How to Write Great Essays

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Choose two works you have read that you believe best support your opinion.
Use the criteria suggested to analyze the works you have chosen.
Avoid plot summary. Instead, use specific references to appropriate literary elements (for exam-
ple: theme, characterization, setting, point of view) to develop your analysis.
Gordon Lish says that writers must tell the truth, even if it’s hard to do. I
think he’s right. Stories that tell the truth like that are very powerful. I can
think of two books that I read that do what Mr. Lish says. They are Angela’s
Ashes by Frank McCourt and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya
Angelu.
For example, if Maya Angelou didn’t tell all the truth about her life, we
wouldn’t know about all the stuff that happened to her when she was growing
up. We wouldn’t understand how difficult her life was or how she survived. We
wouldn’t know how she turned out to be such a strong person. Like when she
describes running away and living in the junkyard. That must have been a really
tough experience and difficult for her to talk about. But she also tells us what
she learned from that experience. Whatever she was feeling, she described it in
her story. She stuck to the truth so we could see how hard it was to grow up
a young black girl in the south.
We read Angela’s Ashes, too. That story, by Frank McCourt, showed us how
tough it was to grow up poor in Ireland. I never imagined being so poor! He
didn’t even have shoes to wear to walk to school in the winter, and to make it
worse the others made fun of him for it. His dad was never around and when
he was, he was drunk. And worst of all, they were always hungry. He had to
steal food and stole money to escape to America. But I don’t blame him. It
must have been hard to admit doing these bad things and to relive all the pain
in his life. If I had it that bad, I’d want to forget my past. But he told his
story for us so we could appreciate what we have.
EVALUATION
This essay begins by interpreting the statement and by establishing a controlling idea. Although
the interpretation is simplistic, the writer states that he agrees with Lish and then discusses
two autobiographies. He doesn’t identify the specific genre, but just calls them “stories.” The
writer offers specific details from both texts and names both authors, though he misspells
Angelou’s name twice.
The style of this essay is too informal, with the writer interrupting the analysis of Angela’s
Ashes twice to express his personal feelings. A statement such as “I never imagined being so
poor” does not belong in a critical essay. The organization of the piece is logical and there
is substantive discussion of each text in terms of the main idea, but it lacks a strong con-
clusion that clearly connects both texts to the quotation. The sentence structure and vocab-
ulary are also unsophisticated, though the writing is clear and correct throughout.
Sample Essay Prompts and Essays  CHAPTER 8