Page 52 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Researching an answer 51
glance at your notes whether the published essay is provoking
you to many noteworthy thoughts of your own or is producing
no more than an uninterrupted summary of its own
propositions. If long uninterrupted, they are almost certainly
being accepted unquestioningly. Wake up and start thinking.
Alternatively, decide that this piece of criticism is not capable of
interesting you into thinking for yourself and abandon it. Try
another instead.
For every critical book or article that your notes summarize
or quote, a full reference—author, title, date, publisher and page
numbers—must be included. Your essay’s bibliography will
need to give most of this information, and on various future
occasions, you may need to refer quickly to some passage which
your notes cite.

Discuss your essay subject with friends or relatives

Students too often work alone. Lonely minds get lazy, lose
concentration, feel bored. So talk about the literary problems
which you are tackling. Listen to other people’s understanding
of them. Discuss their proposed solutions. Informal teamwork
can often make progress where the isolated intellect is
stationary or fruitlessly circling.
If you explain to someone else what you think about a book,
you will have a far clearer grasp of your own thoughts. If you
listen to other people chatting about what they have noticed in
a text or how they respond to some feature of it, you are almost
bound to gain new ways of reading, thinking and eventually
writing.
Of course, the person you like talking to most may know
little or nothing about the relevant text. Yet discussion could
still help you. Show someone a particular passage which
fascinates or puzzles you. Even on the basis of only the haziest
understanding of the overall context, he or she may notice
specifics which you have missed, and may query premises which
you have unconsciously taken for granted.
Where friends fail, and you are living with parents or spouse
or reasonably mature siblings or offspring, try one of these.
Some relative must like you enough to be interested in your
interests. Explain where you need help in deciding what you