PURPOSE: to allow you to get to the bottom of an issue that interests you; to ask and answer a question about one of the texts we've read; to define an argument and follow it to a conclusion

LENGTH: 5-7 pages (typed, double-spaced)

There is no one model or formula for a good literary critical essay. You each have your own voice and style, and can look for ways to use the papers you write to express yourself as well as analyse literature. And even if I could promise to give one type of essay an A every time, the odds are that no other teacher would have the same prejudices or expectations. So what I'm doing here is trying to explain my expectations -- what I'm looking for in your papers -- yet I hope I'm not just exposing my prejudices, but instead indicating strengths that all good analytical or expository writing has.

To me, the best place to begin an essay is with your own reading experience. Try to find something in a text that really interested, perplexed, aggravated, excited or confused you -- whether it's part of the plot, the role of a character, a pattern of images or thematic concerns, the style, or whatever. If you start with something that genuinely interests you, then you've got two reasons to write the paper: to get a grade, sure, but also to explore the issue and reach a conclusion about it that satisfies your own intellectual curiosity.

Before you can start writing the essay, you should turn the topic into an argument. The topic is the subject you're writing about. The argument commits your essay to a particular point -- it's what you are trying to say, what you want your reader to see, about the meaning of the subject. The importance of clothes in Ragged Dick is a topic. That in Ragged Dick Alger implies that clothes really do make the man, that who one is is largely determined by what one wears -- that's an argument. One way to know you've got an argument is if you can see how people could argue about what you want to say. No one could disagree with the idea that clothes are important in Ragged Dick, but there wouldn't be much point in writing a whole essay just to say that. You could, however, disagree with what I've just said about clothes being the most important part of someone's identity in the novel (a good essay could be written, for instance, arguing that although appearances matter a lot in Alger's world, it's ultimately inner virtues like honesty, industry, generosity, etc., that define a self and its potential).

I think it's more fun to write an essay when you've committed yourself to an argument -- you're not just filling pages, but you're building a case, proving how right your idea is. And I think it's easier to know how to shape and organize such an essay too -- because you can plan it around the idea of making your point persuasive, leading your reader to your own idea or conclusion, planning each paragraph as a step in that one direction. And thinking of the paper as an argument helps you know where the boundaries of your discussion are too -- if something isn't directly relevant to the larger conclusion you want your reader to reach, then it doesn't belong in this paper.

You figure out what you want to say by looking closely at what the text itself says or suggests about the issue that you're interested in, so once you've identified your subject, you should next go back to the text, looking carefully at the passages and episodes and chapters where the issue is prominent. The most persuasive essays are the ones that can cite and discuss good textual evidence to explain, develop and support their ideas. To me, a good essay is going to have quotations in every paragraph, is going to continuously show how its ideas arise from the text itself. What I'm looking for is not an intrepretation I personally agree with, but rather a well-developed, well-supported conclusion of your own, a paper that shows me how the text does support its conclusion.

When I write an essay I don't usually know "what I think" until I see "what I write" -- by which I mean that it's usually only as I write a first draft that my interpretation comes into focus. That means I usually have to throw away most of the first draft and begin again, because the whole essay has to be focused on developing that interpretation to a conclusion, and it's not until I have a clear idea of the conclusion that I really know where to start from, what to go to next, &c. That may not be true for you, but you should make sure that before you begin writing you could tell someone else, in twenty-five words or less, not just the general topic of your essay (say, clothes in Alger's novel), but the specific point you're going to argue (say, "I'm going to show my reader that the way the novel connects Dick's character with clothes he wears is an indication of the way that, for Alger, who you are is really defined by the way you look to others"). By the way, once you know that -- the specific argument you're trying to prove -- then you know what title to put on your essay: you want a title that points to your particular argument. How about "Clothes Make the Man"?

There are abstract terms for the basic strengths I'm trying to describe -- focus, coherence, etc. But to sum them up more concretely, and I hope clearly: I think good literary analyses have a point and stick to it, that they develop an idea to a conclusion -- or ask and answer a specific interpretive question, that they make good and consistent use of examples from the text to develop and support their ideas, that they give the writer and the reader (i.e. you and me) the chance to go deeply into some one aspect of what a text means.

"Oh no I've said too much,
I haven't said enough."
          ---- R.E.M, Losing My Religion

I hope by now you know your own interest and my expectations, but it might help if I go on to add the kinds of papers I'm not looking for: