Paragraph Structure using Ricci’s “Going to the Moon”

Paragraph Structure using Ricci’s “Going to the Moon” ENG 4U0

Topic Sentence: Example • The short story “Going to the Moon” by Nino Ricci represents a significant tie to archetypes and the various course themes. These are represented through the archetypal loss of innocence, along with certain cultural and economic influences the narrator experiences and cultural allusions the author employs.

Body of the Paragraph • In the body of your paragraph, you will have several arguments. The number of arguments is up to you however a minimum of three is probably about right.

Developing an Argument • Introduce your point • Give proof (referring to the text and/or providing quotes) • Stitch the quotation into the fabric of your explication. Set up the context and analyze. • Provide analysis

Set up the context Example of Developing an Argument Stitch in the quote pieces. Economic influences affect the narrator socially given the narrator’s family’s financial situation (Point). The young narrator refuses to wear his winter jacket when the zipper breaks and his mother sews “buttons down the coat’s front” with “crude holes for them along the track of the broken zipper” (Ricci 216) (Proof). Instead of letting the other students and Miss Johnson see his family’s “poverty” and strangeness” in the “makeshift repairs” (Ricci 216) he wears only a sweater to avoid being a social misfit at school (Analysis). Include citation

Point, Proof, Analysis: Repeat! • Continue to develop your arguments using the point, proof, analysis method • Between arguments, use TRANSITION words – • Aim for Significant & meaningful ideas that show critical thinking, not just retelling what you have read (ex. I know who JFK is now connect what he represents to the ideas in the story. An example with JFK will follow shortly)

Concluding Sentence • Each paragraph should have a concluding sentence. • This summarizes your paragraph, reiterating your point.

Concluding Sentence: Example • In this sequence we see how economic class influences the boy’s social life at school.

Stitch the quotations into the fabric of your paragraph Complete Paragraph (with connection to 2 course themes, minus the archetypal loss of innocence) The short story “Going to the Moon” by Nino Ricci represents a significant tie to the various course themes, in particular the experience of economic class as.(Topic Sentence) Economic influences affect the narrator socially given the narrator’s family’s financial situation (Point). The young narrator refuses to wear his winter jacket when the zipper breaks and his mother sews “buttons down the coat’s front” with “crude holes for them along the track of the broken zipper” (Ricci 216) (Proof). Instead of letting the other students and Miss Johnson see his family’s “poverty” and strangeness” in the “makeshift repairs” (Ricci 216) he wears only a sweater to avoid being a social misfit at school (Analysis). In this sequence we see how economic class influences the boy’s social life at school (Concluding Sentence).

Another Sample Paragraph(using literary devices) Social & cultural Allusions Catholic allusion employed as a psychological symbol. John F. Kennedy functions as a symbol in Nino Ricci’s “Going to the Moon.” His civil rights record makes him a symbol of hope that the sorts of discrimination experienced by the protagonist as the son of Italian immigrants might eventually be eliminated. His death symbolizes the unlikelihood that these forms of discrimination will ever cease to exist. Kennedy’s death is mentioned in the story shortly before the allusion the Detroit Riots of 1967 which also reflect the profound racial tensions that cause so much conflict in the U.S. and that are reflected in the narrator’s experience in Canada. Kennedy’s death also reinforces how the narrator and his family are deluded to believe the United States to be the sort of “heaven” described in the first few sentences of the story when it, in fact, is no better than the “purgatory” that is Windsor, Ontario.

Your Task Examining Themes, Allusions and Symbols in Nino Ricci Story “Going to the Moon” http://www.ninoricci.com/Moon.htm “All my life, it seemed suddenly, was merely a waiting for the fulfillment of that promise, for a redemption from the narrowness and meanness of the world I came from; but it seemed possible finally that nothing would change, that I was stranded in my own small world as on some barren planet, with no way to bridge the gap between the promise and the hundred small humiliations which kept me from me it, which refused simply to fall away from me like an old skin.” (Ricci p. 4)

Using this quotation as your jumping off point: Item 1. Identify how Ricci uses plot, character and imagery (devices like metaphor & simile) to symbolically work through the implications of the psychological situation the narrator finds himself in. Item 2. Explore one or more themes & allusions made in the story. Develop a paragraph that integrates these two items.

Allusions John F. Kennedy Apollo Program Apollo 1 fire Detroit riots

Paragraph Structure using Ricci’s “Going to the Moon”