Page 76 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

Making a detailed case 75
printed page. What your own prose suggests must be shown to
be at least tenable.
Should you go further? Should you organize the evidence
into proving that your view is not just reasonable but right?
Perhaps striving to change your tutor’s mind is good exercise
for your own.
There are various conventions which operate here and their
relationship is problematical. Most tutors will want you to
develop and express your own opinions but many will still deal
harshly with an essay which sounds opinionated. An objective
survey of available approaches is often welcomed as one
ingredient of a student essay. Yet those students who devote the
whole of their answer to reporting the views of others are likely
to be condemned for failing to think for themselves.
You can present your case as if you were some honestly
polemical barrister consistently arguing for one side in an
imaginary court of cultural law. Many essays derive a useful
clarity and vigour from trying to convince their readers that one
conclusion is true and the alternative false.
You can, by contrast, attempt the objectivity supposedly
achieved by a judge when summing up the conflicting
evidence. Here all the relevant facts are recalled and discussed.
Contrary views of their significance are explained as neutrally
as possible. You can try to give some hypothesized jury of
reasonable readers the materials on which to base their own
decision.
Your own handling of evidence should probably adopt some
compromise between candidly partial advocacy and
meticulously impartial judiciousness. Any minimally competent
barrister understands that simply to ignore the opposing
evidence would be counter-productive. It must be
acknowledged and weighed with perceptible fairness before
being found wanting. Otherwise, the selectivity will be
recognized as grossly misleading and the argument rejected.
Conversely, the way in which a judge sums up rival bodies of
evidence must in practice reveal some preference. The relative
prominence given to particular facts, or to certain ways of
interpreting them, will hint advice as to which verdict could
seem slightly, but measurably, more appropriate.
Extremes are best avoided. Beware of devoting too much of
your essay’s energy to persuasion as distinct from exposition.