Page 65 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

64 How to write critical essays
characterization, style, plot, scene and setting, theme and
stance, considering examples of each issue through a number
of novels. Here, too, thesis and antithesis could shape various
sections. One section might first discuss Dickens’s most
committedly amusing characters or the funnier components in
his more ambiguous portraits. This evidence could then be
balanced by characterization which seems designed to evoke
poignancy or to articulate protest. A subsequent section could
explore the verbal devices which are closest to casual,
localized jokes and then those which contribute to a more
sustained and thoughtful portrait of individual experience or
social pressure.
If you are weighing so many controversial issues, the desir-
ability of regular attempts at synthesis is uncertain. To follow
the pros and cons in each case with a summary which merely
reiterates some already established balance is useless. Do not
indulge in: ‘Thus it can be seen that sometimes Dickens chooses
a setting because of its potential for humour and sometimes
because landscape or architecture can be used for serious,
symbolic purposes.’ Such a method will merely impose a whole
series of flaccidly vague conclusions throughout your essay. The
final paragraph’s inherent risk of imposing just one is quite
sufficient.
But there may be ways here, too, of relating previously
opposed views in some less obviously polarized way. For
instance, a simple contrast between entertainingly hyperbolic
caricatures and touchingly credible characters might be
followed by a consideration of the way in which the plot
compels the two groups to interact. You might wish to argue
that the text often makes us laugh at the muddled way in which
people speak only so that we are alerted to the dangerously
confused definitions upon which they will act.
A merely summarizing synthesis is not worth a sentence. You
should rely upon your detailed arguments to have implicitly
made clear where the balance of probability lies. But a
complicating synthesis which establishes some new relationship
between thesis and antithesis can maintain progress and may be
worth a whole paragraph.