SUPPLEMENTAL READING FOR BACKGROUND.
"‘My father was a sheepherder, and his home was the
hills.’” Thus begins Robert Laxalt’s book Sweet
Promised Land, the best known book by the best
known Basque-American author. The year 2007 marked
the
50th anniversary of this book.
In order to welcome the Class of 2011 to campus, the
University of Nevada, Reno embarked on a special
project by asking incoming freshmen to read this
book over the summer to discuss together.
Summer Scholars program to
welcome the Class of 2011
By John Trent
(a senior editor in
University
Communications
[Source: Reproduced here
in case it is moved, but the original was posted
online at
http://www.unr.edu/features/sweet_promise/
]
It only
takes Warren Lerude a matter of seconds
— a couple of carefully crafted thoughts
— to explain the impact of the words.
They are words that are more than a
half-century old. Yet they are words
that still resonate today.
He recites
them from memory.
“‘My father
was a sheepherder, and his home was the
hills,’” Lerude says, his eyes closing
for a moment as he remembers the Nevada
writer Robert Laxalt’s opening sentence
to the 1957 book, Sweet Promised
Land. Lerude, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist and University
professor of journalism, was friends
with Laxalt for more than four decades.
“Those are
radiant, eloquent words," Lerude says.
"You would be hard-pressed to find an
opening line to any book over the past
half century written with such economy,
or with such feeling.”
Laxalt,
known as Nevada’s greatest writer,
passed away in 2001 at age 77. But his
17 books — and in particular, Sweet
Promised Land, considered to be his
finest work — continue to live on.
In order to
welcome the Class of 2011 to campus, the
University will be embarking on a
special project this fall. The
Class
of 2011 Summer Scholar Project will
ask all freshmen to read Sweet
Promised Land over the summer. When
they come to orientation in August,
faculty, staff and administrators will
lead study groups to discuss the book,
which also is celebrating its 50th
anniversary this year.
“This will
be our entering freshmen’s first
opportunity to participate with faculty,
staff and administrators in an academic
setting as they begin their college
career, and I can’t think of a better
book to serve as the centerpiece,”
Nevada President Milt Glick said. “Our
mission to enliven curiosity, cultivate
critical judgment and encourage our
students to make an informed
contribution to the development of
American society is well-served through
the reading and discussion of Sweet
Promised Land.
Robert
Laxalt
“Robert
Laxalt and his family will always have a
special place on our campus. What better
way to honor a great writer, and a great
Nevadan, than to have Nevada students
reading, discussing and learning from
his greatest work?”
Praise for
Sweet Promised Land has been
universal. The New York Times
said the book “deserves universal regard
as a classic of Americana.” The
Washington Post called the book an
“example of the art of writing.”
“Bob Laxalt
was Nevada's Ernest Hemingway,” state
Archivist Guy Rocha said. From his early
days as a member of the University of
Nevada’s boxing team to his later years,
roaming the hills of the Carson Range
behind his home in Washoe Valley while
on horseback, or in the muted 4 a.m. air
of the morning, writing stories on his
trusted Royal typewriter, hours before
his family would awake, Laxalt clearly
appreciated the important intersection
between the man of the West and his
environment.
As the son
of an immigrant sheepherder from the
Pyrenees Mountains in France, Laxalt
also understood what it meant to seek
the sweet promise of a better life in
America.
“Bob was a
terrific writer, and his wonderful books
spoke not just to Basques but to all the
sons and daughters of immigrants … to
those who love the American West and
indeed all readers who enjoy simple but
eloquent writing,” said Paul Laxalt,
Robert Laxalt’s older brother and former
United States senator and governor of
Nevada.
Laxalt’s
connections to the campus were strong.
He was a 1947 graduate of the University
with a degree in English. He joined
Nevada’s faculty in 1954 as director of
news and publications. He founded the
University Press in 1961, and served as
a journalism and writing instructor —
influencing an entire generation of the
state’s writers — and for the final two
decades of his life was the University’s
writer-in-residence.
His advice
to his students?
“Take your
writing seriously,” Laxalt would tell
his students, “but never take yourself
too seriously.”
Sweet
Promised Land
is the story of the journey of the
Laxalt family’s father, Dominique, who
came to America from the French Pyrenees
at 16 years old to start a new life as a
sheepherder in Nevada, as well as
Dominique’s journey home 47 years later
to the village of his birth.
