In academic contexts, extended writing is a measure of the writer's understanding of a subject. In other words, the essay is a test. There is no getting away from this fact. Everyone, naturally, feels somewhat nervous about being tested and may even resent, consciously or subconsciously, having to undergo a test. Consequently, few people actively relish the prospect of having to write an essay.This is a pity. Obviously your attitude toward a task will affect your ability to perform it to some degree. If it were possible to put a more positive gloss on the nature of the essay and of essay writing, then perhaps more people would approach it in a positive spirit—not simply those who know already that essay writing is an area in which they can shine, but also those who are more diffident about their abilities.An essay is, or ought to be, more than a test. It is an opportunity and a vehicle for you, your talents, and your ideas. An essay is a means of self-expression. Admittedly, it is not a medium as free as a poem, a dramatic improvisation, or a piece of graffiti, but if you are not expressing something of yourself in an academic exercise as much as in anything else you write, then you are probably approaching the task in the wrong way.Most artists come to terms with, and many willingly confine themselves to, existing forms. As Wordsworth said in a sonnet in defense of sonnet writing: "In truth, the prison unto which we doom ourselves / No prison is" ("Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room" [1806]). The conventions of the academic essay likewise should be regarded as a shape-giving agent and a challenge to your ability to discipline yourself and write succinctly. And, finally, remember again: Academic writing exercises are primarily for your benefit as a student; few instructors really need practice in grading.The essay may also seem to be a form that exists in isolation, something that you have to write in high school or college and then never have to write again. That may be the case for many people, though anybody who is reading this book is presumably interested in writing in some form and ought to welcome an opportunity to practice the art. But it is not altogether true that the relevance of the essay ends when you graduate. You may never have to write another piece that you call an essay, but you may have to write an article, an editorial, or a review, all of which could be considered essays by another name. You may have to write an appraisal of somebody's character, abilities, or performance, which may seem like a very different exercise from writing an essay on the character of Macbeth but surely has something in common with it. The essay has many siblings and cousins, some of which you are almost bound to encounter in later life.The notion that the essay is a vehicle for expressing yourself and a form with relevance to future endeavors will perhaps offset to some extent the disagreeable idea of the essay as a chore and a test. So let us begin our examination of it in a positive frame of mind.Dealing with Practical ConstraintsMost essays written for school or college are of between 500 and 1,500 words in length. Though this may seem a large number before you begin, it is not in fact a particularly generous allowance if you have to deal with a topic on which you have a lot to say. In addition, most essay assignments have to be carried out within a limited period. If you are taking an essay exam, you will be given at most two or three hours to plan and write your essay. If you are set to write a high school or college essay, you can expect to be given a week or two to research and write it. In either case, however, a time constraint is added to the space constraint. A high degree of organization is required if you are to operate successfully within these constraints. It seems that, in addition to being a test of your understanding of the subject, essay writing is also a test of your ability to marshal information and evidence and to discipline yourself.But we are proceeding on the optimistic assumption that a test is also an opportunity. Self-discipline is an asset, as is organization. Before you begin to plan your essay as such, plan how you are going to divide up the time available to you. Outside the context of an examination, you should probably aim to spend roughly 50 percent of your time on thinking, research, and planning; roughly 25 percent on writing; and roughly 25 percent on revision and rewriting.The large proportion of time allotted to the first stage of the process is partly an acknowledgment of how long it takes to read books and articles, search the Internet, and possibly conduct interviews and surveys, and partly based on the idea that time spent preparing and planning is time saved when writing. This does not suit everyone, for there are, as has been said before in this book, people who find it difficult to plan in the abstract, who get their best ideas while they are in the process of composition, and who are willing to pay the price of having to reorganize their material as they go along. You will discover the time division that best suits your working method as you gain experience in performing this writing task. Nonetheless, you will still need to