Essay Questions
A Literature essay is an argument supported by evidence. It is not a retelling, and it is not everything you know about the text.
Reading the question properly
Find the instruction word
Discuss, examine, how far do you agree, show how, compare, what is the significance of. Each demands a different shape. How far do you agree requires you to take a position and to consider the other side; show how requires method rather than opinion.
Find the subject
Is the question about a character, a theme, a relationship, a technique or a moment? Underline it. Then check every paragraph you write against it.
Notice the limits
In the first half, in the opening scene, in this poem. A question limited to part of a text becomes wrong when answered from the whole of it.
Rewrite the question as a statement
How far do you agree that the father's pride destroys his family? becomes The father's pride destroys his family — to this extent. Now you can see what you have to argue.
Planning: five minutes, well spent
Do not write an essay plan in sentences. Write it like this, in five lines.
- My answer in one sentence — this becomes the last sentence of your introduction.
- Paragraph 1 idea + evidence — a point, and the moment in the text that proves it.
- Paragraph 2 idea + evidence — a different point, not the same one restated.
- Paragraph 3 idea + evidence — often the complication, the opposing view, or the development late in the text.
- Conclusion — the judgement you will reach, decided before you begin writing.
That plan takes four or five minutes and prevents the two commonest disasters: an essay with no argument, and an essay that stops because the time ran out rather than because it had finished.
The shape of the essay
Introduction (three or four sentences)
Name the text and the writer. Address the question directly. End with your position. Do not write a biography of the author, and do not begin In this essay I am going to…
Body paragraphs (three or four)
Each one point, developed using point, evidence, explanation, effect, link. Each should begin with the point, not with an event.
The paragraph that raises the other side
For how far do you agree questions, one paragraph should consider the opposite case honestly and then answer it. An essay that ignores the obvious counter-argument looks as though it has not noticed it.
Conclusion (three or four sentences)
Answer the question. Not a summary of your paragraphs — a judgement. It should be possible for a reader to tell from your conclusion alone what you actually think.
An introduction and a conclusion, compared
Question: How far do you agree that the father's pride is the cause of the family's suffering?
Weak: In this essay I am going to discuss the father's pride. The father is a very important character in this story. There are many things to say about him. First I will discuss his character.
Strong: The father's pride is the most visible cause of the family's suffering, but it is not, in the end, the deepest one. The writer shows a man whose refusal of help is real and damaging, yet also shows the poverty and the loss of work that made such a refusal feel necessary to him. Pride is therefore better understood as the form his suffering takes than as its origin.
Why this answer works
- The weak introduction announces; it does not argue. It could have been written without reading the text.
- The strong introduction takes a position in its first sentence and immediately qualifies it — but it is not, in the end, the deepest one. A qualified position is what how far do you agree is asking for.
- It also, in three sentences, tells the examiner what the whole essay will argue. That is what an introduction is for.
Checklist for a Literature essay
- Have I answered the question set, and not a similar question I had prepared?
- Does my introduction take a position?
- Does every paragraph begin with a point, not with an event?
- Does every paragraph contain evidence — a short quotation or a precise reference?
- Have I explained how the writing works, not only what it says?
- Have I said what the effect on the reader or audience is?
- Have I considered the other side, where the question invites it?
- Does my conclusion give a judgement, not a summary?
- Have I avoided retelling the story?
- Are my quotations short and accurate?
- Have I named the writer and used the present tense for what happens in the text?