Sample Essay Introductions

QUESTION
In an essay of about 1,500 words analyse either 'A Painful Case' by James Joyce or 'The Old Chief Mshlanga' by Doris Lessing, paying close attention to narrative technique, including narrative voice, characterization, imagery and symbolism, dialogue and descriptive detail.

'A Painful Case' by James Joyce is a short story taken from a collection entitled 'Dubliners', which was first published in 1914. Joyce makes use of a variety of narrative techniques and literary devices in the construction of his work.

Joyce's chosen method of discourse is a third-person omniscient narrator. Unlike the first-person narrative mode, which only gives access to the thoughts and feelings of one of the characters, an omniscient narrator has the advantage of being in a position to know everything about all the characters in a story. The opening sentence provides an example of how the narrator is able to reveal the opinions of the main character through focalization: 'Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod ...because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious.' (1) The narrator is speaking, but the viewpoint is that of Mr Duffy, and is presented without any narrative comment. The reader is, therefore, free to draw his or her own conclusions as to what this reveals about the personality of Mr Duffy, without guidance from the narrator.

Overall grade=88
[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work - not simply the introduction.]

QUESTION
'The language of poetry resembles dancing; it has no purpose beyond itself. "Dancing goes nowhere"'. Discuss the ideas in Paul Valéry's essay 'Remarks on Poetry' in the course materials by considering in detail a passage from The Waste Land and a paragraph from Mrs Dalloway.

Mrs Dalloway displays many of those aspects of language which Paul Valéry identifies as essentially poetic. I have chosen to concentrate upon paragraph two on page 124 (Grafton edition) to illustrate this argument.

Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow, which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper. Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room, and through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.

Similarly, words are grouped and repeated so as to reinforce a sense of underlying patterning. Notably the first sentence has alternating images of light and shadow, yellow and grey, and repeated sequences of words and stresses: 'which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, ...'

Overall grade=80
[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work - not simply the introduction.]

QUESTION
According to Pierre Macherey, the ideology of a literary work resides in its incompleteness, in its significant gaps and silences. With reference to two texts from different genres, suggest how Macherey's theory of ideology might yield new insights and meanings in literary criticism.

No text is 'complete' in itself according to Macherey. The words on the page may appear to produce a clear-cut, easily discemable meaning, however if we accept this at face value we are not appreciating the work as a whole, for as well as the explicit meaning of a work, the reader should also be aware of the gaps, silences and contradictions inherent in a text. Only in this way can we understand the full significance of a literary work, and reveal its relation to the circumstances in which it was produced.

Although Macherey argues that the silences are a prior condition of the text, in that without absences the text itself would not exist, the reader must first examine what is given, the explicit ideas and arguments presented, in order to spot the gaps and silences. When we first read 'A Sahib's War' by Rudyard Kipling, for example, we learn about the characters, the events which make up the story, note the use of an unusual narrative technique and also form opinions as to the meaning or intention of the story. From this basis we can then go on to consider elements not present, and judge whether these reinforce or contradict the explicit meaning of the text.

Overall grade=88
[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work - not simply the introduction.]

QUESTION
'silence is both a condition of women's oppression and a part of their language'. With detailed reference to at least TWO texts from different genres, discuss the relation between gender and silence

Simone de Beauvoir, in her book, The Second Sex, says that 'One is not born but rather becomes a woman' and goes on to say that there is no such thing as a female nature, consisting of essentially female qualities. She holds that concepts of femininity are socially constructed and not biologically determined.[1]

At the time de Beauvoir wrote her book, the currently operating social construct was that language in the public domain was very much organised by males and the language in the private domestic world was organised by women. The implication being, that men's language dealt with the 'weighty' issues of the world, whilst women's language dealt with the domestic trivia.

To this one could also add that, historically, women have only been able to guarantee their economic security through marriage. This meant that sexual relations were also economic relations and therefore, whilst marriage satisfied the problem of the woman's economic insecurity, it constrained her to the public silence required of her by both society and her husband. At the same time, of course, we could usefully argue that the husband was equally a 'prisoner of the system' in that society demanded of him, a wife who obeyed the rules and accepted her socially constructed subordinate role. A husband who could not keep his wife within the limits of expected behaviour, could expect criticism of his failure, from society. The effect of this pressure was to force women into roles that were recurrent stereotypes, virgin, whore, spinster, etc. (p.9)