to the break on page 209 (ending "Oh, wow...").