Argumentative Strategies in Thomas King’s “Truth About Stories”
Assignment: In a coherent essay, analyze and develop an argument about how Thomas King uses an argumentative strategy (or multiple interrelated strategies) in a short passage of your choosing (ideally no longer than a page) from The Truth About Stories. Your essay should go beyond simply identifying the example as a specific argumentative strategy, and instead make a specific argument about how Thomas King is using the strategy, as evidenced in that example, to advance his own argument. (You will likely need to briefly explain what King’s argument in your chosen passage is in order to explain how King uses argumentative strategies to make that argument). You will need to use textual evidence from your chosen passage (ex. short quotations, paraphrase, details from the text, etc.) to support your argument. Make sure that your essay advances a specific, coherent, and manageable argument expressed in a concise manner.
Some examples of argumentative strategies: pathos, ethos, logos, establishing common ground, making concessions, acknowledging the strengths of opposing viewpoints, demonstrating the weaknesses of opposing viewpoints.
Use no more than 250 words for your essay (i.e., approximately the length of one well-developed paragraph). If answers exceed this limit, only the first 250 words will be read. The point of this word limit is to encourage you to write as concisely as possible.
This essay is an opportunity for you to develop an original argument about a passage from King’s lectures, and so you should select an example that is NOT addressed in course lectures. Choosing to discuss an example addressed in course lectures will result in significantly reduced marks, unless your argument is significantly different from any argument about the passage offered in lectures.
This assignment will require you to read The Truth About Stories critically and thoroughly. Your focus should be on analyzing the argumentative strategies in the passage you’ve chosen using evidence from that passage. There is no need to conduct external research for this assignment: in fact, external research will distract from the main objective of this assignment, which is to analyze King’s argumentative strategies.
Please write in grammatically complete and concise sentences and remember to use the course readings and lectures to help make your answers as analytically precise and detailed as possible within the limits of a single well-developed paragraph. You will be
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expected to apply what you’ve learned in this module and the previous modules (ex. critical reading of the text, consideration of the rhetorical situation of the text, consideration of the writing situation of your own essay, essay and paragraph structure, coherence, unity, making strong claims, using strong reasoning, selecting and incorporating evidence effectively, analysis of evidence, formatting & documentation according to MLA style, etc.) to complete the assignment. As an argumentative essay, this assignment requires a thesis statement, evidence and analysis, and a concluding sentence. Consult the Short Essay #2 rubric for further information on how your assignment will be graded.
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Note on language: please remember to use respectful language and appropriate terminology to avoid reinforcing harmful and racist stereotypes. When writing and speaking about Indigenous Peoples,
• Identify Indigenous Peoples first by their Nation, whenever possible. By identifying specific Indigenous Peoples by their Nation, rather than simply as Indigenous, we recognize that each Nation is distinct and avoid making the false (and harmful) assumption that all Indigenous Peoples are the same.
o Ex. Thomas King is Cherokee.
• When it is not possible to refer to a specific Nation, use the term “Indigenous
Peoples.” Other acceptable terms are “First Nations,” “Métis,” and “Inuit,” but please recognize that these are more specific terms, so make sure that you are using them appropriately. Please recognize that some of the terms that King uses are outdated and should not be used in your essays: after all, King was writing almost 2 decades ago.
You’ll notice that Thomas King often uses different terminology to refer to Indigenous Peoples. I argue that King uses these terms to intentionally draw attention to the ways in which racist language has been used by settlers to construct historical and contemporary understandings of Indigenous Peoples, often to justify racist treatment of Indigenous Peoples and the theft of their Lands. King’s use of these terms, in my understanding, is intended to compel the reader to consider and confront their own relationships with these problematic terms. While Indigenous Peoples can obviously use any term they wish to refer to themselves, if you are non-Indigenous, please use the terminology outlined above to avoid reinforcing racist stereotypes. Please see the lecture “Introduction to The Truth About Stories” for a more complete explanation of appropriate terminology and how to avoid reinforcing racist stereotypes.
Feedback Reflection: this assignment will also require you to write a few sentences (50- 75 words) in which you reflect on feedback you received on previous assignments and how you have worked to address this feedback in this assignment. As the word limit indicates, these reflections do not need to be long: they are merely meant to encourage you to make use of the feedback you’ve received, which is an essential resource in helping you become a better writer.
Formatting notes: please use MLA Style (covered in the module associated with this assignment). You will need to include a Works Cited page and in-text citations for Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories as well as any other sources you use, if applicable. You may also choose to use Help write my thesis – APA style, but please make a note when you submit your assignment so that your marker is aware. Make sure that your essay has a specific, informative title. No cover page needed. Use DOC, DOCX, or PDF formats for your written assignments to ensure that they will be accepted by Brightspace.
In the short story “Let Me Entertain You” Thomas King tries to establish how transformation and conceptual understanding of the image of indigenous peoples has been created within the modern American society. He elaborates throughout the passage, with important references to actual events of how the image of the indigenous people was transformed from strange and exotic, to savages, insubordinate, dangerous and indecent later to be replaced by an image of a person who was a “friend to the White man, who was strong, brave, honest and noble, A figure who kept his clothes on and who spoke reasonable English.” (King, 2003, p76). In the short story, King’s argumentative strategy applies the tool of creating a common ground with his reader, to create a more realistic outlook of events. With a particular focus on Columbus, a figure and person that has been idolized and celebrated by the larger American public as the person who discovered the Americas. King uses the argumentative strategy of establishing a common ground to present the two sides of Columbus, one of the side (of him being a slave trader, and a pillager) is usually ignored when celebrating him. Common ground is a basis creating a mutual understanding between a two opposing conceptual understanding of a story to allow a certain perspective to manifest. While Colombus is celebrated for discovering the Americas, (this being the most dominant narrative that defines him) less is known about his attitudes and dismissive nature of the indigenous people, whom he traded as slaves. King indeed agrees that for all he knew, Columbus, when writing back to the King of Spain, did not know where he was and at the same time, he had an agency to continue exploration but lacked the funds. Through logic, King establishes that slavery at the time was rife and normalized form of trade. It would be absurd to omit the fact that he participated in slavery. Common ground is established by first admitting of the popular narrative that defines Columbus today. He then establishes a logical inquiry into the time period and the state of exploration, identifying that it was an expensive venture, one that was not properly funded fully at first by the Spanish crown. This creates a question in the reader mind, on how Columbus funded his exploration. Having already established of slavery and trade of indigenous people in Sevilla, Spain at the time, by use of the same ships he travelled to the Americas, and having established his track record of using force to pillage indigenous people villages (common grounds), it becomes hard to dispute the fact that Columbus was the father of America, but also a slave trader.
References
King, T. (2003). “Short Story III: Let Me Entertain You” The Truth About Stories: A Narratives.
CBC Massey Lectures. Pdf.
