Organizing a Critical Analysis Essay

General Suggestions: Write to a broad audience, not your professor. Imagine your audience is intelligent but uninformed; what they know of the source (the film, play etc.) and the relevant concepts, terms and theories etc. is what you tell them in the essay.

Generally, your task in this type of essay is to show the grader you have read all the material and understand and can apply the key concepts.

Format and Citation:  Use MLA style.  Quote and cite frequently throughout; suggestions for doing so here.

Organization:

1) General Intro: Summarize/describe the sources your essay the analyses (the essays, novels, plays, films etc.).  In a sentence or two, tell us what it is or they are, when was it written or released. Then very briefly (no more than four sentences), summarize the setting, plot and conflict.

Situate them in terms of the philosophical context.

In a short essay, this section or paragraph should be no more than a half-page to a page long.  Do not assume your reader has seen or read the source, but do not fill this section with excessive plot detail; save those details for the essay body.

2) Thesis: Develop and clearly state a strong and complete thesis paragraph. Again, this will be a roughly half-page length paragraph. For this essay, your thesis paragraph should explain:

a) The questions your essay will answer.

b) How you will go about answering it; briefly lay out the concepts and sources you will use in your essay and how you will use them.

c) Explain to us your position/conclusion concerning those questions.

3) Summarize the applicable theories; define your terms.  In this case: hamartia and hubris, tragic heroism etc.  See the assignment for all relevant concept and terms. Briefly use the classical examples (from assigned reading) to explain each example.  This is where you show you have read everything that was assigned, understood it, and can contextualize it in the lecture content.

4) Apply the theories etc. to the source (film etc.): a paragraph (or two or more) for each character. Finally, the body of the essay itself, where you apply the concepts (from classical Greek tragedy, for example) to a new, original context (a modern film, for example).  This will generally constitute the bulk of your essay. 

As a rule, a paragraph makes a claim (topic sentence), explains that claim in a sentence or two, and then offers concrete examples as evidence.

Try to organize each paragraph or section here similarly, so that the reader sees a cohesive pattern between each analytical paragraph. This will also make your writing job much easier: for each character, address the same questions, in the same order.

As a rule, a paragraph makes a claim (topic sentence), explains that claim in a sentence or two, and then offers concrete examples as evidence.

5) Carefully review the assignment and see whether there are additional elements you could not integrate into #4. If so, deal with them here.

6) Conclusion.  A generic, boring conclusion simply summarizes your findings. However, the organization I’ve given here suggests that information belongs in the thesis paragraph, not here. This leaves room for you to say something interesting.  You might tell us what you’ve learned from working through this assignment, about literature, about film, about art, about life, about…?  You might outline possible future applications of this type of analysis, such as other films etc. this approach would also explain.  You might…?