What makes an essay good? Most of you probably think you rarely encounter essays in your daily lives; you may think you have no fixed conviction about what makes one essay better than another, but my hypothesis is that we all encounter essays every day and that we have a remarkable level of agreement on what makes an essay good. Each time we tell someone what we think and why we think it we are producing an essay, though it may be in spoken rather than written form. Probably the most accessible essays in popular culture are newspaper editorials. Most of them are models of what a good essay should be, and you have read plenty of them, or at least I hope you will during this course.
Log Cabin Method
Essays, like buildings, exist in several different forms — elaborate, simple, unusual, creative, shocking, bizarre, weird, funny, or cuckoo. There is no one way to design a good essay or building. BUT there is a simple log cabin method which every essay architect should learn to use anytime, anywhere, fast, on the spot. If you can design one of these log cabin essays, this skill will help you in all the more elaborate and creative structures you may build in the future. If you cannot write an essay according to this simple log cabin method, there is a real danger that the first 3.5 temblor to hit your essay will knock it down because, if your essay lacks these basic elements, it is not firmly constructed. Good essays, no matter how creative or elaborate, no matter how different in appearance from a log cabin, still have the basic principles of construction that the simplest log cabin has. You may not see them at first, but, in one form or another, these principles are there.
Good essays have the following three characteristics. I insist that all the essays you write in any course you take from me must also have these characteristics. (1) The essay is organized to support a clear main point, or hypothesis, which is stated in just a few words at the beginning of the essay, in the first paragraph or even in the title. (2) The main arguments supporting the hypothesis are easily identifiable. They provide the structure of the essay and may even be stated numerically at the beginning, as I am doing here. (3) Finally, a good essay anticipates possible objections and answers them. Let’s examine these three characteristics one by one.
Make Your Hypothesis Interesting!
First, an essay needs to be interesting. It needs to have personality, character, soul. Read at least three essays by the inventor of the modern essay, Michel de Montaigne. (Look him up on the web if you’ve never read his stuff.) Montaigne’s personal stamp is on every essay he writes. What he says and the way he says it are his uniquely. Style and substance are perfectly attuned to each other, and their tune is the unique personhood of Michel de Montaigne. Give your essay the unique stamp of your personhood, humor and all.
Beware of parking lots, my friends. Many of you think that, when you have finally reached (across so many freeways and all their accompanying barbarisms and indignities) a large university, you are supposed to leave your person in your car, all locked up and safe (though perhaps hot), ready for your perusal and enjoyment once again when you finally (after even more barbarisms and indignities) get back to your car. I sincerely question this assumption. I think there is a case to be made for taking your person out of the car and bringing it with you to the building in which your classroom is located and perhaps even to that classroom itself. You could keep your person cleverly concealed in your purse, wallet, or (like me) assorted canvas bags. Maybe no one will even notice you have a person or (heaven forbid — promise you won’t tell) ARE one. Really. The indignities we suffer just in trying to get TO the campus and then, especially during the first week of classes (when students are in attendance) finding a place to park, are so grotesque and unrepeatable (even here) (so unthinkable) that we all kinda say about our persons (as Jesus said, though not about his person, exactly) “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”
Still, the education of personhood is part of education, no matter how much we might believe (because we are told) that the elimination of personhood — the mechanization of self — is the point of all this. See, as long as we insist on keeping our persons locked up in those hot cars in the infinite space of parking-lot-land, our religion will be “You toucha my car, I breaka you face.” This is not a good philosophy of religion. It may be good car maintenance, but it is not the best way to get sunlight, water, and Miracle-Gro onto our persons. The greenhouse of personhood is the well-taught religion class. Write that down. It will definitely be on the test. The greenhouse of personhood is the well-taught religion class, and this means you have to (kinda) bring your person to the (well) classroom. I know it’s painful. I know it’s shocking. I know it may not seem scientific (at first), even though it is (at last). But (and I mean this) you have to bring your person to your classroom — and that means your essay — or (and I mean this, even though you may not believe it and probably don’t), your person will wither and (I mean this) die. It’s not a pretty sight.
I mean, if in some way, you don’t, with all your heart (etc.), seek the Real, the True, the Ultimate, the Absolute (I mean Whatever you call It or non-It), well you won’t find It or non-It, and you will Die. That’s how important the study of religion is. That’s how much is at stake in thinking about religion. What this means is: read Montaigne. He invented the modern essay by inventing Real Fun. What this means is: self-revelation leading to self-understanding and, one hopes, finally, better understanding of others, too. Communication. Communication as discovery-method (see Socrates, Plato, Hegel, Gadamer).