What
follows is a story of great clarity. It
deals with the strong pull of conflicted
emotion, where a father realizes his
home is no longer in the mountains of
the Pyrenees but in the sheep camps of
the Sierra. By book’s end, Dominique’s
heart song has truly become American. “I
can't go back,” he says at one point.
“It ain't my country anymore. I've lived
too much in America ever to go back.”
Sweet
Promised Land
is a story of assimilation and
appreciation for old ways and new ways,
where the story of immigrants is
emblematic of a new America, an America
of dreams and stark realities, a
difficult yet promising America.
Fifty years
later, as the Class of 2011 embarks this
summer on reading Laxalt’s carefully
crafted words, the story has lost none
of its currency or relevance.
“We were
among the last whose names would tell
our blood to know another language in
our homes, to suffer youthful shame
because of that language and refuse to
speak it,” Laxalt writers. “And the
irony of it was that our mothers and
fathers were truer Americans than we,
because they had forsaken home and
family, and gone into the unknown.”
Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land:
A Place to Come To
by David Río Raigadas Universidad del País Vasco
Source:
Reproduced here in case it is moved, but the
original appeared as
Basque Studies Program Newsletter
· Issue 54, 1996 and it
was posted online at
http://basque.unr.edu/09/9.3/9.3.54t/9.3.54.03.laxalt.htm
This article was originally presented by the
author as a paper at the II International Conference
on Regional Literatures (Space and Place: The
Geographies of Literature), Liverpool John Moores
University, April 11-13, 1996.
Sweet Promised Land (1957)(1), the first and
possibly best-known of Robert Laxalt’s books,
appears to be a personal and rather simple story
about the journey of the author’s father, Dominique,
to his Basque homeland after forty-seven years as an
immigrant sheepherder in the American West. In fact,
the book has been often described as an intimate
biography or as an affectionate memoir of a son to
his father. Even Laxalt himself has emphasized to me
the personal quality of this story:
“I couldn’t write it as a novel because something
was missing. I thought that the poignancy of this
trip moved me very much. It was a story of discovery
for me, too. [..] It was a book written from the
heart.”(2)
The intimate approach taken by Laxalt to portray his
father’s life pervades the whole book and
contributes to its success. Readers feel attracted
by Laxalt’s personal and direct statements on his
father and the fact that it is the true story of a
man viewed through the eyes of his son, though some
incidents in the book may have been a little
fictionalized. Laxalt himself felt that the work
meant an invasion of his family’s privacy and was
particularly apprehensive of his father’s reaction
toward it:
“When I told him about it, I thought I was
running a risk of getting shot, but he accepted it
well and even a little detachedly.”(3)
However,
Sweet Promised Land must be read as
the story not only of Dominique Laxalt, but of many
Basque immigrants in the American West. The book
goes beyond its personal level to embody the
experience of Basque immigrants in the United States
and even becomes a metaphor for American immigration
in general.
Laxalt wrote this story about his Basque father at a
time in which Basques were neither well-known nor
popular in America. As William A. Douglass has
pointed out,
“...the Basque-Americans were few in number,
scattered lightly over the vastness of the American
West and [...] their ethnic success as sheepherders
par excellence identified them closely with the
region’s most denigrated occupation.” (1986:xiii)
Set against this particular background,
Sweet
Promised Land constituted a vindication of the
role of the immigrant Basque sheepherder in America,
represented by the figure of Dominique Laxalt and
his capacity to endure hardship in the New World.
Basques in America identified themselves with
Dominique’s story and felt encouraged to show their
ethnic pride. At the same time, the wider public in
the United States discovered Basques, “they
discovered this romantic sheepherder thing,” in
Douglass’ words.(4)
Although the book deals mainly with the way of life
of Basque sheepmen in the American West, their
experiences can be regarded as a symbol of the
struggle of American immigrants in general. In fact,
Laxalt himself agrees with this point and he even,
in all modesty, refers to his lack of a deep
knowledge about the Basques to support this idea:
“Sweet Promised Land became an immigrant
book, not particularly a Basque book, because I
didn’t know so much about the Basques.”(5)
The truth is that the story works as a classic tale
of immigration, where the immigrant’s experience is
portrayed by Laxalt as a process divided into three
basic stages: the immigrant’s decision to abandon
his homeland, his fight for acceptance in the new
country and his impossible return to his native land
once the assimilation process is over. Throughout
these different stages Laxalt shows his deeply felt
concern with the modern individual’s need for
meaning, for a sense of place and identity.
