ES 214: Term 1, weeks 6 & 7

E214 WRITING LIVES TUTORIALS: ESSAY WRITING GUIDELINES

A: ESSAY TOPIC
Each of the three texts discussed in the tutorials tells a particular life ‘story’ from a distinct
perspective. Write a five-paragraph essay of 1000 to 1200 words in which you present an argument
about persona, voice, and tone in the portrayal of character or event in two of these texts. Pay attention
to diction and imagery in your analysis of specific examples from the two texts in the central three
paragraphs of the essay.

Essays must be submitted to your group’s assignment link on SUNLearn by 23:00 on 8 April.

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B: A PROCESS APPROACH TO WRITING THE ESSAY

Please use the following excerpts from Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing about Literature to guide
your essay writing process:

Writing as a Process
Barnet makes the very important point that most of the work going into essay writing is “invisible”
(24):
Although the essay is a finished product, writing the essay is process, a process of trial and
error and success […]. One revises one’s thoughts as one rereads the assigned piece [the poems
and essay, in our case], and one revises further as one jots down notes, begins to arrange the
notes, checks the text for supporting detail, fumbles towards a better organization, writes a
first draft, rereads the draft, and perhaps starts all over. But the initial efforts are not a waste
of time. They are necessary parts of the process, ideas that are modified or even abandoned
but that lead a writer to better ideas, or to a more coherent presentation of the same ideas. (24)

Analysis
Barnet points out that in “analyzing (literally, separating into parts in order to understand),” the writer singles
out an aspect or a set of related aspects in a text for analysis or in-depth exploration. Planning is crucial, because
“you are establishing categories” and must
rearrange them as you refine your thinking, because your essay will not record your thought
processes – with all the false steps – as they occurred; the finished essay will record your best
thoughts in the order that you judge to be best for a reader […]. Once you have established
your categories and tentatively settled on the order in which you will treat them, your job is
half done. You are arrived at a thesis [the central argument of the essay], assembled evidence
to persuade the reader to accept the thesis [i.e. you have collected quotations from the
poem/essay to substantiate your argument – note that these quotations should always be treated
contextually, i.e. a word or phrase relates in specific ways to its location in the poem/essay]
and begun to organize your essay. (16-17)

Once you have assembled the material for your essay and drawn up a framework for it, you can proceed to
write the essay.
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Planning to Write the Five-Paragraph Essay

Use the template below to plan your essay:

• Title

• Paragraph 1: Introduction
o Identification/introduction of selected poems, or poem and essay
o Thesis / Argument

• Body Paragraphs
o Paragraph 2
 Topic Sentence 1
 Presentation and discussion of supporting example/s from poem/s and/or essay

o Paragraph 3
 Topic Sentence 2
 Presentation and discussion of supporting example/s from poem/s and/or essay

o Paragraph 4
 Topic Sentence 3
 Presentation and discussion of supporting example/s from poem/s and/or essay

• Paragraph 5: Conclusion
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The introduction is a comprehensive paragraph that sets up your discussion and should do the following:
1. Demarcate the focus of your essay in the following two ways (either of these may be primary):
a. Identify the issue that your essay will engage with.
b. Identify the text(s) / material that your essay will engage with.
2. Present a clear thesis statement.
3. Provide some indication how you will go about things, esp. regarding method (close reading,
comparative discussion, etc.).
There are more things a good introduction may do. It may seek to pique a reader’s interest by means of an
interesting detail or claim (sometimes it might be the very thing that got the writer interested in the topic in
the first place), or it might identify an ongoing debate or research area to which the essay is meant to
contribute.
The most important aspect of the introduction, its core, is the thesis statement. Here is how the
Oxford English Dictionary defines the term:
Thesis, n. A proposition laid down or stated, esp. as a theme to be discussed and proved, or
to be maintained against attack […]; a statement, assertion, tenet.
In other words, the thesis is a claim or assertion that is elaborated, tested, and substantiated in the essay. It is
that which you aim to persuade your reader of. Although in your introduction you should indicate what you
aim to do in your essay – what you are looking at, why you are looking at it, how you will approach it, etc. –
your thesis should identify the crux of what you will say. To note, for example, that one is going to focus on
the tension between appearance and reality in a text is to identify only what you will do; on the other hand, to
claim that a given text foregrounds the problem of appearance vs reality in a particular way is to make a
concrete claim (which will of course have to be put to the test). One way of checking whether a statement
functions as a thesis statement is to consider whether it is possible for someone else to disagree with or
qualify it.
You should aim to formulate a thesis statement that is as focused, concise and lucid as you can
manage – this is especially important in the case of a short essay. Keep in mind that a thesis is usually
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revised and refined during the writing process. Although it is good to start out from a preliminary thesis, it
may happen that the argumentative emphasis shifts as you engage with the material; in some cases, you may
even find that your interpretation has changed completely. In other words, the refinement or revision of a
thesis statement (or, indeed, the introduction) at the end of the writing process is standard practice. It belongs
to the important final step of reviewing your whole essay, to ensure that everything is aligned.

