Foundation Seminar Part

Foundation Seminar Part I
Essay Questions for Essay #1

Length: 1000-1200 words
This essay is based on analysis of material. It should be about your own, independent ideas – ideas
you’ve come up with by paying close attention to one of the texts we have read.
Please answer the question with your own view, support your view with reference to the text.
Do NOT use secondary sources for this essay. Right now, I want you to concentrate on a close
reading of the text itself. Later on this term, we’ll have a chance to use outside sources, and talk about
referencing.
These questions will ask you to think about the texts we’ve read, and sometimes to make
comparisons. To write it, you need to look at the texts closely. You have a central question to explore.
First, what do you think each text says about this central question?
Your answer is there in the texts: underline, make notes, dig into the work to come up with ideas. The
parts that you notice are the parts you need to back your analysis.
A good paper will have one main idea, and three or four development ideas that expand and explore
that main answer.
It will be written in full paragraphs. A paragraph is like a cell: it centres on one good idea or insight
and uses backing material, examples, to make it come to life. For each of your insights, I want you to
use examples from the text itself to back your idea. Indent at the start of each paragraph using the tab
key. Don’t leave gaps between the paragraphs and please double space, using font 12.
The more ideas you have that are your own ideas, the better your analysis will be. Analysis is the key
ingredient in academic argument – and the key to success in academic life.
I want to know what YOU think, not what other people think. (Later on, I will ask you to compare your
ideas and expand them with ideas from one other writer – a secondary source.)
You can say anything you want, as long as you can show me how you came up with the idea or
insight with reference to the text itself.
Please make sure you bring in examples and quotes from the texts.

1. We read a short piece about Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey. Why is the
hero’s journey such a powerful, universal story? Please back up your ideas with
examples from one or both of the pieces we read, and feel free to refer to another if you
know it – Star Wars, for example, or the story of the Monkey King.