The Literary Essay

Love it or hate it, the literary essay is the most conventional mode of writing in English.  Unfortunately, not many students - or even adults - get excited at the idea of writing one.  This could be for a variety of reasons.  Essays typically follow a strict formula when they are first being taught.  Everything from the topics to choose from and the number of sentences in each paragraph is laid out for the student in a straightforward, yet limiting, way.  These restrictions tend to get lifted as the student learns, giving them more option over the topic, the number of paragraphs, and even the style of the essay (persuasion essay vs. compare and contrast essay).  Unfortunately, by the time the student has enough agency in the essay writing process to choose something according to his of her interests, he or she has already learned to dread the essay for the lack of personal opinion it allows.

I do not have a solution to this problem.  Despite the restricted nature that essays have when they are first being taught, there is value in having students learn a specific formula that typically tends to work before they can start experimenting on their own.  Perhaps what needs to change is not the layout of the essay, but the way in which we approach it.

It wasn't until after I had already completed my undergraduate degree in English literature and was just beginning my Master's  degree that I learned what has, up until now, been the most helpful strategy to approach an essay topic.  This approach is easier shown through drawing a picture than it is through explaining through writing, but I will do my best nonetheless.

Imagine we are going to write an essay about the animated show The Simpsons (this can be anything else, but it helps to have something that everyone is familiar with).  My first step in trying to think of ideas for my thesis would be to brainstorm the general themes and issues that the show covers.  These include family, work, religion, and the American dream.  The second step in this process is to then pick one of those themes or issues and create a list of the different aspects covered within it.  If I were to choose religion I could write that: there are a wide variety of characters from different religious backgrounds; each religion represented is mocked AND shown to help a character through a hard time.  I would then get even more specific in this theme by finding specific instances from the show and relating them back to the information I just did in the second step.  Here, I could write that there are sometimes characters with strong religious beliefs that are shown to make conscience decisions to go against those very same beliefs, such as the Pastor's daughter who steals from the donation plate.  There are also other character's, such as Lisa, that don't necessarily associate themselves with a specific denomination, but that whose behaviour is based in making right decisions and helping others.  With those two examples in mind, I can then go back to the previous step and make a general statement about one aspect of how The Simpsons represents religion: The Simpsons shows that religion can be used in a positive way to help people through hard times, but that it is a person's actions, and not necessarily their beliefs, that will lead to happiness.  And voila, I have a thesis statement.

On paper, this process takes the form of drawing a big box that gets smaller and smaller as I narrow in on the topic.  The visual helps students realize that they do not need to make a statement about the big box, but rather only on the space covered in the small box representing their chosen theme or issue.

I have included two different examples of sample layouts that you could give to students to help them learn the basic outline of an essay.  One is more visual, whereas the other involves more reading and writing.  Although most students relate to these exemplars, and to the process I detailed above, it is important to remember that each student is different and that no one approach will work for everyone.  Differentiation is key!