allow yourself substantial amounts of time for research at one end of the process and for revision at the other.Do not skimp on revision time. Avoidable spelling and grammatical errors spoil the effect of a piece of work. In addition—and once again emphasizing the positive aspects—the final stage of a project is the stage at which you are most "into" it, most familiar with the material and most practiced in writing about it. Your best ideas may come toward the end, and as many writers will tell you, it is after you have produced the first draft and while you are giving a piece its final shape and polish, that writing is most enjoyable.The SubjectIt is comparatively rare that students are given a free choice of essay subject. This may be a blessing in disguise, since this kind of freedom, in which you have the whole wide world to choose from, sometimes leads to paralysis. Being unable to think of a really good idea of your own may lead you to "borrow" a topic that a more decisive friend has already chosen or to opt for something ultra conventional, such as "What I did in my summer vacation" or "My favorite hobby."Try not to get caught in this trap. Perhaps the most frequent hazard for writers is the feeling of being stuck, especially at the beginning of a writing task. There is no magic cure for "writer's block," or, as it should be more properly labeled in this instance, "ideas block." But, if you can be patient, and especially if you can disengage your mind from the problem of not having any ideas and go and do something else and think about something else, it is remarkable how often an idea will present itself.Remember that academic exercises are primarily for your benefit, so look for a topic that will benefit you: for instance, something that will give you the chance to learn more about a subject you are interested in, something that will challenge you to think, something you feel strongly about, something that excites you but leaves many other people cold (one of the many possible functions of the essay is to persuade people or influence their opinion). If nothing gets your creative juices going, then consider at least the possibility of a little mild subversion: "What I did not do during my summer vacation" perhaps has more potential as an essay subject than its conventional counterpart.More often than not, however, you will be given a set subject. In this case, the first test of your mettle centers on that subject: Do you understand what the instructor intends you to do? Can you use this topic as a springboard for a worthwhile essay?Let us consider these two questions separately. Students sometimes come unstuck, particularly in essay exams, because they do not understand the nature of the task they have been given. We are not talking here about the student who when asked to discuss the foreign policy of President Roosevelt during the period 1905–1909 launches into a critique of the foreign policy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt before World War II, but rather the student who simply describes the foreign policy of President Theodore Roosevelt without offering any assessment of its effects or its effectiveness, any opinion as to its rightness or wrongness.Essay questions usually contain clues to the kind of response the instructor expects, and the main clue is often found in the verb used in framing the essay question. Look first at the verb, then at the rest of the wording, and try to decide what type of essay fits the subject as set.Types of EssayThere are, broadly speaking, three different types of essay that instructors try to elicit from their students: the narrative, or descriptive, essay; the analytical, or interpretive, essay; and the discussion essay. Let us look briefly at each in turn.The narrative essay, or descriptive essay, is the simplest type. If the verb in the essay question is relate, outline, summarize, describe, give an account of, or the like, then the instructor expects this first type of essay. If you are asked to outline the events leading up to the American Revolution, your task is to organize the historical facts you have collected, usually in chronological order, so that they tell the story of how the colonists became discontented with British rule and decided to declare their independence. This type of essay is primarily a test of your factual knowledge and secondarily a test of your ability to organize and present material; it offers little scope for you to show insight or put forward your opinion.An analytical essay, or interpretive essay, is usually called for when the question prompts you to analyze, investigate, examine, assess, evaluate, explain, give the meaning of, compare and contrast, or something else along those lines. If you are asked to analyze the causes of the American Revolution, your task is not simply to list the factors and events that led the colonists to revolt; you have to show sufficient knowledge to be able to probe them a little—for example, were the reasons the colonists themselves gave for their actions the real reasons?