In other words, if an essay is not to some extent interesting, even fun, it lacks one of the central ingredients of its mix, like a piece of cake that doesn’t have a taste. What is the point of eating cake that has no taste or reading an editorial that has no spark? An essay becomes interesting when it challenges the critical faculty of our minds. There is no way to avoid that requirement. An essay is an intellectual exercise. It must speak to our intellect, and our intellect is spoken to only by challenges, wake-up calls. You see, our intellect often (like a cat) falls sound asleep in the midst of our daily humdrums, but our intellect wants, like that same cat, to wake up and roar. Yet it must have something to roar about. Evoking the intellectual roar of the reader is the task of you, the humble essayist.
That is to say, the hypothesis being articulated and defended from the very beginning of your essay must be both reasonable (the meat our intellect chews by nature) and debatable (the meat every intellect craves — give that cat some tunafish!). Reasonable AND debatable! Our hypothesis must be BOTH.
Make the Exposition of Your Hypothesis Interesting!
Second, after you have concisely made your reasonable and debatable main point, what will make your defense of that point interesting? Here everything depends on the three or four arguments you offer in support of your main point. I don’t know whether your car has eight cylinders, six, four, or (like mine) three, but your essay should have as many supporting arguments as your car has pistons. Your arguments are the empowerments of your hypothesis. Your hypothesis announces the destination of your trip. Your arguments in support of the hypothesis turn the key, start the ignition, and get your but in gear. No supporting arguments, no trip. No trip, no essay. No essay, no passing grade! No passing grade, no go to college any more!
Many people (you would not believe how many!) who cannot think up energetic supporting arguments for their reasonable and debatable hypothesis figure that dumping in a few paragraphs of summarized textbook or lecture material will suffice. That is like rubbing sludge on your pistons. It is utterly counter-productive. Better say nothing at all (just smile) than summarize gobs of textbook or lecture material. I do not want your undigested food matter, even if it comes from the biggest bull in Northridge. I want to see, not how you can pass my lecture undigested through your alimentary canal, but how you can metabolize it, transform it, change it, from nutrition into muscles, bones, skin, hair, and eyes! That means: only when you come up with three crucial supporting arguments for your reasonable and debatable main point have you begun to write an essay, and I want to see all three of those glistening pistons right up front, in your very first paragraph or, at the very latest, in your second or third paragraph. Do not play cat and mouse with me, throwing me up and down, tossing me all over your essay in search of your three supporting arguments. I want to see the supporting arguments immediately. Remember this principle: my reader is not my mouse.
I want you to be like the airline captain who says, “Well, good morning, folks. Today we’ll be heading for New York [hypothesis, destination, goal, target, yes?]; after we leave California we’ll be flying over Arizona [first supporting argument, yes?]; later we’ll go over southern Illinois [kind of a leap but second supporting argument, uh huh]; and then we’ll go into our descent over Pennsylvania [third stunning argument, the clincher, yes?], and on down to Laguardia.” That is, as soon as you tell me the destination I want you to tell me the route, how the heck you plan to get me there. Otherwise I’m bailing, fast. Outa here. Give your coffee, tea, or milk and assorted cocktails to someone else because I ain’t around any more. Shut the door behind me. I’m gone. Have a nice day. Get it? As our next governor says, hasta la vista, baby. No supporting arguments, no trip. No trip, no essay. No essay, no pass. No pass, no go to college any more. Remember? Waste of time, right? Yours and mine. Hypothesis (reasonable and debatable). Supporting arguments (logical and original, crisply stated, backed up with relevant evidence). No sludge. No bull.
Look: the essay questions in my courses often include the word “compare.” Well, please note right now, once and for all, that the word compare refers to both similarities and differences. (Look it up in the dictionary if you think I‘m cuckoo.) For that reason I refuse to say, and hope you will also refuse to say, “compare and contrast.” That loquacious tautological colloquialism is an egregiously verbose redundancy. Plus, it’s repetitious. So, to redundate, when you hear me saying “compare,” you know I mean both similarities and differences. Let’s say I said, “Compare Buddha and Jesus.” You know, to repeat, that I want to see the major similarities AND differences. But I also want to see this in the form outlined above: reasonable and debatable hypothesis followed immediately by three supporting arguments. What this means is that I do not want an Encyclopedia Britannica summary of Buddha and then same for Jesus followed in the last paragraph of the essay by your list of similarities and differences. No. Skip the Encyclopedia Britannica summaries. PLEASE skip them. I can read the encyclopedia for myself.
When you summarize the two (or more) items you are comparing before comparing them, you are doing sludge. Don’t do it! Build the essay around your insights, not your summaries. Develop a hypothesis that says something like “The most important difference between B and J is such and such, but this difference is made possible only by the most important similarity between them, which is such and such” or “but this difference must not obscure the major similarity, which is such and such,” or “and this difference is more important than the major similarity, which is such and such.” Then say something like, “I say this for the following three reasons.” Then list the reasons. Then organize the essay around the exposition and defense of these reasons.
