Page 108 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Style 107
then, offering reasons for scepticism, dissociated itself.
Alternatively, the approach should have been phrased as
implicitly the student’s own:
The individual lyrics of In Memoriam are not isolated
fragments evoking grief at the loss of a friend. They are
components of a unified artistic whole whose theme is panic
at the loss of religious faith.
Wherever you feel tempted to use ‘one’, ask whether it
represents your own view or that of someone else who deserves
specific acknowledgement. When you are about to write ‘we’,
ask who else’s agreement you are assuming and how well
founded that assumption is. Are you lazily taking your reader’s
support for granted rather than going to the trouble to argue
your case?
At the very least, spare your reader either of these clichés:
‘One may therefore conclude that’, ‘Thus we see that’.
Conclusions drawn, and views held, by your essay are known to
be your own. If they are feeble, the reader will not be persuaded
that the blame lies with some third-party ‘one’ and will resent
being included in a conspiratorial ‘we’. If what you ‘conclude’
or ‘see’ turns out to be interesting, you should not interpose
such empty gestures but allow your reader to reach it
immediately.

AVOID REPETITION
Perhaps the commonest source of uneconomic writing is a
compulsion to say the same thing twice. Repetition rears its
ugly heads in such Hydra-like profusion that I can only identify
one or two of the most popular formulas below. You must
therefore defend yourself by asking, throughout the writing of
your essay: have I said this before?
Nervous writers prefer to dress each concept in at least two
words as if one on its own might fail to prevent indecent
exposure. This belt-and-braces strategy praises the ‘emotion
and feeling’ of some texts while condemning others as
‘shocking and horrifying’. It describes virginal characters as
‘pure and unspotted’ or ‘blameless and innocent’. It describes
tougher types as incapable of ‘love and affection’. They may