Page 64 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Planning an argument 63
You can investigate the evidence for two rival interpretations.
You can weigh the relative advantages of two divergent
approaches to see whether, for instance, an evaluative or
historical analysis is most helpful in what it reveals and least
costly in what it suppresses.
A judicious weighing of the arguments on both sides will
usually lead to some new way of defining their relationship.
Instead of a simplistic choice between mutually exclusive
opposites you may at least be able to recommend a balanced
view which can combine the most illuminating aspects of both
ideas. At best you may be able to construct a quite distinct,
third notion which redefines both the initial alternatives as
misleading.
An answer which conducts a debate should not simply divide
into two halves where a single proposition is defended
remorselessly until a midway switch to equally consistent
attack. The case for and the case against should recur often
enough to ensure that your reader remains aware of both
possibilities. On the other hand, if they alternate too rapidly
each point will be made so briefly before giving way to some
counter-argument that it will sound superficial.
One compromise is to subdivide an essay into three or four
sections each of which offers its own thesis/antithesis/synthesis
pattern. You deploy this pattern for each section of an
argument rather than just once for the essay as a whole. You
might have been asked, for instance, to ‘Discuss whether
Dickens is ultimately a serious or a comic novelist’, You might
subdivide your answer into analyses of three texts. On each you
could first consider the case for that novel’s being read seriously
in order either to appreciate its intellectual complexity or to
identify its ideological stance. Then you could consider what it
offers the reader’s sense of humour. Thirdly, you could consider
the possibility that some of its most thought-provoking
incidents or descriptions or characters are also its most
amusing. How coherent a synthesis does the text itself concoct
out of its graver and lighter subjects or techniques? This
tripartite pattern could then be repeated in discussing each of
the remaining novels.
The same Dickens question could, of course, be answered in
paragraphs about particular topics rather than whole texts.
These might discuss the more or less lighthearted aspects of