Students often ask why they need to write essays in a Religious Studies class. Aren’t essays only for English class? The reason for writing essays is that we do not understand something until we can make a reasonable and debatable main point about it, a point which is supported by cogent arguments which, themselves, are supported by relevant evidence. One reason to go to college is to learn how to graduate from labor to management, if we choose to do so. Until we can clearly state what we think and why we think it we will be poor managers and probably will not even have the opportunity to try managing anything. Until we can clearly state what we think and why we think it we will be taking orders from someone who can. We may or may not choose to manage other people, but we at least need to be competent managers of our own religious lives, that is to say, our ethical, philosophical, and aesthetic lives, our values, priorities, sacred narratives, symbols, rituals, and ethos. The point of studying religion academically is to THINK about it. We are simply not thinking about religion unless and until we can write coherent and interesting essays about it. So essays are not just for English class. They are for any activity that involves decision-making, prioritization of values, THINKING!
Unmitigated Gall
But, third, dear student, your professor (and you knew this from day one — don’t say you didn’t) has unmitigated gall. He not only wants to see that reasonable and debatable you-know-what and its three handsome children, the Supporting Arguments, attired in all their finest evidence, but he has the unmitigated gall to want you to understand that no critical intellect (i.e. reader) will, since he or she is a roaring lion, take anything lying down. Huh uh. That critical intellect who is reading your stuff is (like you reading my stuff right now) saying in every nanosecond, “Wait just a minute! Why should I believe all this bologna? I disagree. I protest! Hey! Wait just a minute, writer! Who do you think you are?” I know you are saying that right now, while you are reading my stuff. You are saying it, aren’t you? Yes, see, I knew you were saying it. Well, I am saying it too, when I am reading your stuff. What do you take me for? What do you think I am? A doormat? Do you think I’m gullible? Do you think I was born yesterday? Do you think I believe everything somebody tells me just because they’re telling me? Huh uh. I think for myself, buster. I react. I have thoughts of my own. Sometimes I even have feelings. If you are writing to me, you had better pay attention to me, which means: I have the unmitigated gall to expect you to think up the most important possible objections to all the points you are making, and I expect you to list these weightiest objections fair and square, out in the open, and provide answers to every last one of them. Uh huh. Yes I do.
I don’t care where in your essay you do this. Do it as you make each point, or do it all at the end of the essay. Makes no difference. Whatever works for you. But I do indeed have the unmitigated gall to ask you to anticipate the best possible objections to every point you are making and to answer them to the best of your ability. Call it The Unmitigated Gall Thing. Just remember that your essay ain’t finished until The Thing is there. Call it The U.G. Thing if you want to. The UGH Thing. I don’t care what you call it. Just do it and do it well. And you know that I will dock you for it if it isn’t there and done well. (You know that this also is for your own good and that it hurts me more than it does you.)
Conclusion
Now, speaking of finished (as I know you are happy to see me doing at long last), what about a conclusion? Me, I’m not much of a conclusion guy. Apocalypse shmapocalypse, I always say. Maybe just don’t bother with a conclusion, I always say. But above all, no matter what you do, no matter how long you live, no matter where life may take you, never, never, my dear friend, as long as you live, never start your concluding paragraph with “Thus we see” or “Thus we have seen.” No, please. Anything but that. (Promise?) Not that, okay? (You and me — we’re buddies, right?) Better not to conclude at all than to conclude with a self-exculpatory excrescence of hackneyed collegiate triteness. That’s what I always say. Better not to conclude at all.
Okay. Let’s try this. You promise me (I’m waiting) that you will march over to your dictionary right now (I don’t know where you left it, but you will need it this semester, so you might as well find it right now) and, yes, look up the word “thus.” As soon as you find it, put a line right through it. (No, I will not reimburse you for the damage to your dictionary, but you can sell it back to the bookstore anyway. They don’t notice. They don’t read books. They just buy and sell them, totally cheating you — and, yes, me — in the process.) So, after you have crossed “thus” out of your dictionary and you have promised never to say “thus we see” or “thus we have seen,” you are ready to think about how (or how not) to conclude.
I can only tell you this, my dear friend: when your Toyota has reached its Burger King, when your 747 has landed at its Laguardia and taxied to its gate, when your college-level essay has clinched its A, your passenger will be aware of the fact, will unfasten his or her seat belt, and quietly walk away, fulfilled. No other conclusion is needed! “Congratulations, friend,” your passenger will say, “you have written an excellent essay! Now that you can do the log cabin method, all other construction techniques are open to you.” Nothing more is needed.