How to Approach Each Assignment Without Guessing
Essay 3 asks you to analyze one of four short stories through literary elements. The Final Exam asks you to reflect on your growth as a writer all semester. Neither is a summary exercise. This guide breaks down what each assignment actually requires — and where students lose points by misreading the prompt.
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Get Expert Help →What These Two Assignments Are Actually Testing
Essay 3 and the Final Exam are testing two completely different skills — but they share a common failure mode. Students write what happened, or what they did, instead of what it means. Literary analysis is not a book report. The reflective essay is not a diary entry about your semester. Both assignments want your thinking, your interpretation, and your reasoning — supported by evidence and written with structure. A reader who finishes your essay should understand not just the facts, but why they matter.
Essay 3 is a literary analysis. You pick one short story, identify at least four literary elements (at least one of which must be a theme), and explain how the author uses them — and how effectively. The word “effectively” is doing real work here. It asks for evaluation, not just description. You are not just spotting symbolism; you are explaining whether the symbolism works, how it serves the story’s larger purpose, and what evidence from the text supports your reading.
The Final Exam is a reflective essay. It runs 1–2 pages minimum, uses first person (“I”), and covers three required topic areas: your personal strengths and weaknesses as a writer, a review of your Essay 1 draft, and a comparison across all three essays. No outside sources. No introduction or conclusion required. What it does require is specificity and honesty — vague reflections that could apply to any student in any English class earn low marks.
Both Assignments Explicitly Prohibit AI-Generated Content
The Essay 3 prompt states directly: “Only original work will be graded. Do not use Generative AI to create the essay.” The Final Exam is asking about your unique experience this semester — it cannot be generated generically. Submitting AI-written text for either assignment carries serious academic integrity risk. This guide is here to help you understand how to write these essays yourself, not to produce them for you.
Choosing Your Short Story — and Why That Decision Matters
You have four options. Pick the one you read most carefully, not the one that sounds most impressive. A deep, specific analysis of a story you actually engaged with will outperform a shallow analysis of a “harder” text every time. That said, each story has different analytical strengths — so here is a quick orientation before you commit.
A Practical Test: Which Story Can You Generate Four Things to Say About?
Before you commit, try listing at least four distinct literary elements you could analyze in each story — and for each one, try to name a specific moment from the text that illustrates it. If you can do that for a story quickly and confidently, that is your story. If you are straining to remember specific scenes or reaching for generic observations (“the setting creates a dark mood”), you probably haven’t read that text closely enough to write 1,000 words on it.
How to Actually Analyze Literary Elements (Not Just Name Them)
The most common mistake in literary analysis essays is identification without analysis. A student writes: “The story uses symbolism. The wheel in Kenan’s story is a symbol.” Full stop. That is identification, not analysis. Analysis answers a follow-up question: what does this symbol mean in this story, how does the author build it, and what would be lost if it weren’t there?
The assignment lists these elements as examples: plot, theme, mood, tone, symbolism, metaphor, motif, characterization, foreshadowing, narrator, personification, setting, imagery, irony. You need at least four of these, and at least one must be a theme. The prompt also says to “determine how successfully the author has utilized these elements” — which means your analysis should include an evaluative claim, not just description.
The Three-Move Analysis Framework — Apply This to Every Literary Element You Choose
For each literary element in your essay, your body paragraph should work through these three moves in sequence. No move should be skipped.
Identify & Introduce
- Name the literary element and define it briefly if needed
- State your claim about how the author uses it
- This should be your topic sentence — not a fact, but an arguable assertion
- Example: “Moore’s use of irony functions as the story’s primary emotional engine, allowing her to dramatize grief while appearing to avoid it entirely.”
Evidence from the Text
- Cite directly from the story — specific passages, dialogue, description
- Do not paraphrase when a direct quote is available and short
- Multiple examples per element are stronger than one
- The prompt explicitly says: “cite directly from the short stories to use as evidence”
Analyze & Evaluate
- Explain what the quoted passage shows — what does the author achieve here?
- Connect back to your claim and to the story’s larger meaning
- Evaluate: does this element succeed? Is it effective? Why or why not?