Although Sweet Promised Land emphasizes primarily
the challenges that immigrants must face in America
and their often fruitless attempts to recapture the
past, it also explores the main reasons that lie
behind their decision to seek their future in
America. Thus, immigration is presented as the only
way to escape from poverty for many European youths,
symbolized by Dominique. He, as most immigrants,
regretted leaving his native land, but he was well
aware that he had to find an opportunity in life
somewhere else:
“What chance was there if I stayed? There was no
money for anything. I wanted stock and the land to
move in, [...] and we didn’t even own the property
where we lived.” (1986: 35)
At first, the journey to America was viewed by
people like Dominique just as a temporary
experience, as a way to earn enough money to return
home. However, most of these immigrants soon
realized that their way to success was in America, a
raw new land that could provide them with a chance
in life if they were ready to suffer and work hard.
Thus, America represents for Dominique and many
other immigrants the land of opportunity, the place
to make their fortune. Nevertheless, Sweet Promised
Land also describes the decline of America as a land
of opportunity since the mid-century, particularly
for new groups of immigrants like the Puerto Ricans,
who are shown leaving for Brazil in search of
another America.
Although Laxalt stresses the importance of the
economic reasons in the immigrant’s decision to
abandon his native land, he also refers in the book
to the lack of freedom of these people in the Old
World. Thus, for instance, one of the characters in
Sweet Promised Land, Michel, escapes from France in
order not to be imprisoned after running away from
the seminary where he was to be ordained. Besides,
there are other references to the restrictions
imposed by the French authorities on one of the main
symbols of the Basque culture: the Basque language.
This meant, as Dominique says, “to be made to feel
that it was a crime to be born a Basque.” (1986:76).
Being unable to display their ethnic identity in
their own land, these people feel constricted in the
Old World and they set their heart on America, which
symbolizes for them not only the land of
opportunity, but also of freedom.
The integration experience of the immigrant in
American society is described by Laxalt as a gradual
process in which the immigrant’s desire for
acceptance and his reluctance to lose his ethnic
identity often act as opposing forces. He
particularly focuses his attention on the challenges
that the newcomer must face during his first years
in America. Thus, he gives in his book a detailed
description of the hardships endured by his father
when he first arrived in Nevada. Although
Dominique’s struggle for integration presents some
specific characteristics related to his condition of
Basque sheepherder, the tests he must undergo during
this process illustrate the hard lessons the
ordinary immigrant usually has to learn in the new
land.
One of the first challenges that the immigrant must
face in America is the adaptation to a new setting,
often completely different from that of the Old
World. Laxalt particularly emphasizes the deep
impact that the Nevada desert produces on Basque
sheepherders like Dominique, who longs for his green
land:
“You would have to see the beauty of the Basque
country before you knew what I meant, but I remember
going out into that cruel desert when I first came,
and nights when I cried to sleep in my tent.” (1986: 50)
Thus, on their way to integration, these immigrants
will inevitably have to adjust themselves to a harsh
landscape, with a devastating climate, and gradually
they will have to overcome their nostalgia for the
old country, too.
Laxalt also portrays isolation and loneliness as
common trials for the immigrant. Besides, in the
case of the Basque sheepherders the challenge
becomes especially arduous. Their loneliness is not
simply the result of their condition of newcomers,
their ignorance of the language or the bad
reputation of their job, as was often the case with
other immigrants. The loneliness of the Basques is
also produced by the utter solitude in which they
find themselves as sheepherders on the open range.
In the most desolate corners of the American West
they long for human company, for the sound of a
human voice, and the monotony of their lonely life
exposes them to potentially severe mental strain.
Related to this, it is worth mentioning that, even
though the Basques had a special reputation among
all nationalities in America for their capacity to
endure solitude,(6) Laxalt includes in Sweet
Promised Land a Basque sheepherder, Joanes Ergela
(or Crazy John), who loses his mind from loneliness
in the mountains. This example works as a symbol of
the serious nature of the ordeals that the
immigrants must undergo in their new country.
