Long forgotten English essay help

October 29, 2021 1:51 PM

My son is writing an essay, and asked for help editing. His opening paragraph The Handmaid’s Tale Culminating Essay When looking at stories everyone can be labeled as either a brave person or a cowardly person such as in any of the Harry Potter novels. Most people would call people like Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley brave. People would also call characters like Peter Petigrew, Gildoroy Lockhart, and Draco Malfoy as more cowardly....The character of Offred in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” demonstrates how people in your life affect how brave or how cowardly you are. He talks about Neveille Longbottom at the ....

My question is

1- Its an introductory paragraph, and while he does get to thesis "The character of Offred in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” demonstrates how people in your life affect how brave or how cowardly you are." its buried quite deep. Should he be starting that earlier in the intro, and then reiterating near the end
2- He states "most people would characterize (harry potter characters) as brave/cowardly".. I feel like this should be cited somehow? But should it? He's introduced an opinion in a thesis statment about a completely different book, and I'm not sure that's allowed


It has been a really long time since Grade 11 English.

But also, I had another post about the same kid, and we've come a long long way!

posted by Ftsqg to Education (12 answers total)

This is a variation on what a friend of mine called the Cecil B. DeMille intro when we were teaching freshman writing (a la the "let there be light" first scene of The Ten Commandments). Usually it's something along the lines of "since the beginning of time, Man has wondered..." but "every character can be classified as either brave or cowardly" comes from the same instinct: unsure how to move towards the actual point they want to make, novice writers start with a galaxy-level view. It usually means that whatever they said is way wrong, because they are in 11th grade (or freshmen in college, or whatever) and don't know anything, let ALONE everything. Every character certainly can NOT be classified as either uncomplicatedly brave or cowardly! He just said that because he wasn't sure how else to introduce the idea of cowardice and bravery.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad instinct, at all! The overly sweeping intro helps you write yourself towards your actual point. The crucial thing is to then go back and take this part out. It did its job! It got him to "The character of Offred in Margaret Atwood’s 'The Handmaid’s Tale' demonstrates how people in your life affect how brave or how cowardly you are," which is a pretty decent thesis. The Harry Potter comparisons, too, which are not relevant or useful unless the paper is specifically about parallels between The Handmaid's Tale and Harry Potter, helped him organize his thoughts and move towards the point he wanted to make. He's done a great job getting himself to the beginning of his essay. But most of what he's written is the scaffolding he'll stand on to start painting the mural, if you see what I mean.

So yes, he should cut most of this (which will also help get him to the thesis quicker) but that doesn't mean he's done it wrong. He's done it exactly right—kicking away the scaffold is part of the process. I can't tell you how many adult professional writers I've given this same edit to.
posted by babelfish at 2:09 PM on October 29, 2021 [56 favorites]

Yep babelfish has it. It's sometimes called "throat clearing" .and one of the easiest ways to improve a piece of writing is to chop off the beginning. All part of the process!
posted by Threeve at 2:18 PM on October 29, 2021

High School English essays are generally taught structurally like they're a paint by numbers picture. This graphic breaks it down here. (his teacher may have a slightly different structure, but the basic premise is pretty ubiquitous.)

The structure is pretty formulaic and clunky. It's not really teaching the craft of writing but the craft of structuring ideas in a way that will work for *any* topic. Your kid's paragraph seems to follow that structure pretty well.

(I guess I'm only cautioning you to hack this to pieces without orienting yourself to the teacher's expectations)
posted by lownote at 2:20 PM on October 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

It’s not bad that the thesis isn’t the first sentence. A lot of good writing does that. What’s bad in this case is what’s in front of the topic sentence. He’s talking about another, completely unrelated book instead of the book he was assigned. And this is maybe a pet peeve of mine in particular, but the assigned book is one of the most important works of the past forty years and he’s instead talking about a facetious book for children. I get it; I was assigned Handmaid’s Tale in high school and didn’t really engage with it like I should have either. But if you’re going to dilly dally, at least give Atwood the respect she deserves by discussing an author of similar stature.
posted by kevinbelt at 3:39 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

I am a college writing instructor. I agree with babelfish, there's nothing wrong with your son's approach. It's perfectly fine that his thesis statement comes later in his introduction. He's actually attempting to do what I am constantly trying to get my students to do: use an attention grabber/hook at the beginning of his introduction. Granted, his isn't the most sophisticated or smooth, but he's in Grade 11! He'll get more sophisticated as he writes more essays. For now, you can try to gently steer him away from overly broad sweeping generalizations, but generalizations are OK.