- This is where most of your analysis score lives — don’t cut it short
The Theme Requirement — What It Actually Demands
At least one of your four subtopics must be a theme. Theme is not the same as topic. The topic of “The Book of Martha” is God and human nature. A theme is a complete, arguable statement about that topic: “Butler argues that true compassion requires the willingness to sit with discomfort rather than fix it.” That is the kind of thematic claim your essay needs — one you can actually defend with textual evidence.
Avoid vague theme statements like “this story is about identity” or “the theme is community.” Every story is about something. What does this story actually say about that thing? The theme is the author’s position, not just the subject matter. Your job in the theme section is to articulate that position and demonstrate it through the text.
The One Paragraph of Summary Rule
The prompt is explicit: students will provide only one paragraph of summary after the introduction paragraph. This means your essay can have exactly one paragraph that explains what happens in the story — and the rest must be analysis. If you are selecting plot as one of your four elements, the prompt notes you should “choose specific moments from the story to illustrate the effectiveness of this element” — not summarize the whole thing. Students who fill their body paragraphs with plot recap rather than analysis typically score significantly below students who stay analytical throughout.
Where to Focus Your Analysis in Each Short Story
This section doesn’t tell you what to write — it tells you where to look. The richest material for analysis in each story. You still need to read closely, form your own interpretations, and support them with direct quotation. Consider this a map, not a script.
Venita Blackburn — “Halloween”
Where to Look
Blackburn’s story is densely visual. Pay attention to the way she describes costumes, bodies, and the darkness of the setting. The images are doing thematic work — they are not decorative. Ask yourself what each image makes you feel, and why the author chose these specific visual details over others.
Where to Look
Flash fiction lives or dies on tone. Notice shifts in the emotional register — where does playfulness tip into unease? The tone is not consistent, and those shifts are intentional. Analyzing how the author manages tone across a very short piece is a strong analytical move for this story.
Where to Look
The Halloween costume is a rich symbol. What does it mean to wear a different face? What does Blackburn seem to suggest about performance, disguise, and identity? Connect the symbol to the theme — they should reinforce each other in your analysis.
Randall Kenan — “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel”
Where to Look
Kenan’s characters are shaped by community, faith, and the weight of expectation. Pay attention to how characters are revealed through dialogue, action, and description — and what the gap between their public selves and inner lives reveals about the story’s themes.
Where to Look
The Southern Gothic setting is not just backdrop. It carries meaning — it shapes what the characters believe is possible, what they fear, and what they want. Analyze how Kenan constructs the setting and what it contributes to the story’s emotional and thematic weight.
Where to Look
The biblical allusion in the title is not incidental. The wheel from Ezekiel is a symbol of divine presence and transformation. Trace how this motif operates through the story — where does it appear, how does it shift in meaning, and what does it ultimately argue about faith or deliverance?
Lorrie Moore — “Charades”
Where to Look
Moore is a writer whose irony is structural, not just verbal. The title “Charades” frames the whole story as performance and guessing. Pay attention to what characters say versus what the narration implies, and how Moore uses irony to reveal emotional truths that the characters themselves won’t name directly.
Where to Look
The narrator’s point of view shapes everything the reader knows and feels. Analyze the narrative distance — how close are we to the protagonist’s inner life? Where does the narrator seem unreliable or selective? The narration is doing work, and identifying that work is analytically strong.
Where to Look
Moore’s tone in “Charades” is wry, controlled, and occasionally devastating. It is a story that uses humor to talk about something painful. Analyze how the author sustains that tonal balance — what specific word choices and sentence structures produce it, and whether it ultimately serves or undercuts the story’s emotional impact.
Octavia E. Butler — “The Book of Martha”
Where to Look
Butler is an explicitly philosophical writer. “The Book of Martha” is structured as a conversation about power, responsibility, and what it means to help people without taking away their agency. The theme is not subtle — but analyzing how Butler develops and complicates it through Martha’s choices is rich analytical territory.
Where to Look
Martha’s characterization is built almost entirely through dialogue and internal reaction. She is an ordinary woman given extraordinary responsibility. Analyze how Butler makes Martha’s doubt, fear, and moral seriousness credible through specific details — and what the story seems to say about who should and shouldn’t hold power.
