Page 19 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

18 How to write critical essays
worth raising at the outset so that, when you embark on your
research, you have already jotted down some points that may
be worth pursuing.
Notice how often the above examples use question marks.
You may later decide—as you read and think more—that some
of the problems that first occurred to you should not be
discussed in your essay. Even those confirmed as relevant by
growing knowledge of the texts will need to be defined far more
precisely and fully before you think about composing
paragraphs.
Notice too that in a number of cases the issues have emerged
through wondering whether any of the question’s terms might
have more than one meaning. Investigation of ambiguity can
often stir the blank mind into discovering relevant questions.

Terms of approach

You may spot easily enough the keywords in which a title
defines your subject-matter but terms prescribing how this is to
be approached may prove harder to find. Often they are simply
not there. Essay-writing should, after all, exercise your own
skills in designing some appropriate style and form in which to
define and explore a given literary problem.
Even where a title’s grammar is imperative rather than
interrogative, you will usually have to decide for yourself how
the topic should be tackled. The title may tell you to ‘Describe’,
‘Discuss’, ‘Debate’, ‘Analyse’, ‘Interpret’, ‘Compare’ or
‘Evaluate’. In all these cases, you are still being asked questions:
what do you think are the most relevant issues here? what is the
most appropriate evidence which needs to be weighed in
investigating them? how should that evidence be presented and
on what premises should it be evaluated?
When your essay title uses one of the above imperatives, you
must not assume that the demands represented by the others
can be ignored. Many students are, for instance, misled by titles
which tell them merely to ‘Describe’ some feature of a text.
They think this sounds a less intellectually strenuous assignment
than one which requires them to ‘Discuss’ or ‘Debate’. They
may offer a mere recital of facts rather than an argument about
their significance. But the text which you are to describe will