Content
The objective of the Card Report assignment is to analyze a work into its component parts.  Usually confined to the front and back of one 5 by 8-inch index card, such a report is just as challenging to write as an essay.  

To do the job well you have to see the story in its elements, then specify them succinctly and accurately.  In this assignment you are asked to include the following:

1. The title of the story play or poem and the date of its original publication.
2. The author’s name and dates.
3. A terse, chronological summary of the story’s main events (plot).
4. The name of the central character, together with a description of the character’s main traits or features.  In the case of some poems, create a description of the speaker’s main traits or features.
5. Other characters dealt with in the same way.
6. A short description of the setting.
7. The narrator of the story, or the point of view in which the story is told.
8. A description of the general tone of the story: the author’s apparent feelings toward the central character or the main events (atmosphere, moods, or ironies).
9. Some comments on the style in which the story is written (or the form and prosody of the poetry).  (Brief illustrative quotations are helpful, insofar as space permits.)
10. In a sentence, the story’s main theme.
11. The story’s leading symbols (if any), with an educated guess as to whatever meanings each symbol suggests.
12. An evaluation of the story as a whole, concisely setting forth your opinion of it.  (This is the most important part of the report; most students find that by the time they have separated the elements of the story, they have arrived at a definite opinion of it.)

All the information must fit on a 5 by 8-inch index card.  You may use front and back.  You may neatly write the information by hand or, preferably, you may type or word-process.  

To fit so much information into the space of a single card is demanding.  The student who wrote the sample succinct report on “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (below) had to spoil a few trial cards before he was able to do it.  Every word has to count, and making them count is a discipline worthwhile in almost any kind of expository writing.  Some students enjoy the challenge.  In doing such a report, while you may feel severely limited, you will probably be surprised at how thoroughly you come to understand a story.  Besides, if you care to keep the card for future reference (you English majors), it won’t take much storage space.  A longer story, even a novel, may be analyzed in the same way, though in such a case two cards might be essential.

Grading Criteria

25 points possible (roughly 2 points for each section).