Compare 2 characters in terms of a quality associated with samurai

Graded out of 100, worth 20% of final grade • 6-7 pages double-spaced, in English • Compare 2 characters from the course so far (including next week if you want) in terms of a quality associated with samurai • Need an argument and thesis statement • Need to use and analyze textual evidence (examples and direct quotes) • Need 1 outside ACADEMIC source What I’d like you to do is to choose two characters from works we’ve read or watched this quarter and compare the ways that they illustrate a specific quality associated with the samurai (you could choose to focus, for example, on loyalty, honor/avoidance of dishonor, martial valor, the warrior-poet, readiness to die, etc.). You should aim for six to seven pages, double-spaced. You’re welcome to use works from next week, if you like (I will put next week’s readings up on GauchoSpace later today), and you’re also free to compare two characters from the same work (so if you want to consider two characters from Chūshingura or The Tale of the Heike, for example, that’s fine). I encourage you to pick characters who illustrate the chosen quality in different ways (you can even pick someone who illustrates it by counterexample), otherwise the process of comparison will not be particularly interesting or revealing! In comparing the chosen characters, you will of course need to make some sort of argument and have a thesis statement that goes beyond mere description. You should aim to make some claim about what the depiction of the two characters, and the differences between them, demonstrates about the nature of the samurai, or at least how the samurai was seen and represented in literature/film/Japanese culture. I expect you to support your argument with textual evidence and examples, which you will need not just to plop down in the paper, but to analyze, explain, and shed light on. Also, as I state on the syllabus, you are to draw on at least one outside source. So you will need to find some piece of scholarship that is relevant to your comparison—a book in the library, or an article through Muse or JSTOR–and use this in some meaningful way in your essay. For the most part, this is an essay that allows you to do a close reading of texts we’ve already read, but you will need to do a little bit of outside research that goes beyond what we’ve done in class