—and to assess their relative importance—for example, Was American discontent or British obstinacy the primary cause? This type of essay is primarily a test of your ability to think. It requires factual knowledge and usually a more in-depth knowledge of the subject than is needed for a narrative essay, but instead of simply presenting the knowledge you have, you must also be able to break it down, weigh it, and relate the separate pieces to one another.A discussion essay typically requires you to take a stand on a debatable or controversial issue: " 'The Americans did not win the Revolutionary War, the British lost it.' Please discuss." It is usually a test of your ability, first, to apply the knowledge you have of a subject to construct a defensible point of view; second, to select and marshal evidence in order to support that point of view; third, to write persuasively on behalf of your chosen side of the argument; and, fourth, to consider and deal with the arguments for the opposing side—that is, assuming that you either agree or disagree with the proposition. You could take a neutral stance, in which you would need to balance opposing arguments rather than pitting them against each other. Besides giving you a choice of point of view, the discussion essay also allows you a presentational or stylistic choice. You may discuss the question relatively dispassionately, weighing the pros and cons and eventually coming down on one side or the other as a jury member might after hearing a trial. Alternatively, you may embrace one side of the argument enthusiastically and try to refute the other. In either case, you will need to know the arguments for both sides. It is not a proper discussion if you give no space to arguments for the opposing point of view, even if you do so only to expose their weakness.The categories are, of course, not absolute, and you will frequently find yourself, for instance, mixing explanation with discussion. But they should provide you with basic guidelines so that you can identify the kind of response the instructor is expecting.Narrowing Down the TopicAll the experts agree that you are only creating trouble for yourself, if, when you are presented with a wide-ranging topic, you simply accept it as it stands and make no effort to focus on a significant aspect of it. A thousand words are obviously not enough to give an adequate account of "Women in contemporary society," "The Internet, a paradise for advertisers," "The influence of ancient Greek philosophy on modern thought," or "The nature of Shakespearean tragedy as embodied in Hamlet." When instructors set such topics, it is not because they delight in big themes and broad generalizations for their own sake, but because they want to allow you some freedom to select your own approach and also want to test your ability to use this freedom wisely.If you were given the assignment of writing on, say, "Women in contemporary society," your first task would be to come up with a viable idea: one that could be turned into an essay of the desired length, would reflect your interests, and would shed some light on the topic as a whole. Probably the best way of tackling this task is to write down a list of the ideas that come to you when you think about this topic.If your essay is an assignment for a particular course, then it is likely that you have class notes and books for required reading that you will be able to turn to. Check through any course-related material that you have, but be prepared to supplement that material from other sources and your own knowledge and experience.Perhaps, however, "a list of ideas" is still too all-encompassing. Ideas such as "women in the workplace" or "the changed role of women in the home" represent little progress on the original grand topic. What you need is a specific subject, a focus, possibly something from your own experience. You might, for instance, focus your attention on a particular woman whose activities, career history, or fate may seem to you typical of the condition of modern women: "Condoleezza Rice/Martha Stewart, a Woman in Contemporary Society" might make a feasible essay title. You might know of a group of women in your neighborhood who have taken a stand on an issue, set up a business, or organized themselves in some form of self-help group. What they have done may speak volumes about the opportunities open to women nowadays or the special problems that they face.Let us return to the opening theme of the preceding paragraph. Write down a list of ideas, but make sure that some of them at least are very focused or even localized ideas. Perhaps you will find that one of these ideas stands out, or that two or three have something in common. Puzzle away at those two or three until they coalesce into a viable subject. But always make sure your subject is manageable—that is, not too broad and generalized, able to be dealt with in a short space, and able to be backed up by specific evidence and examples.The Thesis StatementAll essays, of whatever type, usually adhere to the standard three-part structure that we are already familiar with in other documents: introduction, body, conclusion. In pieces of writing such as essays, however, the intellectual structure, the coherent development of a central idea, is much more important than the basic physical structure—though teachers are still likely to take you to task if you omit or skimp on your introduction or conclusion. Once you have decided which type of essay you are expected to write, you then have to work out what the connecting thread is that will link your various ideas and pieces of information together. The central idea or linking thread is expressed in your thesis statement.A thesis statement performs a similar function for an essay that a topic sentence performs for a paragraph. It encapsulates the main theme. As LEO: Literacy Education Online puts it: "A thesis statement in an essay is a sentence that explicitly identifies the purpose of the paper or previews its main idea" (http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/thesistatement.html). The same online resource goes on to clarify that a thesis statement is "an assertion, not a statement of fact," that it "takes a stand rather than announcing a subject," that it "is the main idea, not the title," and that it is narrow and specific as opposed to broad and general.According to Edward A. Dornan and Charles W. Dawe, who give an exhaustive account of the process of preparing and writing a college essay in The Brief English Handbook: A Guide to Writing, Thinking, Grammar, and Research: "If there is one moment in the composing process when an essay's final direction and shape become clear, it is when you write a thesis statement. A thesis statement stands as a college essay's intellectual center." They next elaborate on its purpose: "The thesis statement plays a significant role in the writer-reader relationship too. For writers, a thesis statement identifies and limits the subject, establishes a dominant purpose, and limits the discussion…. For readers, a thesis statement tells what the essay will cover and helps put discussion paragraphs into perspective" (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004, pp. 58–59).A thesis statement is obviously a very important element in an essay, so let us just recapitulate what it is and is not. It is not the essay question, or a factual statement, or an announcement of your purpose in writing, or the title of your essay. It is an assertion.If you were asked to write an essay on "Automobile use and the problem of pollution," a factual statement would beGas-powered automobiles produce pollutants. An announcement of your purpose in writing might take the form,I want to show that if Americans are serious about the problem of pollution, they must reduce their dependence on gasoline-powered automobiles. And the title of your essay might, for instance, be"Out of the Garage and into the Greenhouse." None of these is a thesis statement. A thesis statement is an assertion and, moreover, one that can be incorporated in the text of your essay. So, the following are all viable as thesis statements:Americans who are serious about the problem of pollution must reduce their dependence on gasoline-powered automobiles. Until the U.S. government stops supporting oil companies, the automobile will continue to be a major source of pollution in our cities. Pollution is an acceptable price to pay for the immeasurable benefits of motorized transportation. We need to add that a thesis statement must be not only an assertion written in the style that you are going to use throughout your essay; it must also be a pregnant assertion from which you can develop a defensible case.Now, obviously, the thesis statement is closely related to a title, to relevant factual statements, and, in particular, to a statement of purpose. Often the simplest way to reach at least a working thesis statement is to construct it from a statement of purpose. Another online resource, the University of Kansas Writing Center, suggests that you produce a rudimentary thesis statement by filling in the gaps in the following sentence:"I am writing about ___________, and I intend to argue, show, or prove that ______________." (http://www.writing.ku.edu/students/docs/thesis.shtml) The topic of the essay fills the first blank space, and your basic assertion fills the second. From this you develop a usable thesis statement.Note, that the terms working thesis statement and rudimentary thesis statement have been used in the foregoing paragraphs. Your essay ought to have a thesis statement, and that thesis ought to appear near the beginning, but you do not have to have a thesis statement in its final form before you start work. You need to know what you are arguing for or against, but a statement of purpose will suffice to get you started. A thesis statement naturally forms part of the introduction to the essay, and as has been mentioned elsewhere, the introduction is one of the hardest parts of any work to write and is often something that is best left to the end. (How can you inform the reader accurately about what you are going to say before you know what you have said—that is, made considerable progress with the body of your essay?) So do not be afraid to leave writing your definitive thesis statement until fairly late in the writing process or to write a tentative thesis statement and change it later. As long as the final version of your essay contains a proper thesis statement, all is well.Essay-Writing StyleEssays should normally be written in a neutral style and with a fair degree of objectivity. Even if you are making a case for a point of view that you