1. Now, for tonight, you should begin to piece together your conclusion. Here are the basic guidelines for closing an essay that we discussed in class today…
Closing Up
Three Reminders..
1. Focus on your main and (usually) final point.
In this case of the kind of essay we are writing at this time, the main/final point should actually be a series of at least two very concrete clearly stated explanations of (a) what is learned about the play Othello as a result of reading your comparison/contrast on two of the characters.
2. Gratify your audience with at least one new phrase or twist to help make your final point memorable.
This is the lagniappe effect we have talked about often this year.
3. End with emotional impact.
Emotion always carries the day (some we learned from The Things They Carried).
Here’s the good example of a closing section of a student essay about Shakespeare’s play King Lear…
After his defeat and capture. Lear’s transformation of character is complete. To be a prisoner of his daughters should be the most humiliating experience in a king’s life, yet we find Lear expressing real happiness. Because he is with Cordelia, the longing for power and loyalty has been replaced with a desire for love and compassion. At last Lear sees a love without price and power. He actually looks forward to being a prisoner with Cordelia:
Come, let’s away to prison.
We Two alone will sing like birds in a cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At guilded butterflies… (V.iii.8-13)
The kind of love he now wants is the antithesis of the worship that his other daughters promised him. Lear has discovered a human love based on sharing and feeling, and found that it is worth far more that crowns or kingdoms. The tragedy of King Lear is that Lear’s ideal universe discovers itself in a prison rather than in a kingdom. For when Lear has the power to preserve love he could not see it, and when he had the wisdom to see love, he could not preserve it.
Now here is the same paragraph with the “final point” section (#1 above) in brackets, the lagniappe section (#2 above) in parenthesis, and the emotional final statement (#3 above) underlined.
{After his defeat and capture. Lear’s transformation of character is complete. To be a prisoner of his daughters should be the most humiliating experience in a king’s life, yet we find Lear expressing real happiness. Because he is with Cordelia, the longing for power and loyalty has been replaced with a desire for love and compassion. At last Lear sees a love without price and power. He actually looks forward to being a prisoner with Cordelia:
Come, let’s away to prison.
We Two alone will sing like birds in a cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At guilded butterflies… (V.iii.8-13)
The kind of love he now wants is the antithesis of the worship that his other daughters promised him. Lear has discovered a human love based on sharing and feeling, and found that it is worth far more that crowns or kingdoms.} (The tragedy of King Lear is that Lear’s ideal universe discovers itself in a prison rather than in a kingdom.) For when Lear has the power to preserve love he could not see it, and when he had the wisdom to see love, he could not preserve it.
2. We also discussed in class today the use of evidence in making your assretions aboutvyour two characters. In short, there are two basic types of evidence you use in a literary analysis: quotational evidence and anecdotal evidence. For the essay that we are working on right now, you need at least two pieces of corroborating evidence for each assertion you make about a character.
3. Please come to class tomorrow with a hard copy of your rough draft ready to turn in.
Everything English Two 