If your introduction makes it clear what you are focusing on and what your argument is, the body of the
essay consists of a logical sequence of paragraphs in which you make your case. There are various ways in
which you might present your argument – e.g., there might be several options for ordering your ideas – but it
is important to ensure that you break up your presentation into a clear sequence. Each paragraph in the body
of your essay should serve to establish and substantiate a point that works towards corroborating your thesis.
This point should be encapsulated in a topic sentence that makes it clear what the paragraph itself aims to
show. You might think of it this way: the thesis and topic sentences constitute the skeleton of your essay. For
example:
• Thesis: Arguably, the true protagonist of Melville’s short story, “Bartleby,” is not the eponymous
character but his employer, the narrator of the tale.
• Paragraph 2: Although the focus in the story is predominantly on the interaction between Bartleby
and his employer, a significant portion of the text also deals with the latter’s engagement with his
other employees.
• Paragraph 3: Bartleby is not a typical protagonist, since the character shows almost no
development.
• Paragraph 4: On the other hand, we can tell that the narrator has been unsettled and radically
transformed by his encounter with the pale scrivener.
• Conclusion: It is possible to read Melville’s story in the first instance as dealing with the narrator’s
defeated attempt to maintain his peaceful, comfortable and perhaps complacent existence against all
odds.
If each topic sentence is a claim that works toward corroborating your thesis, it follows that you will have to
ground each of these claims in textual evidence. In other words, in each paragraph you will present,
contextualise and explain the evidence for the claim advanced in the topic sentence. For this essay your
evidence will take the form of pertinent quotations from the two texts you have chosen to discuss.

The conclusion does not present new evidence but briefly encapsulates the findings of the essay. This means
that it is to some extent a reformulation of the thesis, albeit in a more nuanced way, or in a way that
highlights additional implications. Certainly, a conclusion should never simply repeat the thesis verbatim. In
the case of a short essay, there is also no need to retrace the steps of the argument. Rather elaborate upon
what it means to accept the claim advanced in the thesis (e.g., “This means that we might consider Bartleby
himself to function more as a catalyst than a protagonist…,” or “This reminds us that the title of a work of
literature may be potentially misleading, or always requires careful consideration….”). The conclusion might
also proceed to suggest how this discussion might yet be extended into other aspects of the text, or even to
other texts, etc.
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How to Use Quotations

Quote only what is needed to illustrate your point or convey the point which a writer is making. Make sure
that your quote supports your argument and does not make your argument for you. It is also essential that you
integrate quotations used into your own sentences, so that the whole reads smoothly and coherently. The
examples below show some ways to do this. Writing your own sentence followed by a sentence consisting of
a quotation only results in disjointed writing which detracts from the smooth flow of your argument. The