Another major challenge that immigrants must face is
economic survival, a subject that plays an important
role in Sweet Promised Land. Laxalt shows that
immigrants, apart from suffering hard working
conditions, as in the case of the Basques mentioned
above, usually have a difficult start making their
living in the New World. America may be the land of
opportunity, but working hard is not enough there.
The newcomer must be ready to fight competitors,
even resorting to violent means. In addition, he
must resist the temptation of wasting his money,
even if that means staying away from town for a long
period. Last but not least, his economic success
often depends on a volatile market. All these
features are perfectly represented in Sweet Promised
Land by the struggle experienced by Dominique and
Basque-American sheepherders in general. Thus, these
immigrants are shown in open conflict with the
cattle ranchers for the feed and the water. Besides,
the book describes their obsession with saving and
their difficulties in resisiting the temptation of
wasting their money in town. Finally, Laxalt also
introduces the livestock crisis of the 1920s as an
example of the uncertain economic conditions: the
sheep market began to go and immediately most of the
Basques lost everything for which they had worked so
hard.
Apart from the different challenges mentioned
throughout this paper, immigrants must sometimes
confront hostility, fun-making or contempt from the
host community. In some cases this hostile
atmosphere is closely related to economic reasons,
as we saw in the conflict with the cattlemen
described above. However, in many cases this
situation is simply due to the cultural and ethnic
distinctiveness of the newcomers. They do not fit
into the standard patterns of the American society
because they are outsiders, who speak a different
language and have a different culture. And at that
time in America, as Robert Laxalt remembers, “it
wasn’t fashionable to be ethnic.“(7)
As a result, the Basques, as other groups of
immigrants with special ethnic features, will
experience some bullying, fun-making, and rejection.
Laxalt does not wish to exaggerate the importance of
these incidents and consequently he does not include
any episodes of violent discrimination against the
Basques in Sweet Promised Land. However, he shows
how two young Basques are made fun of just because
of their speech and clothes and he also refers to
the shame suffered by Basque-American children when
they speak Basque in public. These examples
illustrate the intolerance of the American society
in the first half of the twentieth century toward
expressions of cultural or ethnic diversity. As
William Douglass has pointed out,
“persons who clung to their native language and
who continued to manifest Old World lifeways were
suspect.” (1986:x)
So, these immigrants, in spite of their reluctance
to lose their original identity, will often have to
hide their ethnic heritage or to renounce it in
order to become Americans.
All these hardships that immigrants must endure to
achieve their integration in American society are
symbolized in Sweet Promised Land by boxing, a sport
whose rules Dominique and other immigrants
understand perfectly well. The comparison between
boxing and the immigrant experience enables Laxalt
to enhance the sacrifice of these newcomers in
America:
”Like the men in the ring, they too had stood
alone and fought alone, with their only weapons the
hands that God gave them, and the fight was
everything they had ever done and seen and felt.”
(1986:65)
The struggle for acceptance of the immigrants also
extends to their descendants, for whom boxing works
as a useful model, too. As Laxalt knows from his own
experience, second- generation Americans often must
fight harder than the rest, just because they “were
born of old- country people in a new land.”
(1986:66)
Although Laxalt’s interest is mainly focused on the
obstacles that the immigrant finds on his way to
integration, he also shows how the newcomer
gradually becomes familiar with the host country and
its people and even identifies himself with them.
This process has its origin in the immigrant’s
capacity to adapt himself to the new environment
without questioning it:
”...afterward it wasn’t suffering, because it was
the way things was, and a man couldn’t do anything
about it, and maybe that’s why he didn’t spend the
time thinking about it, either.” (1986:50)
However, the self-identification of the newcomer
with American society is accelerated by a series of
elements that represent the progressive acceptance
of the immigrant by the host community. As an
example of this, Laxalt describes the first time
that his father did not feel like a stranger in
America. It was an encounter with a group of
bandits, where he discovered that even the cruel
people who inhabited the harsh land were capable of
kindness toward a foreigner like him. This incident
shows him that the new country is not only a place
of disillusionment and brutality, but also of
generosity and love.
In Sweet Promised Land, Laxalt also pays
close attention to the last stage of the immigrant
experience: the impossible return of the native. The
book shows the return to the homeland as an
unrealistic idea for most immigrants. Certainly,
Laxalt provides the reader with the examples of two
Basques (Nazario and the innkeeper) who come back to
their native land after a few years in America and
decide to remain in their country of birth. However,
these two cases can be regarded as exceptions
because most of the Basque immigrants in the story
fail to return to their homeland. In addition to
this, the main character, Dominique, who manages to
see the Basque Country again, prefers in the end to
go back to America.
