Aldous Huxley said, “The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."1 Huxley's description of an essay may seem a bit vague. Still, he captures the element of what makes essays so gratifying. They are the complete package: wisdom draped in pretty language.
What is a thesis and definition of an essay
An essay is an article whose thesis explores a theme, provides information about a subject, or tries to persuade. The parts of an essay may look different depending on the type of essay, but each one has an introduction, a body made up of paragraphs, and a conclusion. A close reading of an essay examines its voice, tone, and style.
Voice
The voice of an essay is the way vocabulary, point-of-view, and syntax work together.
- Vocabulary: The types of words the author uses in the essay. Does the essay include technical terms or figurative writing? What age level is the author writing the essay for?
- Point-of-View: The essay's perspective. Is it in first-person (uses "I"), second-person (uses "you"), or third-person (uses "he/she/they")?
- Syntax: The way words are organized into sentences. Is the essay written in simple, compound, or complex sentences?
A simple sentence is a complete thought (I went home). A compound sentence connects two simple sentences (I went home, and I cooked dinner). A complex sentence connects a sentence that makes sense by itself to a subordinate clause that depends on the other sentence to make sense (Because I was hungry, I cooked dinner).
Tone
The tone of an essay is comparable to a speaker's tone of voice while having a conversation.
- Neutral: Objective, has no opinion on the topic.
- Emotional: Is the essay supposed to make the reader feel happy, sad, angry, etc.?
- Authoritative: Does the author appear to be knowledgeable about the subject?
- Informal: Conversational, written as if the author is close to the audience.
- Formal: Academic writing, written as if the author is addressing the audience professionally.
Style
The style of an essay is the language the author uses that depends on the type of essay they are writing.
- Narrative: Uses a story to explore a theme
- Expository: Explains or defines a subject
- Persuasive: The author shares their opinion and tries to convince the reader it's correct
- Descriptive: Uses imagery that evokes the five senses to create a picture in the audience's mind
An image of a corrected essay on a student's desk, representing a close reading, pexels.com
Types of Essays
The genre of essays contains four broad formats that reflect the author's purpose for writing them:
Narrative Essay Format
A narrative essay uses a personal account to examine a theme, such as a moral question or universal truth. Features of narrative essays include:
- Characters: The people who are a part of the story.
- Dialogue: Direct (exact words) and indirect (paraphrases) conversations between the characters.
- Theme: The thesis and overall point of the essay. Usually, it examines something about the human experience.
- Setting: Where the story takes place. Examine how the location's time period and social environment provide context for the theme of the essay.
- Plot: What happens in the story. Does the author move effectively between sharing their story and discussing the theme?
- Conflict: The way the characters struggle teaches them a lesson related to the theme.
Narrative essays and short stories share many of the same characteristics. However, the characters, dialogue, setting, etc. in a narrative essay are based on real people and events, while a short story is a work of fiction.
Expository Essay Format
An expository essay "exposes" information about a subject to educate an audience. Expository essays are logical and analytical, meaning they use critical thinking to perform an in-depth examination of a subject. They share information in an unbiased and explanatory tone. In other words, an expository essay informs its audience about a topic, avoiding emotional or opinionated language. An expository essay formats its thesis by doing the following:
- Looking at cause and effect: How an action or idea caused something to happen or affected something
- Explaining: "How To" articles are a good example. This type of expository essay is written in chronological order to explain how something works.
- Defining and exploring: Provides an in-depth definition that explores a specific angle of the subject, such as its history.
- Comparing and contrasting: Discusses how two objects or ideas are alike and different.
Persuasive Essay Format
A persuasive essay attempts to convince the reader of something. Along with facts, a persuasive essay uses an emotional appeal to sway the audience. The thesis of a persuasive essay is usually called a claim, and the style of the essay depends on what type of claim the author is making:
- Definitional: Argues whether something "is" or "is not"
- Factual: Argues whether something is true or false
- Policy: Defines an issue and its best solution
- Passive agreement: Seeks audience agreement without expecting them to do anything
- Immediate action: Seeks audience agreement and expects them to do something
- Value: Judges whether something is right or wrong
It's also important to consider the purpose of the essay. At the outset, determine whether the persuasive essay is:
- Defending a position by providing proof that supports its claim
- Challenging a claim to prove it is invalid, or
- Qualifying a claim that has both valid and invalid points.
Descriptive Essay Format
A descriptive essay uses sensory and figurative language to write a picture for an audience. A descriptive essay shares some of the same characteristics as a narrative essay. Still, they are different because a narrative essay explores a theme, while a descriptive essay aims to use its thesis to illustrate an object, place, or concept thoroughly. Descriptive essays are written as :
- Personal essays that describe an event that affected the author's life
- Formal descriptions in which author writes an impersonal and precise report of the subject's characteristics, or
- Impressionistic definitions that attempt to create an emotional reaction in the reader with their description.