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fragment you quote should make sense within the context of your own sentence. One way to check this is to
read your essay aloud to yourself, listen, and make sure that your essay flows logically and coherently.
Quote accurately from the original text. Use ellipsis marks in square brackets […] to indicate any words which
you have left out. You may have to adapt the quotation to fit the grammar of your own sentence, and in such
cases you must use square brackets to enclose the altered letter/s or word/s. For example, here are the original
lines from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”: “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones
under his pines, I tell him” (lines 25-26). In your essay, you might incorporate the quotation follows: The
speaker explains that “[his] apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under [his neighbour’s] pines”
(lines 25-26). Here a pronoun (“my”) has been altered; “his pines” has also been altered to avoid possible
confusion. Note the use of the present tense.
Short quotations (as in the above example) should be enclosed in quotation marks and run on in the text of
your essay. An oblique stroke (/) is used to separate lines of poetry, as above. When quoting from a poem,
indicate line numbers in brackets (lines 25-26); when quoting from the essay, indicate the page number.
Long quotations (more than three lines of poetry or four lines of prose) should be separated from the text of
your essay by an open line before and after, and should be indented (1.27cm on both sides). Quotation marks
are not needed when indentation is used:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” (lines 23-26)
Omissions should be indicated with an ellipsis in square brackets. This means that if you decide to leave out
some of your quote, you will need to show that you have altered the original version of the quote: Frost’s poem
asserts that “[h]e is all pine and […]/ My apple trees will never […]/ eat the cones under his pines” (lines 23-
25).
All quotations must be identified. The exception is when you are discussing a short poem where quotations
may easily be located without the use of line numbers.
Note: always discuss your quotations. Evidence must be contextualised and interpreted to function properly;
in other words, quoting something does not yet constitute adequate demonstration. You should explicate the
quotation, providing any necessary context, clarifying difficult or ambiguous terms, explaining what you make
of it and how it relates to your topic sentence and/or thesis. (Note the following pertinent denotations of
“explicate” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “To analyse (a text or literary work) in order to reveal its
meaning”; “[t]o make clear the meaning of; to remove difficulties or obscurities from; to clear up”; “[t]o
explain oneself; to make clear one's meaning.”)
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Checklist for Writing and Editing Your Essay

Use the following checklist to guide your writing and return to it after you have completed the essay to edit
the first draft:
 Title
 The title of the essay should inform the reader of the focus of the essay and should include the title
of the focus texts (in other words, the poems or the poems and essay).
 Introduction
 An essay should always have an introductory paragraph.
 That introductory paragraph should have a thesis statement, which demonstrates your engagement
with the selected topic and focus texts, which are introduced in the introduction.

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 Paragraphing
 A paragraph is an elaboration on an idea contained in the topic sentence of that paragraph.
 Build the paragraph around selected examples and quotations from the focus text/s.

 Sentence structure
 There are dangers inherent in both short and long sentences.
 Short sentences can have a fragmentary effect on your essay.
 Long sentences can become complicated and your reader might lose the point of your argument.
 Vary your sentences. Both long and short sentences can be useful and effective when used
correctly.
 Word choice, register and style
 Using words that sound impressive will not guarantee you an impressive argument.
 Do not use a word if you are not certain that you understand its meaning.
 Use a dictionary, thesaurus or similar tool to check the meanings of words as well as the form
(adverb, noun etc.) of the word.
 Tautology should be avoided as much as possible.
 Be aware of the fact that you are writing an academic essay. This does not mean that it should be
boring, but rather that you should avoid colloquial language and slang.
 Do not use contractions like “don’t”, “can’t”, “won’t” or “shouldn’t”.

 Grammar, spelling and typing

 You should always re-read your essay to look for spelling and grammatical errors.
 An essay riddled with bad grammar and typing or spelling errors creates a bad impression and
immediately has a negative impact on the person reading your work.
 Quoting and paraphrasing
 Paraphrasing can sometimes be a useful tool when analysing a text but your essay should not
simply be a paraphrase of the poem. You should be giving your reader something to think about,
not simply stating the obvious.
 When quoting, the quote should be integrated into your sentence. You should not have freestanding
quotes littered through your essay.
 Referencing and bibliography
 You should reference (using the MLA system) whenever you quote or paraphrase. See
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/ml
a_formatting_and_style_guide.html
 You may not cite works in your bibliography if you do not refer to them in the text.
 If you use any additional sources as you analyse a text, you should reference in the areas in your
essay where you are indebted to those sources. If you do not do this, you are guilty of plagiarism.
Note, however, that for this essay, secondary sources may not be used.
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Works cited
Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing about Literature. Little, Brown and Company, 1981.
Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.” The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, Vintage,
2001, pp. 33-34.
“Explicate.” The Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com/. Accessed 5 March 2024.
“Thesis.” The Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com/. Accessed 5 March 2024.