advocate enthusiastically, you should retain a sense of proportion in your advocacy and in your treatment of the opposition. You should not, for instance, seem to imply that anyone who supports an opposing view is automatically either foolish or acting in bad faith.It is usual practice for essays to be written in straightforward paragraphs without graphics or the kind of highlighting (bullet points, numbered lists, and so on) that you might use in a letter or a report. It is important that the paragraphs should be logically ordered and linked together in such a way that your argument flows. It may be useful to look again at chapter 6, "Constructing Paragraphs," before embarking on an essay project (page 123).An Example EssayLet us assume that the assignment is to produce an essay of 750 to 1,000 words as part of a course on English literature. The essay topic that has been set is the following:Theater director Marvin T. Bowdler said: "I left Fortinbras out of my recent production of Shakespeare's Hamlet, because Hamlet is essentially a private tragedy, and Fortinbras is an irrelevance." Give your opinion of Mr. Bowdler's directorial decision in an essay of between 750 and 1,000 words. Obviously, this is a discussion-type essay in which the student is expected to take a stand on the issue, as well as to demonstrate his or her knowledge of the play (and possibly of other Shakespeare plays as well). In this instance, there are two debatable parts to the statement: "Hamlet is essentially a private tragedy" and "Fortinbras is an irrelevance." The student perhaps looks at the first of these and wonders, What does "a private tragedy" mean? Is this a technical literary term? Isn't this a very broad question? The second part looks like the key to a much more manageable essay, especially since Fortinbras appears in only two scenes—act 4, scene 4, and act 5, scene 2—and is referred to only in three others—act 1, scenes 1 and 2, and act 2, scene 2.As the student thinks and studies further, it may seem important that this character, though minor, figures at the beginning and the end of the play; indeed, he speaks the play's closing lines and is the highest-ranking character left alive on stage when the curtain falls. Moreover, though Fortinbras says very little in act 4, scene 4, most editions fill out the scene with a soliloquy by Hamlet that is prompted by Fortinbras's apparently senseless military expedition. The fact that this soliloquy was omitted from the text of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's complete works in 1623 might suggest that Fortinbras is indeed an irrelevance. The student, however, takes the opposite view.Moving on, the student tackles the thesis statement using the formula shown earlier:I am writing about the role of Fortinbras in Hamlet, and I intend to show that Fortinbras is not irrelevant to the plot or meaning of the play. The eventual essay reads as follows (comments on the essay are interspersed):Beaver 1 Anthony Beaver
Dr. Gervais
English 1
March 5, 2005 It is usual to put the writer's name, the instructor's name, the title of the course, and the date at the top of an essay. Pages should also be numbered, and the writer's surname should appear alongside the page number.Unfair to Fortinbras Capitalize all words in a title except definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. Any of these should be capitalized, however, if they follow a colon. Do not underline your title or put it in quotation marks. You may, however, use quotation marks if your title contains a direct quotation, for example, "He has my dying voice": A Study of the Role of Fortinbras.Nobody could reasonably claim that Fortinbras is a major character in Hamlet. He appears in only two scenes and has less than a dozen speeches, none of them containing any particularly memorable lines. Mr. Marvin T. Bowdler has therefore decided that he is an irrelevance and has cut him out of his production. But although Shakespeare allowed Fortinbras into only two scenes, one of these is the final scene, and although he gave him few speeches, these include a brief eulogy for the dead prince and the closing lines of the play. In addition, Fortinbras is Hamlet's choice as the next ruler of Denmark and is effectively in charge of that country and of the stage as the curtain falls. Far from being an irrelevance, Fortinbras is an important element in a dimension of the play apparently ignored by Mr. Bowdler, the public and political dimension. This is a rather long introductory paragraph, but it does two things quite effectively. It presents the basic facts relating to Fortinbras's role in the play; it also begins to make the case. It combines these two activities quite neatly by appearing to make a concession on the basis of Fortinbras's few appearances and small number of lines, but then stating what these appearances and lines are precisely in order to take the fight to Mr. Bowdler. These positive statements provide an effective lead-in to the thesis statement, contained in the final sentence. This puts the schematic statement of purpose, given above, into a form suitable for the finished essay.During the closing moments of the play, its public and private dimensions are interestingly juxtaposed. Shakespeare