Page 102 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Style 101
Whereas the dull sentence tends to be long, the interesting
sentence is often short. Whereas the dull sentence tends to
vagueness and repetitiveness of terminology, the interesting
sentence usually deploys precise words each of which is used
only once. Whereas the dull sentence tends to offer
generalizations which might apply to almost any text, the
interesting sentence frequently offers close observation and
verbatim quotation. Whereas the dull pattern of unvarying
syntax tends to drive one barmy, imaginative variation in the
ways that each sentence begins, proceeds and ends may keep
a reader awake.
Arousing interest is, however, a secondary consideration. Your
first must be the clear and precise communication of your
thoughts. If your prose is flexible enough to keep matching its
style to its substance, your sentence length and syntax will
vary.

USE OF THE PRESENT TENSE
The rule requires ‘Beowulf achieves [not ‘achieved’] more than
most Anglo-Saxon poems’. ‘Romeo loves Juliet’ is acceptable;
‘Antony loved Cleopatra’ is not. You should write ‘Jane Austen
here means [not ‘meant’] to be funny’. These are not arbitrary
conventions. They are rational practices on which criticism’s
commitment to precise accuracy depends.
The text which your essay is discussing cannot be recalled as
a past event. To do so would imply that it has become a
permanently closed book. In fact, the very existence of your
own essay proves that the text can still be constantly reopened,
reread and reinterpreted. It is a resource whose present
availability is indisputable.
Each reader of a story, even a reader who has read the whole
of that story before, begins the first line in imagined doubt as to
what the last will reveal. Whenever you are describing some
particular episode within a narrative, you should report its
events in the present tense. Only this can reflect the tension then
present in the mind of the imaginatively curious reader.
There are, of course, remarks about books which do require
the past tense: ‘I first tried to read Robinson Crusoe when I
was still at primary school and did not understand a word of