Solid arguments for Stone Angel Essay

HI there!

I am having trouble coming up with good solid arguments for my Stone Angel Essay. I was wondering if you could help me with this. The theme is "Loss leading to self-awareness" and I want to have the loss of family, the loss of less main characters (I.E. Regina Weese, Clara) and a paragraph on death archetypes and how they relate to Hagar's self awareness. Can you help me?

Here are the instructions for my essay.

The Task

Choose one of the topics listed below and develop a thesis. Your essay should be a well-organized, five-parapgraph essay that uses the text to support ideas. You must also use at least one secondary source to support your ideas.

My Topic

Loss Leading to Self-awareness

Details

* You must use 9-12 quotations, with a minimum of 3 per body paragraph
* The majority of your qoutations should be from your primary source (the novel)
* The essay should be 5-6 pages typed, double-spaced, using size 12 font

Jeff :)

Well, let me ask you this: can you think of an example of loss leading to awareness from the story? Write a sentence about it. follow that up with a sentence of elaboration/explanation. Next comes a sentence with an example or quote. Finish the paragraph with a conclusion sentence that reflects on the implications of what you just said or transitions into the next paragraph.

Do this for 3 different examples of loss leading to awareness, and you have your body paragraphs. Each begins with a topic sentence.


This seems like a bad idea. Who wants to read a paragraph that is so long? Who wants to read a 5 paragraph essay that spans 5-6 pages? This seems like a strange assignment, and there are too many rules.

Anyway, your argument is going to come from the 3 points you make (one point per topic sentence). Form an argument based on examples from the story. The argument you make will tell something about the mechanisms that are at work as loss leads to awareness.

Think about this:
If loss leads to awareness, does that mean gain leads to lack-of-awareness?