could have ended the work with the touching and intimate exchange between the dying prince and his faithful friend, Horatio. But he does not—because, so to speak, Hamlet himself will not let him. Rather unusually, this first paragraph of the body of the essay is quite short. It picks up the word public from the final sentence of the introductory paragraph and places it together with the word private, derived from the original quotation of Mr. Bowdler. The two words form an obvious and useful contrasting pair, related to the main theme of the essay. The writer also continues with the tactic begun in the first paragraph of opposing one authority, Mr. Bowdler, to another and, in this case, a much greater one, Shakespeare himself: Mr. Bowdler did this; Shakespeare, however, did that.Hamlet is aware that the public perception of his actions must be very different from Horatio's perception. We, as readers of the play or members of the audience in the theater, have been privileged to watch Hamlet's private struggles and hear his private thoughts, and so we share Horatio's view. We may easily forget, as Hamlet does not, that the Danish public is completely ignorant of his real motives and more likely to assume that he killed the rightful king in a fit of madness or as part of a plot to seize the throne. Consequently, Hamlet prevents Horatio from committing suicide specifically so that Horatio can "go public" with the true story. "Report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied" (5.2.291–292), he commands him. The writer quite cleverly weaves the keyword public into this paragraph. The phrase go public is put into quotation marks, because it belongs to a somewhat different register from the rest of the essay: It is rather informal and belongs more to the language of politics or business than that of literary criticism. It performs a useful function here, however, because it uses the keyword. Note the method of quoting lines of verse in the middle of a passage of continuous prose. The original capitalization is retained and the lines are separated by a slash. The act, scene, and line numbers are given afterward in parentheses.When Hamlet wrenches the poisoned cup from Horatio's grasp, however, there is no other named character alive on stage. Osric reenters at line 301 to announce the arrival of the ambassadors of England and Fortinbras. But Osric, "a chuff … but spacious in the possession of dirt," as Hamlet calls him (5.2.89–90), is hardly a worthy hearer of this story. Shakespeare, instead, brings virtually new characters, the ambassadors and Fortinbras, onto the stage at this moment, not to give an unexpected twist to the plot, but because they are needed as a fit audience for Horatio's tale. Logically, if Mr. Bowdler cuts out Fortinbras, he should also alter Hamlet's final speeches, because it is the arrival of Fortinbras that enables Hamlet's dying wishes to be appropriately fulfilled. This paragraph is again linked to the one that precedes it. The penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph mentions Horatio's attempt to commit suicide, and this paragraph begins with a reference to that. Next Mr. Bowdler is mentioned, after two preceding paragraphs without reference to him. The writer now completes the first point he or she wanted to make, dealing with Fortinbras's role at the end of the play. As a clincher, the writer delivers another critical attack on the person he or she is arguing against. This helps to give shape and unity to the essay.But the importance of Fortinbras does not rest solely on the role he plays in the final scene. He has a place, too, in the overall design of the play. This is a classic transition paragraph. The first sentence sums up the argument of the previous paragraphs; the second introduces the main argument of the second half of the essay.Shakespeare frequently bases his plays on a parallel structure: The fate of the leading character is mirrored by the fates of other characters. In King Lear, for example, Lear himself has one good daughter and two evil daughters, while Gloucester has one good son and one evil one. Lear has to go mad before he can reach understanding; Gloucester has to be blinded before he can see. In Hamlet, the mainspring of the plot is the fact that the hero has lost his beloved father by violence. Three other young characters are placed in the same situation. Ophelia and Laertes are orphaned by Hamlet's accidental murder of Polonius; the other fatherless character is Fortinbras. In a literary essay—indeed, in any kind of essay—it is a good tactic to show that your knowledge extends beyond the topic you are currently dealing with. This paragraph begins with a general point about Shakespeare. This provides the writer with a good opportunity to show knowledge of another play. But there is no space in an essay of this size for a long discussion of general issues. The writer refocuses on Hamlet and then, in the final sentence, brings the discussion back to its main theme, Fortinbras.We are told by Horatio in act 1, scene 1 (lines 81–106), that Fortinbras's father was slain by Hamlet's father in single combat and, as a result, the Danish crown acquired extra territories. Horatio suggests that old Hamlet's ghost is