AF: Integrated text, The Awakening

Properly integrated text should form a part of your original sentence.  Here's a tip:  read the sentence that you have constructed aloud; in you can hear where the quote begins or ends, it is not properly integrated.

Chopin makes use of a variety of symbols to develop the theme of freedom and independence as expressed by Edna Pontellier.  For example, the evening she learns to swim is the first of several breakthrough experiences for Edna.  Swimming becomes a way for Chopin to discuss freedom personal power, self-will and independence.  The evening in the gulf, Edna "comes to realize her own powers," and is "intoxicated" by "some power of significant import" (27). Edna experiences a sudden burst of strength, a sense of her own possibility; she swims and "[reaches] out for the unlimited in which to lose herself" (28). Swimming is more than a pleasant exercise, but a way for Chopin to reveal a new, autonomous Edna Pontellier, a woman who is quickly developing a taste for sensuality, solitude, physical expression, and personal freedom.

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In a short essay, such as a timed write, long quotations must be avoided.  Generally, your quotes should not be entire sentences; instead, embed a short passage into a longer sentence that you write -- a sentence that is already doing some analytical work for you by contextualizing, supporting an assertion, explaining, etc.

Which of these do you like best?

• "Secretly, of course, I was all for the Burmese," Orwell confides.
• Orwell confides that he "was all for the Burmese."
• Orwell was "all for the Burmese," and hated working as an agent of the British Empire.