Although a lot of immigrants in
Sweet Promised
Land talk about going home, their return is
nearly always postponed and in most cases it never
takes place. Two opposite reasons may be argued to
account for this situation: the failure of the
integration process, and its overwhelming success.
Actually, the book describes a group of Basque
immigrants who are unable to overcome the challenges
of the new land, but have to remain in America
because their return has become physically
impossible. They have failed to save money or they
have been defeated by adversity, age, or loneliness.
As one of the characters in the story says,
”...they were lost souls, and they did not even
have the good fortune to be lost in their own hell.
They were foreigners when they came and they will
always be foreigners.” (1986:107)
As a contrast to these immigrants, Laxalt focuses
his attention on the figure of his father, who
symbolizes the success of the assimilation process.
After forty-seven years in the New World, Dominique
is so integrated in the American society that his
early wishes to return to the Basque Country and
settle there have vanished. We can even see how he
hesitates when his family encourages him to go back
to the old country for a short visit to his sisters.
His nostalgic trip to the Basque Country is
portrayed by his son, who accompanies him, as a
shocking and ambiguous experience. In particular,
Robert Laxalt emphasizes the deep impact produced on
his father by his sudden return to the old country
after forty-seven years of absence. Besides, the
return becomes a catalyst for very opposite
feelings. On the one hand, it is a moment for joy,
reward and fulfillment. Dominique has the
opportunity to meet his relatives again and these
welcome him as a hero, as “the youth who had gone
out into the world in beggar’s garb and come back in
shining armor.” (1986:122) On the other hand, the
return makes Dominique feel sad and old because he
realizes that too much time has gone on and nothing
can be the same again. His parents and some of his
old friends are dead and, in spite of the joyous
reunion with his relatives and the recall of
youthful memories, he cannot avoid feeling like a
stranger in his own land.
Robert Laxalt ends his tale of immigration by
stressing the impossibility of returning to the
past. To illustrate this point, he uses the example
of his father’s nostalgic trip to the Basque
Country. Actually, Dominique’s final decision to
leave again for the United States shows that once
the assimilation process is over and the old land
has become only a dimming memory, the return of the
native is nearly always a chimerical idea. As
Dominique says at the end of Sweet Promised Land,
“I cannot go back. It ain’t my country anymore.
I’ve lived too much in America ever to go back.”
(1986:176)
What
is the American Dream?
From the Library of
Congress,
http://memory.loc.gov/
The
term was first used by James Truslow Adams in his
book The Epic of America which was written in
1931. He states: "The American Dream is "that dream
of a land in which life should be better and richer
and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each
according to ability or achievement. It is a
difficult dream for the European upper classes to
interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves
have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a
dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a
dream of social order in which each man and each
woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature
of which they are innately capable, and be
recognized by others for what they are, regardless
of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or
position."
In
the United States’
Declaration of Independence, our founding
fathers: "…held certain truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Happiness." Might this sentiment be
considered the foundation of the American Dream?
Were
homesteaders who left the big cities of the east
to find happiness and their piece of land in the
unknown wilderness pursuing these inalienable
Rights? Were the
immigrants who came to the United States looking
for their bit of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, their Dream? And what did the desire of
the veteran of World War II - to settle down, to
have a
home, a car and a
family--tell us about this evolving Dream? Is
the American Dream attainable by all Americans?
Would Martin Luther King feel his Dream was attained?
Did
Malcolm X realize his Dream?
Some say, that the American Dream has become the
pursuit of material prosperity - that people work
more hours to get bigger cars, fancier homes, the
fruits of prosperity for their families - but have
less time to enjoy their prosperity. Others say that
the American Dream is beyond the grasp of the
working poor who must work two jobs to insure their
family’s survival. Yet others look toward a new
American Dream with less focus on financial gain and
more emphasis on
living a simple, fulfilling life.
Thomas Wolfe said, "…to every man, regardless of his
birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right
to live, to work, to be himself, and to become
whatever thing his manhood and his vision can
combine to make him."
Is this your American
Dream?
