I’m working with my students on how to construct an argument in general and a literary argument in particular. We’re working with single paragraphs now, slowly building to whole papers. Here’s one effort:

The character Montresor from “The Cask of Amontillado” is an untrustworthy narrator. He tries to improve his image to the reader by telling how he’d endured the “thousand injuries of Fortunato”. This is meant to give the reader the idea that Montresor has good reason for wanting to murder Fortunato. However, Montresor does not describe the injuries Fortunato apparently gave him; in fact, because the story is in first person, we don’t know if Fortunato ever even hurt him. Not only that, he lies in the actual context of the story as well; for instance, when he tells Fortunato that he “receive[s] a pipe of what passes for amontillado”. Even if he did get the amontillado, Fortunato wasn’t fortunate enough to see it. He probably lied about being a mason, too. You can see from these quotes and facts that you cannot trust Montresor.

I love teaching writing because we all see the improvement in short order.