Where to Look
Notice how Butler plants seeds early in the story that the ending fulfills. Track the motif of dreams throughout — what do dreams represent in this story, and why does Butler make them central to Martha’s solution? The ending’s emotional power depends on the groundwork laid earlier in the narrative.
How to Structure a 1,000-Word Literary Analysis That Covers All Four Elements
One thousand words sounds like a lot until you realize you need an introduction, one summary paragraph, four body paragraphs analyzing four literary elements, and a conclusion. That’s roughly 100 words each, which is tight. This is not an essay where you can afford to pad. Every sentence should be doing something — making a claim, providing evidence, or explaining what that evidence shows.
| Essay Section | Word Budget (Approx.) | What It Must Do | Common Mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 100–130 words | Introduce the story and author, provide brief context, and end with a clear thesis statement that names your four literary elements and makes a claim about the story as a whole. The thesis should not be a list — it should be an argument. | Starting with “Since the beginning of time, literature has…” or providing five sentences of biographical background on the author before mentioning the story. Lead with the work and the argument, not with throat-clearing. |
| Summary Paragraph | 100–150 words | Give the reader just enough context to follow your analysis. What is the story about? Who are the main characters? What happens at the key moments you will be analyzing? This paragraph exists to orient, not to replace analysis. | Using this paragraph to retell the entire story. One paragraph means one paragraph. If you find yourself summarizing for two or three paragraphs, you are using summary as filler instead of as setup. |
| Body Paragraph 1 — Theme | 150–200 words | Open with your thematic claim (not “one theme of this story is…”), bring in specific evidence from the text with direct quotation, and analyze what that quotation demonstrates about the author’s thematic argument. End by connecting the theme to the story’s overall effect. | Writing a theme paragraph that describes the subject of the story rather than the author’s position on it. “This story deals with loss” is a subject. “The author argues that loss cannot be outrun, only metabolized” is a thematic claim you can actually defend. |
| Body Paragraphs 2–4 | 150–200 words each | Apply the three-move framework (identify, evidence, analyze) to each remaining element. Vary your sentence structure. Don’t open every paragraph the same way. Each paragraph should feel like a distinct argument, not a template filled in. | Treating the body paragraphs as independent units with no connection to each other or to the thesis. Your analysis should build — each element should deepen the reader’s understanding of the story’s overall achievement, not exist as a separate observation. |
| Conclusion | 80–100 words | Synthesize what you have argued — not summarize. The conclusion should answer the question: “So what?” What does your analysis of these four elements reveal about the story as a whole? End with a strong final sentence that gives the reader something to think about. | Beginning with “In conclusion, this essay has shown…” and then listing the body paragraphs. That is a summary, not a synthesis. Your conclusion should elevate the essay, not recap it. |
The difference between a C analysis and an A analysis is almost never about what the student knows. It’s about how deeply they are willing to stay with a single moment in the text — to ask why it’s there, what it does, and what it costs the story if it’s removed.
— Standard principle in literary analysis instruction (see Purdue OWL’s guide on literary analysis)On Scholarly Articles — Optional, but Worth Knowing How to Use
The prompt says you may consult scholarly articles to help further support your analysis — but they are not required. If you do use them, do not let them drive your argument. Scholarship should support your reading, not replace it. The prompt also explicitly says the majority of content should come from your own analysis and the weekly reading comprehension assignments. If a scholarly source contradicts your reading, engage with it; don’t ignore it or swap your argument for theirs. A good place to find peer-reviewed criticism on these stories is through your institution’s access to JSTOR or the MLA International Bibliography — search the author’s name plus “short fiction” or the story title.
The Final Exam — Three Required Topics and How to Write Each One Well
The Final Exam is different in almost every way from Essay 3. It’s first person. No outside sources. No required introduction or conclusion. No thesis in the traditional sense. What it shares with Essay 3 is the demand for specificity. Vague, general reflections that don’t reference your actual experience this semester will underperform. The rubric is the modified ENGL 103 rubric without the Thesis category — which means everything else (development, evidence, organization, mechanics) still matters.
