Page 72 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Planning an argument 71
Another popular ritual for limbering up before the essay
makes any pretence of performing its specific task, is a
generalized claim to be thinking:
The statement made in the above essay title certainly
raises some important issues.

In order to discuss whether this quotation is appropriate
or not, it is necessary first to decide exactly what it means.
There is no quick and easy answer to this question which
can only be resolved after careful consideration of some
specific passages.
Truly considerate critics keep such musings to themselves. At an
early stage of preparation, they start thinking in more precise
terms, defining exactly what the ‘important issues’ in this case
are, and choosing the ‘specific passages’ which will be most
illuminating. What they later share with the reader in an
opening sentence is a stimulating idea about just one of these
issues or passages. Their essays begin not by asserting
thoughtfulness but by demonstrating it in the careful definition
of a particular thought.
You can usefully aim for an opening idea that is so peculiarly
apt to the set question’s demands that, unlike the weak
examples above, it could only be used to introduce the specified
topic. But first sentences which just restate the title are useless.
That is the one piece of information which your reader
indisputably has in mind already, having just read it at the top
of the page. Here is a question followed by the opening of a
feeble answer:

What is there in the poetry of the 1914–18 War besides
decent human feelings of outrage and horror?
To suggest that First World War poetry is merely used as a
vehicle to express outrage about the long-drawn-out war and
to depict with horror the anguish of the battlefield limits the
works to being little more than protest poetry and anti-war
propaganda.

Here the title’s concepts are regurgitated rather than
discussed. Some terms are simply repeated (‘outrage’,
‘horror’). Others are translated by synonyms which may