Open Prompt (9/22)

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’ observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

Essay N achieves the first objective of sticking to a thesis that falls under the prompt well, with one central question that the novel discussed, Candide, addresses. The writer maintains the focus and gives evidence as they bring in key parts of the book and then go on to explain them with clear ideas. Breaking the question into parts is key to the structure of the essay and understanding of the ideas and flow. Breaking up how the question was addressed and then the authors’ intentions made the piece easy to follow and also clearly showed the answer to the prompt without having too much separation between ideas. The continued restating of “tending our garden” seemed unnecessary and took away from the explanation. If the writer just mentioned it once, or even broken the quote down so that they were talking about each word separately, the essay and explanation would have better flow and be less redundant. The only issues that took away were some uses of punctuation, like the almost random exclamation mark, and some word choices. Still, the final paragraph is able to reaffirm the whole essay’s message as well as display that the main question in Candide is both answered and unanswered without making it seem like the writer was trying to get out of the question and frustrate the reader.

Essay J does set up the essay to follow the prompt and go more in depth, but the essay reads more like a summary than an explanation for the question “What is freedom”. The essay does show that Huck and Jim may still be left with societal “restrictions” in the end which displays that they may not have any freedom at all. Still, the analysis of the intentions of the author or how the intentions were portrayed was not explored and the essay fell short of a deep analysis of the answer to the question. In the end, the writer devotes a whole new paragraph to another question: “was Huck’s and Jim’s trip a success”. Bringing in a whole new question here only sidetracks from the main point and is space that could be used to further investigate the original question. There are a few word choices that also distract from main points such as “ourselves” when the writer should focus on the effects on society, not personally. Overall, the essay manages to give a surface explanation of the prompt, but does not go in deep enough or explain enough to sufficiently address the prompt.

Essay U fails to address the prompt with a specific issue that is maintained in the novel, Things Fall Apart. The essay brings up major issues in the novel like the fight for dominance between contemporary and traditional values, but a clear position on how the author displays this issue is not reached. Where specific events could be cited, the writer simply says “certain events” and leaves the reader to guess which events they are. The descriptions of the novel are general and the specific examples are nonexistent. The overall subject of the essay answers the prompt, but there is no proof. If the writer had used specific examples and analyses to defend and prove their thesis, the essay would have worked very well and fulfilled the prompt. There were also some distracting uses of tense in the piece, with switches between the present and past tense when talking about events in the novel.  The essay could have met the prompt well, but it was too general and failed to have specifics needed for evidence.