Page 111 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

110 How to write critical essays
To express that view clearly and fully, however, you will need to
be just as precise in selecting and arranging your own
terminology.

GENERALIZATIONS TEND TO BE FALSE AND BORING

A course in literature may eventually help you to develop
clearer opinions on large issues. You can quite legitimately see it
as a way to arrive at your own definition of literature and your
own theory of its function in forming minds, shaping cultures
and controlling societies. However, if broad ideas are to have
any impact, they must demonstrably derive from close attention
to fine detail. Had Darwin failed to offer precise observation of
specific examples, his theory of how species evolve would
probably be incomprehensible. It would certainly be
unconvincing. You, too, must patiently examine the apparently
trivial and fragmented. Only then will your judgements on
larger relationships be worth reading.
Inclusive, unqualified statements tend to suppress relevant
distinctions and implicitly to deny exceptions which may
matter. So the more broadly you generalize, the less likely you
are to be accurate.
Even where a generalization is sufficiently guarded to be
true, it may be such a self-evident truism as to be useless: ‘The
importance of love to Shakespeare varies enormously from play
to play but all his works are to some extent interested in human
relationship.’
A precise observation on some specific aspect of one
particular play would clearly seem fresher. The amount of
localized effects assembled within one text is so vast that your
own choice as to which words deserve comment is unlikely to
duplicate any other reader’s selection. Conversely, the more
general the point which you offer, the more likely it is to be an
idea which your reader has met many times before.
Be wary of using too many plural nouns. These tend to
proliferate where precision is being abandoned in favour of
generalizations too sweeping to be useful: ‘Fools and rogues are
to be found throughout Shakespeare’s plays.’ ‘In Dickens’s
heroines we witness the emotional and moral qualities he most
admires.’ Any statement about all the works of an author is at