No Outside Sources — This Is a Hard Rule With a Grade Penalty
The prompt states clearly: “I will deduct points if outside sources are included.” This is the inverse of most academic writing requirements. The Final Exam is graded on the quality of your self-reflection and your ability to analyze your own writing process — skills that require no external sources. Citing anything outside of course materials (lecture notes, Canvas content) is not just unnecessary; it actively costs you points.
Required Topic 1: Your Strengths and Weaknesses as a Writer
This paragraph asks for honesty and specificity. “I am a good writer because I work hard” is not a strength — it is a character trait. A writing strength is something technical and demonstrable: “I construct complex sentences without losing syntactic control” or “I write strong thesis statements because I draft them last, after I know what I actually argued.” Same logic for weaknesses: don’t say “I struggle with time management.” Say “I tend to write conclusions that summarize rather than synthesize, and I’ve noticed this in all three essays for this course.”
The prompt asks why you consider these strengths and weaknesses. That “why” is where the analytical work lives. Don’t just name the trait — trace where it comes from, how it shows up in your writing, and how you intend to address weaknesses going forward. Minimum 5–8 sentences means this paragraph needs to do real work.
Required Topic 2: Reviewing Essay 1 — What You Notice Now
Open your Essay 1 final draft before you write this section. This is not a hypothetical question — the prompt is literally asking you to look at your own document. What do you actually see? What did you do well that you didn’t know you were doing well at the time? What do you now see as an error that your instructor marked or that you can now identify yourself?
The central question here is: “How has your writing, writing process, and knowledge of writing skills changed over the course of the semester?” This is the analytical heart of the whole Final Exam. You are comparing the writer you were in January or February to the writer you are now. That comparison needs to be specific. “I understand essay structure better now” is generic. “I no longer open paragraphs with topic sentences that just name a subject — I write topic sentences that make a claim” is specific and shows real growth.
What to Actually Look for When You Open Your Essay 1 Draft
Thesis quality: Is your Essay 1 thesis an actual argument, or does it describe the topic? Would you write it differently now?
Body paragraph structure: Do your paragraphs have clear topic sentences? Do they provide evidence and analyze it, or do they summarize and move on?
Transitions: How do you move between ideas? Are transitions mechanical (“In addition…”) or do they actually build the argument forward?
Evidence use: Did you cite directly from sources? Did you analyze the citations or just drop them in? How has your relationship to evidence changed?
Conclusion: Does it synthesize or summarize? Would you rewrite it now?
Mechanics and style: What errors do you see now that you might not have caught then? What has your understanding of sentence-level writing improved?
Required Topic 3: Comparing Your Three Essays
This section has four sub-questions embedded in it, and each needs at least a sentence or two: Which essay was your strongest? Which was easiest? Which was most challenging? Which did you get the most out of? These can overlap — your strongest essay might not be the one you found most valuable. Treat them as distinct questions and answer each one with a reason, not just a label.
The key here is that “strongest,” “easiest,” “challenging,” and “most valuable” are four different criteria. A student who picks the same essay for all four is probably not reflecting carefully enough. For example: Essay 2 might have been the easiest because the prompt was clear, but Essay 3 might be your strongest because the difficulty pushed you further. Your answer to “which did you get the most out of” should probably be your most honest and thoughtful response — because it asks about learning, not performance.
What Makes This Reflection Strong
- Names specific essays and explains the reasoning behind each label
- References concrete moments from the essays or the writing process
- Demonstrates actual change in skill, not just attitude (“I learned to care more about writing”)
- Honest — including about essays that didn’t go well and why
- Written in first person consistently, with 5–8 sentences per paragraph
- Uses MLA or APA format throughout, including proper header and page numbers
What Causes This Reflection to Underperform
- Generic statements that any student in any class could write
- Flattering self-assessment with no specificity (“I am a great creative thinker”)
- Paragraphs under 5 sentences — below the minimum stated in the prompt
- Discussing what happened without analyzing what it means for your writing
- Including outside sources — this is penalized explicitly
- Using “you” instead of “I” — the prompt specifies first person throughout
MLA vs. APA for ENGL 103 — What You Actually Need to Know
Both essays permit either MLA or APA. Most introductory English courses default to MLA — if your course materials, syllabus, or instructor haven’t specified otherwise, MLA is the safer assumption. Either way, pick one and apply it consistently. Mixing citation styles in the same essay is a formatting error.
