The Drafts
This is what the drafts for your essays will be in FR 33335
Draft 1: A list of your examples/quotations. You need to give me a list of TWELVE
quotations. They will include after them, between parentheses, their location in the text you are citing, Act
and Scene number or verse number.
Draft 2: The topic sentences for your categories. Since these essays are longer than five
paragraphs, your essay may well have two or even three paragraphs for some of your categories. What I
am looking for here is the TOPIC
SENTENCE that will start the first paragraph for each of
your categories. Under each topic sentence you will list the examples/quotations that
apply, from the quotations that you gave me in Draft 1
Draft 3: You develop the first category in prose. This may take more than one paragraph. Remember, a
body paragraph in an analytical essay follows this format:
a. Every paragraph must start with a topic sentence (You wrote the topic sentence in Draft 2.) that
announces the category. Nothing in that paragraph can deal with anything other than the topic you
announce in the first, topic
sentence. If you take several paragraphs to deal with one category, the
topic sentences of the second (and third, etc.) paragraphs must rephrase the topic, making it clear
that you are providing further examples.
b. After the opening topic
sentence, and before you get to the first
quotation/example, you must give us the context of your example, so that the reader can
situate it in her recollections of the text. Can you remember what happened in Act I, Scene 3 of Le
Misanthrope? No, of course not. Neither can your reader. So telling us “In Act I, Scene 3 of Le
Misanthrope Alceste says…” is a waste of your time and ours. Evoke the context: “Lorsque Alceste
parle à Oronte de son sonnet, il lui dit….”
c. Then the quotation/example.
d. Then comes the analysis of the quotation/example. Students too often shortchange
this, but this is the most important part of the paragraph. What does your quotation show? What makes it
significant? Why was it worth troubling the reader with? If your quotation was worth quoting, it will take
you several sentences to analyze it.
e. Then a transition to the next context/quotation/analysis.
So a body paragraph in an analytical essay looks something like this:
It starts off with a topic
sentence that announces the topic of the paragraph. Then there is
the context to situate the first example. Then there is the analysis of the example.
Then there is the transition to the next context. This introduces the next
quotation/example. Which is followed by an analysis of that second quotation/example.
Etc.
Draft 4: The Introduction. If you don’t have the knack down for writing a good Introduction, here is
how to do it. Start by writing your Thesis Statement. It announces a) what you intend to demonstrate,
and b) the categories into which you have broken down your argument. Now – and this is hard for a lot
of today’s undergrads, because they didn’t learn how to do this back in grade school – abstract away
from your thesis as far as you can get to arrive at a more general statement. If you don’t understand what
that means, ask, or you’ll get a bad grade on this assignment. That general statement is the first sentence
of your Introduction. Now write a series of sentences, each one linked to the one before, that will get you
from the general statement down to the thesis statement, which will be the last sentence of the
Introduction. Each sentence should be somewhat more specific than the one before, and each has to pick
up where the one before left off, so that they all tie together. It will have the form, intellectually, of an
inverted triangle.
Like this.
1) Over the years, novelists have developed many ways to present their characters. 2) Some, like F. Scott
Fitzgerald, believed that “action is character,” and so presented their characters primarily through their
actions. 3) Others have preferred to convey the personality of their characters primarily through the
dialogue they speak. 4) Still others, like James Joyce, have preferred to use the thoughts of their
characters to suggest their nature. 5) In Pêcheur d’Islande, so as to make for a more interesting and varied
work, Pierre Loti used different methods to present each of his main characters. 6) He presents Gaud
Mével, for example, through her appearance, her thoughts, and her interactions with others.
Look at how this paragraph is constructed.
Sentence 1) deals with novelists in general. It is a very general sentence.
Sentence 2) deals with a subset of novelists in general, “some.” It is therefore more specific than sentence
1), but still has not focused on the specific topic of this essay.
Sentence 3) deals with “others,” another subset of 1), novelists in general. The word “others” refers back
to “some” in sentence 2, and so links the two sentences together.
Sentence 4) deals with “still others,” yet another subset of 1) novelists in general. “Some others” refers
back to “others” in sentence 3 and so links those two sentences together.
Sentence 5) gets down to Pierre Loti, one specific novelist, and Pêcheur d’Islande, one specific novel, so
it is more specific than 2, 3, and 4, but still not as specific as 6, which deals with only one character in
that novel.
Sentence 6) is the most specific of the sentences, because it deals with only ONE character in that ONE
novel by that ONE novelist. It presents the thesis statement.
Going from the general to the specific without getting off the topic is very hard for some undergrads. It
may take repeated effort for some of you. If it does, blame your grade school teachers. They may have
been “nice,” which is all many Americans want out of teachers these days – because they mistake them
for babysitters – but if you didn’t learn how to do this in grade school, your grade school was a joke.
Draft 5: The Conclusion. The Conclusion of an analytical essay begins with a rephrasing of the Thesis
Statement that includes your categories. Not a repetition of it; a rephrasing of it.
After that, you need to set off on new territory. WHY have you told us all that is in your essay? What is
the significance of your discovery? That’s what you will write about in your Conclusion.
The single tritest line from bad high school English papers, which even my high school English teachers
would not have let me get away with, and for which my college professors would have laughed a student
out of the classroom, is: “And that’s why X is a great author/novel/etc.” If you use that sentence, or any
variant of it, you will get an F on the paper. You folk are a long ways from being able to argue what
makes for a great work of literature, and neither you nor anyone else is going to be able to demonstrate
something that broad in four or five pages. Have a sense of proportion, folks. Explain what the
significance of your discovery is, but don’t pretend that you’ve just discovered the meaning of literary
greatness.