Resource Links from the
Library of Congress
An
American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides
and Other Printed Ephemera
Millions of acres. Iowa and
Nebraska. Land for sale on 10 years credit by the
Burlington & Missouri River R. R. Co. at 6 per ct
interest and low prices ... Buffalo. N. Y.
Commercial advertiser printing house [1872]
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbpe&fileName=rbpe13/rbpe134/13401300/rbpe13401300page.db&recNum=0
Declaration of Independence
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt001.html
Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights,
1860s-1960s
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgibin/query/i?ammem/bbpix:@field(NUMBER+@band(ppmsc+00046)):displayType=1:m856sd=ppmsc:m856sf=00046
Martin Luther King
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/
Malcolm X
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/065.html
The
Center for The New American Dream
http://www.newdream.org/about/
The
Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1897-1906
Emigrants [i.e. immigrants]
landing at Ellis Island / Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgibin/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(lcmp002+m2a10987))+@field(COLLID+newyork))
Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor
Horydczak, 1923-1959
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgibin/query/i?ammem/horyd:@field(NUMBER+@band(thc+5a49405)):displayType=1:m856sd=thc:m856sf=5a49405
How
to Write a Compare/Contrast Essay
Compare and contrast essays are the
other big essay types in academic writing. These
essays will follow a specific question and are
fairly easy to complete. There are several ways to
write this type of essay. The most important thing
to remember is structure. Many wonderful essays fall
victim to the woes of bad structure, making any
ingenuity to fall by the wayside. Go over the rules
on how to write a general essay, and then structure
your compare/contrast essay in one of the following
two formats:
1.
Introduction. Your introduction should open
generally (with a quotation, anecdote,
generalization), and lead into the thesis statement.
2.
Topic
1. This next portion of your essay (which may
consist of one paragraph or several) should cover
only the first topic of the comparison and contrast.
Compare/Contrast essays take two topics and
illustrate how they are similar and dissimilar. Do
not mention topic 2 in this first portion.
3.
Topic
2. This next portion of your essay (which may also
consist of one or more paragraphs) should cover the
second of the two topics. Do not discuss Topic 1 in
this section. Since you have already gone into great
detail about it, you may allude to Topic 1 briefly;
however, do not analyze Topic 1 in this section.
This portion of the paper is to discuss Topic 2 in
great detail.
4.
Topics
1 and 2 Together. Now that you have analyzed both
Topic 1 and Topic 2 independently, now it is time to
analyze them together. This section may also be one
or several paragraphs.
5.
Conclusion. The conclusion — like the introduction
— should be a generalization of the thesis. This
paragraph should express your certainty and absolute
knowledge on the subject matter. You should reaffirm
your thesis (essentially restate it in new words)
and show how you've proven it.
OR
1.
Introduction. Your introduction — like the
five-paragraph-essay, should open generally (with a
quotation, anecdote, generalization), and lead into
the thesis statement.
2.
All
Comparisons (Topics 1 and 2). This section — which
should consists of several paragraphs — should go
through all similarities you find in the two topics
on which you are writing. There should be at least
three comparisons (essentially three short body
paragraphs) in which you give an example from both
topics of comparisons in each.
3.
All
Contrasts (Topics 1 and 2). This section — which
should consist of several paragraphs — should go
through all differences you find in the two topics
on which you are writing. There should be at least
three contrasts (essentially three short body
paragraphs) in which you give an example from both
topics of comparisons in each.
4.
Conclusion. This conclusion is wrapping up
everything you have just proven in your paper. It
should restate the thesis in a new, more official
way, and you should feel quite confident in your
writing.
Here is a quick breakdown on how the
Compare-Contrast Essay should appear:
Type A:
Paragraph 1: Introduction (with Thesis)
Paragraph 2: Topic 1 (Comparison a)
Paragraph 3: Topic 1 (Comparison b)
Paragraph 4: Topic 1 (Comparison c)
Paragraph 5: Topic 2 (Contrast a)
Paragraph 6: Topic 2 (Contrast b)
Paragraph 7: Topic 2 (Contrast c)
Paragraph 8: (Optional) — Comparisons/Contrasts
together (any topic)
Paragraph 8: Conclusion
Type B:
Paragraph 1: Introduction (with Thesis)
Paragraph 2: Comparison a (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 3: Comparison b (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 4: Comparison c (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 5: Contrast a (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 6: Contrast b (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 7: Contrast c (Topic 1&2)
Paragraph 8: Conclusion
FOOTNOTE GUIDELINES
WHY FOOTNOTES?
