Here are some examples of good practice in essay writing from my Year 10s:
This is a strong introduction because it is clear, direct and concise. The quotations could probably be shorter (and indented) and colloquial expressions (like “sugar-coat”) and abbreviations should be avoided. However, despite minor detractions, this opening impresses because of its clarity. It covers the three essentials for commentary (or practical criticism): what, how and why.
Generally, it is a good idea to avoid weak words like “give” and “show,” substituting active terms (such as “creates; argues; describes; renders; posits” etc). Nevertheless, this is again clear, direct, concise and expressive.
Another great introduction, this one is pared-down to the essentials – there is not a wasted word. It is crisp in its exactness, expressing (again) what, how and why.
This piece contains a good example of the correct use of terms. See how “juxtaposition” is slipped in deftly as a verb (This is what you should do, where possible, in your own writing). However, take care to avoid unfounded claims (“he wants reality to become”). If you make an assertion, you must provide evidence to support it (usually in the form of a brief quotation).
Again, this is concise but meaningful.
Learn from these pupils. Look over your own writing to see how you can improve it.
While nuclear energy, global warming, deforestation and Donald Trump continue to be major threats to the environment, mobile phones can rob us of our very humanity.
Students arrive for my lessons with their phones in their hands – despite signs on the doors clearly indicating that phones are forbidden in my classroom. The very concept of leaving the phone in a locker is horrifying to most students. They even have to reach out and touch their phones periodically just to be reassured that they’re still there. This is ADDICTION. No ifs, no buts. ADDICTION. Forgot to bring your books to school? We have reading lessons at the same time every week, and yet about six students in each class forget to bring books with them. The same six students would never dream of being without their phones. This is ADDICTION.
Walk around the school. You’ll see many students playing with their phones, but very few actually talking to each other and none at all reading books. This is a change that has occurred gradually over the last few years so that most never even noticed it.
You may well think that this is a gross exaggeration – but if so, perhaps you haven’t observed the slow slide into a digital dystopia, a world of social exclusion where families stare mindlessly at their phones rather than talk to each other. Even dating couples are to be seen romantically gazing into each other’s eyes the screens on their mobile devices.
There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention,” severely limiting people’s ability to focus and possibly lowering IQ.
If this weren’t bad enough, serious scientific research (not funded by the industry) indicates that mobile phones can cause cancer and “may be exposing us to harmful levels of electromagnetic radiation.”
At parent teacher conferences, I am often asked, “how can my son/daughter raise his/her grades?” The answer is simple. But like the rich man who asks Jesus how he can enter heaven, you may not like the answer – Ditch the phone and open a book. Lewis goes on to note that many people within the mobile phone and computer business severely limit their own children’s access to digital technology:
It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned.
Is buying a mobile phone a form of self-destruction? Is buying a mobile phone for a child actually a form of child abuse? The very people who design these products think so.
“Why is the imagery there?” someone asked me this week.
To ask this question is perhaps indicative of thinking about the poem or lyrical prose passage too much and (to paraphrase Charlie Chaplin) feeling it too little. One might as well say, “what is the purpose of poetry?” (Sadly, one joyless Mr Spock type Science teacher once did, before going on to declare that it “serves no function”! It seemed that for him love, humour and enjoyment in general were illogical and thus “irrelevant, captain”).
Figurative language is essentially poetic language. When we read lyrical passages in works such as Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, we need to ‘experience’ it with our senses. What Lee does is share with us, first and foremost, the feeling of being in those ‘exotic’ places, so we can understand on an emotional level something of what it felt like for him to have that peculiarly paradoxical mix of revulsion and attraction, of culture shock and exoticism. Imagery hits us in our hearts. We are intended to respond to it as human beings – yes, we may think about it, but feelings precede thoughts in this case.
Eddie, the tragic hero
Tragedies traditionally took as their heroes men and women of high office (kings, queens, princesses etc) but Miller believed the “ordinary” man to be an appropriate protagonist for his plays. In fact, he shows us characters who are not “ordinary,” an implicit statement that there is no such thing as “ordinary.” The USA is a meritocracy (at least in theory) where the power lies with the so-called “ordinary” person (again, at least in theory). Eddie is in fact from a solidly working class environment – but his passions are just as “Greek” (as Miller terms them) as any high-born emperor. Like them, his fatal flaw drives him to his own self-destruction. “Eddie Carbone had never expected to have a destiny.” A “destiny”? What does Miller mean by this?
Eddie’s self-denial
Eddie cannot face up to the reality that he finds Catherine (his neice and god-daughter) attractive, and so he decides that “something aint right” about Rodolpho, the man she admires. His apparently effeminate attributes (and even his stature) seem evidence enough to Eddie that he is actually a homosexual and thus only interested in Catherine as a means to gaining American citizenship – the fact that he is buying luxury items seems to confirm this – “he’s here to stay,” Eddie says.
