Thoughts on Essay #2

Last week, a student asked me to send feedback on the rough draft of Essay #2 via e-mail. As I wrote my comments, I realized they apply to everyone in the class. In fact, they are probably relevant to many situations in which college students are asked to write analytically about literature.


Here are a few of the observations I made as I read your draft of Essay #2:

1.) Saying the story is "very interesting" is not a "very interesting" way of starting your essay. Make your introduction stronger by making a clear, arguable assertion right from the get-go. In other words, clearly state your thesis. Everything you write in your essay should somehow support your thesis. Keep this in mind as you consider the following notes:

2.) Don't summarize the plot (the action that takes place in the story) so much. Your essay should consist mostly of your analysis, with occasional quotations or paraphrases or summaries of the story's action. Only mention parts of the story that are most relevant to your analysis. Be sure to use quotation marks when you are quoting the story's text word for word, whether you are quoting a short phrase or a full sentence or several sentences.

3.) Don't change tenses as you describe action in the story. In general, the standard practice for summarizing action in a story is to use the present tense. For example, one should write, "The boy in 'Araby' is melancholy" rather than "The boy in 'Araby' was melancholy." I suppose the reason for this is that a piece of published literature is usually permanent and unchanging; there's no reason to refer to it in the past tense because it continues to exist in the present (the plot "happens" in the present for the reader each time it is read).

4.) For this essay (not necessarily for a more formal research paper), don't be afraid to write about how the story made you feel. Offer more of your own personal interpretation and reaction, but be sure not to assume that your audience/readers will feel the same way. This approach should make your essay distinctive. Everybody who reads "Cathedral" knows the main character's attitude changes (his "eyes are opened") because of his interaction with the blind man. That's the main point of the story, and it's obvious. Your task in this essay is to observe and analyze the ways this dynamic (the change in the character's outlook) and other elements of the story (Carver's writing style, the "tone" or "mood" of the story, etc.) make the story "work." If it's easier to describe how the story "works for you," go for it. If you liked the story, try to think about how all these elements work together to prompt your personal reaction.

5.) Often, narrowing one's focus makes the difference between a strong essay and a weak one. If you fear your thesis is not original enough or perhaps not worthy of an argument (i.e., too obvious), try narrowing the scope of your essay. Rather than trying to analyze "the whole enchilada," you might want to limit your analytical claims to a particular aspect of your subject. For example, rather than trying to argue that the protagonist in "Cathedral" goes through an experience that radically changes his outlook (which is obvious; see note No. 4 above), focus on something more specific. Perhaps you might want to compare/contrast the relationship between the narrator and his wife with the other relationships in the story: the blind man's relationship with Beulah, the blind man's relationship with the narrator's wife, the narrator's wife's previous marriage, etc. Or focus specifically on all the passages in the text that specifically relate to the themes of "sight" and "blindness" (literal and figurative). Or focus specifically on dialogue (the words characters in the story speak to each other -- their tone, phrasing, vocabulary, etc.). A tightly focused thesis is essential if you want to successfully follow this last bit of advice:

6.) Your introduction should claim no more and no less than what you actually will deliver in the essay. It's better to make a modest claim and follow it up with a solid analysis than to make an overly ambitious claim and fail to support it.