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This is a the place to find student examples of exemplary work. I'll try to add to this continually as we proceed through the semester.
Tatsiana DeRosa
Nice attire is another important part of attaining respectability in Ragged Dick. Alger suggests that your<<<AVOID YOUR/YOU IN FORMAL WRITING appearance and wearing a nice suit is one of THE<<< key elements of being a respectable person in the society. The way you are dressed indicates the social group or class you belong to and you are treated accordingly. We can see the transformation that happens to Dick when he receives his very first gift- a new suit. It made him look so different that it was "difficult to imagine that he is the same boy" (40). It turned a boot black into a respectable gentleman.<<<HOW SO? SHOW THAT HE WAS NOW CONSIDERED A GENTLEMEN -- NOT RECOGNIZED BY HOTEL PERSONNEL Dick notes: "It reminds me of Cinderella when she was changed into a fairy princess" (41) The new suit gave Dick the ability to be more than a simple boot-black. Now he looked like a young gentleman's son and received respect everywhere. In Chapter XII Dick, wearing a new nice suit, goes to refectory<<<RESTURANT attached to Lovejoy's Hotel, where the prices were higher and the company more select. "In his ordinary dress, Dick would have been excluded, but now he had the appearance of a very respectable, gentlemanly boy, whose presence would not discredit any establishment"(131). His orders were therefore received with attention by the waiter and supper was served shortly. Dick is emphasizing that if he showed up in his old ragged clothes in this expensive restaurant, he wouldn't even be let in. But new nice clean suit was his pass to a place like this. Dick has realized that in order to be treated like a respectable gentleman you need to be dressed like one.<<<GOOD JOB OF CONTINUING THIS EXPLANAITON For Dick a nice attire is the first step to attain respectability.<<<NOT NEEDED The suit symbolizes a change in how Dick is viewed as on a socio-economic level. He was approached by merchants because the merchants thought Dick was a financially stable man, not a poor homeless bootblack. <<<QUICK EXAMPLE OF THIS? Alger suggests that discarding ragged clothes for a new suit signals a turning point in Dick's life- A<< rise from "rags" to "respectability" and transformation from Ragged Dick to Richard Hunter.
Alger, Horatio, Jr. Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. Philadelphia, 1868.<<<? RES OF CITATION NEEDED
STRONG START MS. DEROSA. YOU SPELL OUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE CLASS ISSUES HERE AND EXPLAIN HOW YOUR QUOTES PROVE YOUR POINT. CAN I USE THIS AS A SAMPLE PARAGRAPH?
Jennifer Skrinak
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck's reaction towards his father kidnapping him is another way the novel rejects domesticity.<<<YOU WENT WITH THE MOST CHALLENGING PROMPT: WAY TO GO. Although Miss Watson and the widow try their best to raise Huck in a quality environment by providing him with clean clothes, a warm bed, and an education, Huck demonstrates how their efforts go unappreciated when his father kidnaps and takes him into the woods.<<<NICE SET UP Here, Huck describes his time in the woods as "lazy and jolly" (122) and is delighted in the fact that he didn’t have to "wash", "eat on a plate",<<<COMMAS GO INSIDE THE QUOTES or "go to bed and get up at regular"(122) as he did when he was living in a more civilized environment. Instead of missing the comforts of his old<<"CITIFIED"? lifestyle<<<COMMA he embraces the wilderness and does not want to go back to his old house to be "camped up and sivilized"(123). This shows that Huck does not want to be domesticated and is willing to stay in unfavorable circumstances with his father, even at risk of being beat with "the cowhide"(121), to do so. Therefore, by having the main character demonstrate a strong desire to be uncivilized and undomesticated proves that the novel rejects domesticity and allows the reader to see this as well.
Twain, Mark. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."<<<ITALICS INSTEAD OF QUOTES FOR LONGER WORKS The Norton Anthology of American Literature. EdS.Nina Baym ET AL. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2007. 108-294. Print.
© 2008 David Bordelon
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