It's great that he's trying to connect concepts in the book he's writing about (Handmaid's Tale) to concepts in a book he and most of his peers are familiar with (Harry Potter). It shows he's able to synthesize his learning, and that's a GREAT sign that he's developing critical thinking skills and applying them to what he reads.

I often ask my students to think about how an assigned piece of literature relates to other things they've read, or things that have happened in their own lives, or current or historical events. There's nothing wrong in finding a connection with something they can relate to, and for many kids, that's a book like Harry Potter. It's a good sign of your son's intellectual development. His way of expressing it might be slightly clunky for now, but he's in Grade 11. It's developmentally appropriate.

I remember your other question about your son, and I'm happy to hear he is doing so well with his writing!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:43 PM on October 29, 2021 [9 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you so very much.

Does he need to refence anything with regards to Harry Potter in order to support his statements?
posted by Ftsqg at 5:26 PM on October 29, 2021

If he’s actually quoting from the book, then yes. Otherwise, if he’s just stating his own analysis about Harry P, I don’t *think* he’d need to cite it.

Now I’m not sure myself. Honestly, to make certain, he should ask the teacher what they expect.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:06 PM on October 29, 2021

I do think the aside about Harry Potter is random, but it's been covered, so moving on -- the fact that you're asking about a citation highlights the problem with the wording, which is that your son seems to lack confidence in his [very uncontroversial!] assessment of the characters so he's couching it in the form of "most people would call Harry Potter brave" rather than the more direct, better form of "Harry Potter is brave". Remove that framing where (as hurdy gurdy girl points out) he's basically taking his own opinion and putting it into someone else's mouth, and it then more obviously doesn't need a citation.
posted by phoenixy at 11:04 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

The one time I was paid folding money to write, the deal came with the attention of an copy editor from the glossy magazine. This most excellent practitioner dug out a vivid anecdote buried the essay and brought it to the front. I believe this is hurdy gurdy girl's The Hook. Maybe Team ftsqg needs to find a specific example of brave or craven in the book and start with that. That may help define the terms for starters.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:29 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

People are saying your son’s mention of Harry Potter is random but I’m not sure it is. Why did he pick Harry Potter to compare to Handmaid’s Tale? Your son is trying to write about how bravery functions in The Handmaid’s Tale and has brought up another book (perhaps the only other one he can think of?) that features a Hero’s Journey. Could it be that he’s trying to make an argument that the Hero’s journey, as a literary trope, is too focused on an individual character? That the setting and other characters play a much more important role in Hero’s Journey stories than what is usually described?


It is perfectly acceptable (and even quite interesting) to explore how multiple books relate to a thesis in an essay and relate to one another. (However if the assignment is to write about the Handmaid’s tale, he should focus on that.) If he wants to include Harry Potter ask him to think about: How are The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter linked? What makes them the same story and what makes them different?
posted by CMcG at 3:13 AM on October 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

I try to steer my students away from unnecessary truth claims that either can't be backed up or would not be worth backing up.

"Most people would call" is one of those. It's not worth finding evidence for that even if that evidence existed, because the truth claim is not necessary for the essay's larger argument. I encourage my students to think about how they weaken those claims or sidestep them all together. Even, "Some people would call," or "many people might call" would be an improvement, and a good exercise in revision.
posted by Salamandrous at 12:41 PM on October 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh also, to clarify—if he’s supposed to focus his essay on The Handmaid’s Tale, that’s what the body of his essay should be about, of course. My impression was that he was just mentioning Harry Potter as a hook in his intro, but that should be the extent of it (he could do a callback in the conclusion) if the essay is supposed to be about THT.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:59 PM on October 30, 2021