| Format Element | MLA (9th Edition) | APA (7th Edition) |
|---|---|---|
| Header | Your name, instructor name, course name, date — top left, double spaced | Title page with title, name, institution, course, instructor, date — centered |
| Page Numbers | Last name + page number in top right header (e.g., “Smith 1”) | Page number in top right header, no name required |
| In-Text Citation for Short Story | Author’s last name and page number in parentheses: (Blackburn 1) | Author’s last name, year, and paragraph number if no page: (Blackburn, 2021, para. 3) |
| Works Cited / References Page | “Works Cited” — story citation required; hanging indent format | “References” — story citation required; hanging indent format |
| Title of Essay | Centered, not bolded, not underlined — your own title | Centered and bolded on page 2 (after title page) |
| Spacing & Font | Double-spaced throughout; Times New Roman 12pt standard | Double-spaced throughout; Times New Roman 12pt or similar serif |
Verified External Resource: Purdue OWL’s MLA and APA Guides
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) at owl.purdue.edu is the most reliable free resource for MLA and APA formatting questions. It covers in-text citation format, Works Cited and References page formatting, how to cite online short stories (which is what you are dealing with here — all four stories are published online), and how to handle sources with no page numbers. This is a primary reference resource — bookmark it and use it when formatting your essay and Works Cited page, not just for checking after the fact.
How to Cite an Online Short Story
Since all four short stories are published online (The New Yorker, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Seven Stories Press), you will need to format your citation accordingly. Online sources don’t have page numbers — which means your in-text citations in MLA should use the author’s last name only in parentheses, and in APA you will cite paragraph numbers if needed. For the Works Cited or References page, include the author, title of story, publication platform, date, and URL.
Common Errors That Cost Points — and the Fix for Each One
| # | The Error | Why It Costs Points | The Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Treating the literary analysis as a five-paragraph book report | A five-paragraph essay with intro, three body paragraphs, and conclusion can only cover three elements — but the assignment requires at least four. Beyond the count issue, the five-paragraph structure tends to produce mechanical writing that summarizes more than analyzes. Graders can tell when a student has filled in a template rather than built an argument. | Plan your essay around your argument, not around a fixed paragraph count. You will likely need at least five body paragraphs (one summary, four analysis) plus intro and conclusion — seven sections minimum. That’s fine. The essay just needs to be at least 1,000 words. |
| 2 | Selecting more than one paragraph of summary | The prompt is explicit: one paragraph of summary, placed after the introduction. Students who spend two or three paragraphs explaining the plot before beginning analysis have used up word count that should have gone toward literary analysis — and have violated the assignment’s stated structure. This is a compliance error, not just a stylistic choice. | Draft your summary paragraph first, keep it to 100–150 words, and then stop. If you find yourself wanting to explain more plot before analyzing, you probably haven’t read the story carefully enough to analyze without the retelling as a crutch. Go back to the text. |
| 3 | Using SparkNotes, CliffsNotes, or summary websites | The prompt explicitly prohibits text summary sources that provide summaries or interpretations. This is not a suggestion — it’s a stated prohibition. Using these sources for your summary or analysis is an academic integrity issue, not just a quality issue. It’s also usually obvious: the vocabulary and interpretations from these sources read differently from student writing. | Your summary and analysis must come from your own reading. The weekly Reading Comprehension assignments your instructor assigned are the resource here — use the notes you already took. If you didn’t take notes, go back to the story and read it carefully before writing. |
| 4 | Theme statements that describe a subject rather than an argument | Since the assignment requires at least one theme, a weak theme statement is a problem in an otherwise adequate paragraph. “The theme of this story is family” gives the grader nothing to evaluate — it’s not arguable. The rubric is assessing your analytical ability, and a non-argumentative theme statement signals that you haven’t done the analytical work. | Test your theme statement: can someone reasonably disagree with it? If no reasonable reader would say “I don’t think this story is about family” — your statement is too vague to be a thesis. Push it toward an interpretation: what does the story say about family? What position does the author take? |