Alfieri
Like Rod serling in The Twilight Zone, Alfieri acts as the narrator. His function is, in a sense, the “bridge” of the title – he acts as a link between our world (comfortable ‘tame’ middle class) and that of the working class American Italians in their enclave. The “bridge” is not just the literal Brooklyn one (from which we may look down as we pass over) but a functional one within the play itself.
Something’s lost, but something’s gained
Perhaps “civilised” means ‘tamed’? Yes, it means that there is less bloodshed (no more Al Capone), but is something lost too? Miller has Alfieri call Capone “the greatest Carthaginian of them all” – a man born in New York, not North Africa! Why? Probably because Carthage fought against the rule of Rome, which Miller may be using here as a metaphor for a civilising power. Southern Italians, in particular, have long held a deep suspicion of the law – but Alfieri notes that he now feels safer. Nevertheless, this “ordinary” man sometimes yearns for an idealised past on the Mediterranean. He feels a sense of loss. Something is missing now, something raw and vital. Something Authentic. Something that Alfieri admires in Eddie. Could it be that like Carthage, Eddie too wages an unwinnable war against a younger power? He is ultimately doomed (his “destiny”) but his refusal to back down, his insistence on regaining his “name” (his honour), is an admirable quality.
Poetic Justice
Eddie dies from the very weapon with which he threatens Marco.
This scenario is often a cliche in action movies because it clears the hero of any blame – the villain is a victim of his own evil machinations (Typically, he forgets a trap that he set earlier or…he dies from his own hand in a duel). If the universe itself is somehow responsible for the villain’s doom, it is called Natural Justice. When the punishment fits the crime, we call it Poetic Justice. Is Eddie a villain? Is the universe punishing him? Does he (and remember that ‘he’ is a fictional construct representing people like ‘him’ in the real world) deserve his fate?
“…something perversely pure calls to me from his memory…he allowed himself to be wholly known…I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients.”
Poetry often seems to scare people. Here’s a straightforward video presentation that demystifies and helps you to understand and appreciate poetry:
n.b. The definition of alliteration in the video above is wrong – alliteration is the repetition of the initial (first) sound in a string of words. If those repeated sounds happen to be consonants, then it is also consonance – but if they’re vowels, it is also assonance.
Don’t forget that poetry is a different country (They do things differently there). Where you may think about a prose or drama excerpt, the poem is more for feeling. One good way of approaching a poem is to ask yourself how it makes you feel. This may or may not be the poet’s intention, but that’s beside the point – try to work out why it makes you feel this way. Then just ensure that you remove personal pronouns and focus it instead on the poet and his/her writing techniques (Always WHAT, HOW and above all WHY). Thus, “I feel uneasy when I read this poem” becomes “This poem generates a sense of unease through…” Finally, don’t forget that it is no good just to identify the ‘WHAT’ – you have to explain the HOW and the WHY.
The write-up for the first album cited here is a very good example of how to connect form and content in poetry. This is specific and focused, a far cry from empty claims or vague references that sometimes occur in poetry essays for IGCSE and IB. Take note.
P.S. Don’t forget that these are also the kinds of comments that you should be writing about prose too – it’s not just poetry that has rhythm, repetition and so on.
In Reservist, Boey Kim Cheng regards the military service as laughable. He mocks it as being delusional (This is most evident in his reference to Don Quixote – “…tilt at windmills”). These are old men he says (“With creaking bones…grunts”) play-acting at being “knights” in some medieval farce – but the most that they can muster these days is being “battle-weary” ones before they even begin. They all look ridiculous (“…rusty armour…pot bellies”). Their “cavalier days” (when they looked dashing and vital in uniform) are long gone. Now they are a parody of a fighting force. It is pure “fantasy land” to expect these old and out of condition men to prepare for war. Moreover, Cheng appears to say that it is all for the vanity of those in power (“…kings’ command”) that they enact this pointless ritual (“We…Sisyphus”).
“To be loved to madness – such was her great desire.”
The characters are perhaps not as ‘flat’ as they initially appear. Hardy takes stereotypes (the virtuous woman, the fallen woman, the hero, the rake etc.), then holds them up to the light. Like jewels (sorry to be pretentious here) each facet suggests a different aspect of the character(s). Is Eustacia selfish, vain, a witch, just a naïve young girl, a vibrant youngster stuck in a dull backwater, a fallen woman, a simple victim of the romances that she reads? Yes. No. Maybe. Possibly all. It is as if the situations themselves suggest roles for the characters (one in which the villagers are happy to believe). They are, in a sense, victims of circumstance and appearance – or are they? Hardy provides no easy answers.
