Essay Prompt:

Boccaccio documented the plague that struck Florence in 1348. Defoe created a journal based on his uncle’s first-person experience of the plague that struck London in 1665. And Contagion was inspired by the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak and 2009 flu pandemic. In describing the purpose of telling stories in general, Cody C. Delistraty argues in “The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling” that stories are a “way for humans to feel that we have control over the world,” that they “inform people’s emotional lives” by providing a “peek into someone’s conscience,” and that stories can even be “an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive” (Delistraty).  

In this essay, I want you to look at one or more of the pandemic stories we have read together for evidence of why we tell stories about pandemics. What psychological, emotional, or intellectual need does accounts of pandemics fill for its authors and audience?

Paragraph-level Guidance

Introduction

Your first paragraph, or introduction, should always begin by introducing the topic under consideration in the essay. Introduce your topic as you would a person at a party – with details. You wouldn’t start an introduction at a party by saying something broad and cliche like, “warmth is an important characteristic in choosing a person with whom to talk at a party.” You would say, “This is my friend, Andrzej, he is a sound engineer, just like you.” You want to indicate what the topic is (in the case of the party example, the topic is your friend, Andrzej), and why it is interesting or important (in the example, Andrzej will be interesting to the audience because they work in the same field.)

In your introduction, you should introduce your answer to the question of why we tell stories about pandemics in the specific terms of what the story or stories you are discussing show us about why we tell stories. Do not start with broad generalizations about storytelling, but rather, something like – “Boccaccio’s Decameron shows us that we tell stories about pandemics to work through our feelings of disgust and sympathy.” Then you can generalize about storytelling in so far as it illustrates your specific point about the text or texts you will discuss.  

Your introduction should include a road map that corresponds to your body paragraphs.

Your introduction should end with a “thesis,” or argument that answers the question of why we tell stories about pandemics.

Body Paragraphs

Your essay should have 2-3 body paragraphs. Each of your body paragraphs should be organized around a particular piece of evidence from the text that illustrates your thesis. You should introduce/ contextualize the evidence, describe it, and then relate it back to your thesis. The evidence you discuss in your body paragraphs are your evidence/ examples/  supporting reasons for your thesis – so in this case they are the ways the text(s) you are discussing illustrate the reason you think we tell pandemic stories.

Conclusion

Your conclusion ties everything together. In your conclusion, you can open up your discussion beyond the narrow focus you established in the introduction to consider broader questions, concerns, the future, or the past.