Paper 2 suggestions

Whenever I have to process a good load of information and write a paper, I always feel at a loss on how to begin and how to proceed. Here are some tips that I wanted to share...

A. Begin with the novel, not your thesis
Ask yourself: What scene stood out to you? What phrases or words do you notice repeated? What character caught your imagination? What moments in the plot struck you as strange? What metaphors or images are used that seem uniquely symbolic?

This is the easiest place to start because you are already writing and thinking about things that you find interesting. It also ensures that your eventual thesis is supported by direct evidence.
If you have TOO many examples, you'll have to limit yourself somehow (perhaps by theme). For a short paper, I begin with 5 quotes.

B. Analyze your "evidence"
Take your quotes one by one and focus specifically on the quotes. Write out your analysis and observations. Apply your basic prompt question to each. ie.

• 1*how does this scene help me understand testimony (and "truth")?
• 2*how does this scene help me understand historical inheritance and/or human will?
• 3*how does this scene shape violence or empathy?
• 4*wind-up bird?!

3. When you have finished analyzing your handful of quotes, you can consider what message ties it all together. This is your preliminary thesis.


4. Make sure your thesis works.
It is easy to "cherry pick" convenient evidence and/or miss the big picture. So...

• 1*If this is what literary testimony is, can I read the rest of the novel as intervening into historical memory in _____ way?
• 2*If transgenerational haunting is ____, does it help me understand May's as a whole? Or Murakami's overall message about human will?
• 3*If empathy is related to violence in _______ way, does it make sense to apply this explanation to Toru and Kumiko's killing of Noboru?
• 4*If I argue the wind-up bird is _____, does it make sense that Toru is called Mr. Wind-up Bird?

5. Make your thesis meaningful

• 1*If I see "fictional" testimony as doing ____, how might Murakami's dreamy postmodern style be a kind of revolutionary stance?
• 2*If I think May's attitude towards things changes _______ aspect of historical inheritance, what is Murakami's message to his young readers living through the malaise of the 1990s?
• 3* If violence and empathy are _____, then how does Murakami understand society and social contact?
• 4* What might it mean, then, to write a Wind-up Bird Chronicle?