| 5 | Dropping quotes without analysis | Evidence without analysis is just decoration. “Butler writes, ‘[quote]'” and then moving to the next point leaves the grader doing your work — inferring what the quote means and why you included it. This is the most common single reason for analytical essays losing points at the paragraph level. | After every quotation, ask yourself three questions and answer them in writing: What does this passage show? How does it demonstrate my claim? What would be different if this moment weren’t in the story? If you can’t answer all three, you don’t understand why you quoted it, and you need to rethink the evidence. |
| 6 | Using second person in either essay | The Essay 3 prompt specifies third person (“he/she”) and explicitly says to avoid second person (“you”). The Final Exam specifies first person (“I”). Second person (“you might notice that…”) is a default for many writers who are uncertain about their voice, but it’s specifically excluded here. It also sounds imprecise and unacademic in literary analysis. | Before submitting, do a search for the word “you” in your essay. Replace every instance with a more specific subject — the author, the reader, the character, or “I” (for the Final Exam only). This is a one-pass editing fix that should take under five minutes. |
Pre-Submission Checklist — Essay 3
- Short story clearly identified at or near the start of the essay
- Thesis statement makes an arguable claim about the story and names (or implies) the four elements you will analyze
- Exactly one paragraph of summary — no more
- At least four literary elements analyzed, each in its own body section or paragraph
- At least one of the four elements is a theme, with a specific, arguable thematic claim
- Direct quotation from the short story used as evidence in each analytical section
- Every quotation followed by analysis that explains what it shows
- No SparkNotes, CliffsNotes, or summary websites referenced or paraphrased
- Written in third person (“he/she/they”) — no second person (“you”)
- MLA or APA format applied consistently throughout — header, page numbers, citations
- Short story cited on Works Cited or References page
- Minimum 1,000 words
Pre-Submission Checklist — Final Exam
- Written in first person (“I”) throughout — no second person
- Paragraph 1 covers personal strengths AND weaknesses in writing, with explanation of why
- Paragraph 2 references the actual Essay 1 final draft — specific, not hypothetical
- Paragraph 2 answers how writing, process, and knowledge of skills changed over the semester
- Paragraph 3 identifies strongest essay (with reasoning), easiest (with reasoning), most challenging (with reasoning), and most valuable (with reasoning)
- Each paragraph is at least 5–8 sentences
- Total essay meets minimum 1–2 complete pages
- No outside sources included — lecture notes and course materials only
- MLA or APA format applied — header and page numbers present
- No true introduction or conclusion required — but each paragraph should have a clear opening sentence
FAQs: ENGL 103 Essay 3 and Final Exam
What Separates a Strong Essay from a Passing One in ENGL 103
For Essay 3, the gap between a C and an A comes down to one thing almost every time: how deeply you stay with the text. Students who write strong literary analyses don’t just read the story once and summarize what they remember. They go back. They mark specific passages. They ask, for each passage, what is this doing here and why did the author make this choice instead of another? That habit of questioning — of treating every textual detail as a decision the author made intentionally — is what produces analytical writing that has something real to say.
For the Final Exam, the equivalent is honesty. The reflection essays that score well are the ones that say something true about the student’s writing — including about where it fell short, what was genuinely difficult, and what actually changed. Instructors have read hundreds of reflective essays. They can tell the difference between a student who genuinely reflected and a student who wrote what they thought the instructor wanted to hear. Specificity is the marker of genuine reflection. Generic praise of the course or of your own work without concrete examples is the marker of a student who didn’t engage with the prompt.
If you need professional support structuring your literary analysis argument, developing your thematic claim, locating and formatting citations, or editing your Final Exam reflection for clarity and completeness, the team at Smart Academic Writing works with ENGL 103-level courses and higher. Visit our essay writing service, our editing and proofreading service, our APA and MLA citation help, or our college essay help page. You can also see how the service works or contact us directly with your assignment details and deadline.