An image of a prism refracting white light, representing the different types of essays, wikimedia.com
Essay Examples
This excerpt of "Goodbye to All That," written by Joan Didion and published in Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968), is an example of a narrative essay.
I remember once, one cold bright December evening in New York, suggesting to a friend who complained of having been around too long that he come with me to a party where there would be, I assured him with the bright resourcefulness of twenty-three, "new faces." He laughed literally until he choked, and I had to roll down the taxi window and hit him on the back. "New faces," he said finally, "don't tell me about new faces." It seemed that the last time he had gone to a party where he had been promised "new faces," there had been fifteen people in the room, and he had already slept with five of the women and owed money to all but two of the men. I laughed with him, but the first snow had just begun to fall and the big Christmas trees glittered yellow and white as far as I could see up Park Avenue and I had a new dress, and it would be a long while before I would come to understand the particular moral of the story.
Didion uses a personal story to explore the theme of reality versus illusion in this narrative essay. She uses herself and a friend as characters, and their dialogue highlights their personality differences. The setting of the essay mirrors her youthful idealism. Christmas lights are temporary, and sparkling white snow will turn to gray slush by the following day in the city. Including details of the young Didion laughing with her friend while focusing on the twinkling lights and falling snow sets up the conflict of the essay by showing the reader that she's not focused on reality.
For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, though, there’s much more to know than most of us care about—it’s all a matter of what your interests are. Taxonomically speaking, a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws used for subduing prey. Like many other species of benthic carnivore, lobsters are both hunters and scavengers. They have stalked eyes, gills on their legs, and antennae. There are a dozen or so different kinds worldwide, of which the relevant species here is the Maine lobster, Homarus americanus. The name “lobster” comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider.. . .But they are themselves good eating. Or so we think now. Up until sometime in the 1800s, though, lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and institutionalized. Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats. One reason for their low status was how plentiful lobsters were in old New England. “Unbelievable abundance” is how one source describes the situation, including accounts of Plymouth Pilgrims wading out and capturing all they wanted by hand, and of early Boston’s seashore being littered with lobsters after hard storms—these latter were treated as a smelly nuisance and ground up for fertilizer. There is also the fact that premodern lobster was cooked dead and then preserved, usually packed in salt or crude hermetic containers. Maine’s earliest lobster industry was based around a dozen such seaside canneries in the 1840s, from which lobster was shipped as far away as California, in demand only because it was cheap and high in protein, basically chewable fuel.
Wallace provides a quick cultural study of the lobster to inform readers that opinions about consuming lobsters have changed over time, which validates the essay's question of whether it's time to change society's thinking about how they're prepared. He asks that since opinions on consumption and preparation have changed previously, should they change again? Using scientific details to describe lobsters provides a neutral viewpoint on just what a lobster is. Wallace uses precedence and scientific language to avoid the appearance of emotional involvement in the subject. He dives deep into the issue to provide enough information to allow the reader to come to a conclusion.
An image of cooking pots over an open fire, pixabay
This excerpt of "A Modest Proposal," (1729) a pamphlet written by Jonathan Swift, is a satirical example of a persuasive essay. Satire uses humor to criticize. In this case, Swift was criticizing the British Parliament for the way they were treating the poor.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
Swift's thesis is an immediate action claim, and his essay defends a position. He uses statistics and facts about raising and preparing livestock to discuss how many children will be needed to create a sustainable system. Describing poor children as livestock and discussing how best to eat them operates as an emotional appeal that they should be treated better. By using such an extreme solution to starvation, Swift opens the door to a more level-headed discussion about how to better help the poor.
E. B. White's essay, "Once More to the Lake," reprinted in Essays of E. B. White (1977), is an example of a descriptive essay. This excerpt captures many of a descriptive essay's characteristics, including the way it describes things in great detail to help the reader relate to the experience:
We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in
the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few
inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me
beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a
mirage and there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chucking the
rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the
same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floor-boards
the same freshwater leavings and debris--the dead helgramite, the wisps of moss, the
rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday's catch. We stared silently at
the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and wells. I lowered the tip of mine
into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away,
poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There
had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one--the one
that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it
was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn't know which
rod I was at the end of.
'Once More to the Lake' is an example of a personal essay because it describes a place that had an effect on White's life, which he later shared with his son. He emphasizes that the place he loved as a boy hadn't changed by describing familiar details like the flitting dragonfly. The sensory images appeal to the reader's senses so they can relate to the scene. Concrete details, such as "two feet away," bring the reader into the experience.
Essays - Key takeaways
- An essay explores a theme, provides information, or tries to persuade.
- When performing a close read of an essay, examine its voice, tone, and style.
- A narrative essay uses a story to explore a universal theme, usually about some part of the human experience.
- An expository essay digs deep into a subject to educate its audience.
- A persuasive essay uses a combination of facts and emotional appeal to convince the reader of something.
- A descriptive essay attempts to explain something by creating a picture of it in the reader's mind.
1Huxley, Aldous. Complete Essays: 1956-1963, 2002.
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