Historians are fond of footnotes because they provide:
-
substance
(demonstrating the scope of your research; quantity does
matter)
-
verification
(allowing readers to confirm your evidence and to establish
that you are NOT arguing simply by assertion) and
-
elaboration (allows
you to further develop select points that would take you
away from the main narrative).
AUTOMATIC FOOTNOTE
INSERTION. Inserting footnotes is quite easy using current
computer software programs. For example, in Microsoft Word
you click on the "Insert" link on the top menu bar and then in
the pop-up menu you have "footnote" as a selection and you click
there. Type footnote in your program's help section for
specifics. The number automatically comes up and now you
just type in the data following the examples below and the
program automatically inserts it at the bottom of your page.
QUALITY OF RESEARCH.
You will be evaluated on the quality of your selected sources.
A batch of websites is not very impressive; traditional books
and articles [on the shelves in libraries] are recommended.
Again, DO NOT simply rely on Internet sources. Note
that the minimum of ten footnotes does not mean that you need
ten different sources; some of course can be repeated.
FOOTNOTE SAMPLES.
There are various ways that your work can be documented/cited
and you probably learned one or more ways of doing this for
another class. Historians prefer the Chicago style and we
will utilize that format in this paper assignment. A
footnote number should come at the end of the sentence.
Sometimes, you might want to combine several footnotes together
at the end of a paragraph. Please follow these guidelines
as you reference your sources at the bottom of the page:
-
IF A BOOK: Author(s).
Book title. Place of publication: Publisher,
year of publication. Page(s). For example:
Ronald T. Takaki,
Iron Cages: Race and Culture in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Alfred Knopf
Publ., 1979): 2.
Allen, Robert and James Brandon.
World History.
New York:
Dodd, 1999.
*Note, with two or more
authors, the additional author’s names are listed first name
then last name. For a book editor,
include a coma and the abbreviation ed. for editor after the
individual’s name.
-
IF AN
ARTICLE: author, title, journal title, volume and page
number. For example:
Ronald T. Takaki, “Within the ‘Bowels’ of the Republic,”
Journal of History Vol XX, No. 5: 4.
-
MAGAZINE/NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: Author. "Article
Title." Title of Publication. Day Month
Year: page number(s).
Williams, James.
“New York Tips.”
Newsweek. 9 July
2002:33
*Note:
for newspapers, section and
page number should be included (ex: C3).
-
ANTHOLOGY /
REFERENCE BOOK: Author (if known). "Article
Title." Book author or editor. Anthology or
Reference Book Title. Place of Publication: Publisher,
year of publication. Page(s).
For example:
Creasy,
James. “George Washington.” Bloom,
Harold, ed. Encyclopedia
Americana.
New York: Groliers, 2001.
-
FOR A
WEBSITE: Author(s) if known. Name of Page.
Date of publication (if known). Name of
institution/organization affiliated with site. Date of
access <URL address>
“Thomas Jefferson on Slavery” in
Afro-American Almanac,
http://www.toptags.com/aama/voices/commentary/jeff.htm
(25 March 2001). or
Cook,
James. Webdoctor. 2004. American Medical
Society. 3 September 2004 <http://webdoctor.com>.
-
FOR A FILM:
Citizen Kane.
Dir. Orson Welles. Perfs. Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton. RKO
Radio Pictures, 1941. or
Fahrenheit 9/11. Dir. Michael Moore. Lions Gate Films,
2006.
SAMPLE PAGE THAT USES FOOTNOTES
Here is a sample page that uses footnotes. The regular
text of your essay should be double-spaced. At the bottom
if there are footnotes, the text will appear single-spaced [note
that this is automatically inserted this way].
HOW TO QUOTE
Frame your quotation. Don't just drop your
quotation into your paper; provide an introduction of your own
and explain its signifiance.
Indicate where your quotation begins and ends.
Indent long quotations. If your quotation is more than
four typed lines, this is a called a block quotation.
Indent this quotation and in this case, quotation marks are not
necessary (the indented portion indicates it is a quotation).
Integrate your quotations grammatically
Keep quotations brief
example