walking the battlements to warn of the danger posed by young Fortinbras, who is actively trying to get that territory back. Claudius certainly takes this threat seriously. In act 1, scene 2, he sends Valtemand and Cornelius on a mission to the king of Norway. In act 2, scene 1 (lines 59–85), we learn that the mission is successful and that Fortinbras will use the force he was raising to attack Denmark for an expedition against Poland instead. This paragraph does not advance the argument greatly. It is like a paragraph from a narrative essay, inasmuch as it retells part of the plot. This is a perfectly legitimate procedure as long as the factual material presented provides evidence that backs up the argument. In this case, it does, for instance by explaining how Fortinbras comes to be fatherless. In this kind of paragraph it would be a waste of precious space to quote either of the two speeches mentioned. It is sufficient to refer the reader to them by means of line numbers.Shakespeare's reason for including this material is surely not simply to show that Horatio's understanding of events is limited or that Claudius is an effective, if not particularly warlike, king. He includes it because Fortinbras's actions contrast with Hamlet's. Fortinbras literally "takes arms" in order to combat his troubles and does so apparently without question. There is no sense that he feels any doubts or scruples or engages in any soul-searching. The contrast with Hamlet himself could not be more marked. This paragraph returns to the basic purpose of the essay: to argue for Fortinbras's relevance. In giving a suggestion as to why Shakespeare included this material (which can easily pass almost unnoticed in performance or even in reading), the writer justifies his own references to it in the previous paragraph. He refers indirectly to Hamlet's most famous soliloquy "To be or not to be" as a way of reinforcing the contrast between the active Fortinbras and the inactive Hamlet. (It is not a direct quotation, as the form of the verb has been changed—"or to take arms against a sea of troubles"—so a line reference is unnecessary, but the phrase is borrowed from Shakespeare, hence the quotation marks.)And Hamlet himself is aware of this contrast. He compares himself to Fortinbras in the soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me" and in other passages (see 4.4.23–57). If Shakespeare omitted this soliloquy in his final revision, I suggest that he did so because it delayed the winding up of the plot, not because Fortinbras was dispensable. Hamlet contemplates Fortinbras as a possible role model. Even if Shakespeare had second thoughts, it seems unlikely that he would at any stage have made his hero waste his time by thinking about a totally irrelevant character. Wisely, the writer does not overlook the point—that Hamlet's soliloquy prompted by Fortinbras does not appear in the text of the First Folio—that could be used by the opposition. He does the correct thing by suggesting an alternative explanation to counter the opposing argument and then reintroduces the idea of relevance or irrelevance, contained in the topic and referred to in the opening paragraph, in order to launch the conclusion.Fortinbras, as I have tried to show, is relevant to the play. Not only does he have an important role in its final scene, he is an integral part of its overall design by being in a parallel situation to the hero's. Moreover, he is part of the final tragic irony of the drama. Hamlet's private tragedy is that, like any other tragic hero, he is partly responsible for his own death. The public and political dimension to his tragedy is that, again partly as a result of his actions, the kingdom and people that he was born to rule fall into the hands of their ancestral enemy. The basic purpose of a conclusion is to state finally what you have shown and to assure the reader that you have delivered on the thesis statement contained in your introduction. As a minimum it should deliver a summing up of the argument. But it is a good tactic, if you possibly can, to save something new for your conclusion, some telling anecdote, something that links the argument directly to the reader or to your own experience, or perhaps a particularly apt quotation. As Dornan and Dawe remark in The Brief English Handbook, "readers remember best what they read last" (p. 72). Anything you do reserve for an effective ending, however, must be brief, effective, and integral to the essay as a whole. It ought not to seem merely tacked on. In this instance, the writer introduces a shift in perspective, but one that remains within the ambit of the topic. The writer picks up the term private tragedy from the original quotation, reintroduces the contrasting phrase public and political from the introduction, and weaves them together with the standard definition of a tragic hero according to Aristotle—a person with a fatal flaw in his or her character that leads to disaster—to leave the reader thinking about other directions in which this line of thought might lead.The essay is what we might call the "base form" for pieces of extended writing. Let us now look, in rather less detail, at some other extended forms.
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