Literary Analysis IV: Introductions, Alternative Interpretations, Conclusions and the Full Draft

From parts to a whole essay

You now have a complex thesis and layered body paragraphs. This lesson finishes the essay: an introduction that earns the thesis, a paragraph that takes on a different reading, a conclusion that says why the argument matters, and a full draft written to the criteria your teacher uses. Expectation 2.7 asks you to produce revised drafts of texts, including increasingly complex texts, written to meet criteria identified by the teacher. A full literary essay is exactly that kind of text.

The introduction: they say, I say

A Grade 11 introduction often works best when it starts from a common reading of the text (what they say) and then shows where your reading differs or goes further (what I say). The writing guide They Say / I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein made this move famous, because it shows your reader why your thesis is worth reading: it adds something to a conversation.

1. The usual reading: how the text is commonly understood.
2. The text: author's full name, title, form, year and only the context the reader needs.
3. The tension: what the usual reading leaves out.
4. Thesis: your claim. You may add a brief roadmap of your main points if your teacher wants one.

Avoid openings that could begin any essay: dictionary definitions, Since the dawn of time, or In this essay I will.

A model introduction:

For more than a century, "In Flanders Fields" has been recited at Remembrance Day ceremonies across Canada, and it is often remembered simply as a call to honour the dead by carrying on their fight. John McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, wrote the poem in 1915, giving voice to soldiers buried in Belgium who speak to the living from their graves. Yet the Dead spend most of the poem not urging but mourning: they remember dawn, sunset and love before they ever mention a quarrel. Although the Dead grieve the ordinary lives they lost, that grief becomes the force behind their demand, so the poem is a lament that obliges the living.

Context: a spice, not the meal

In the introduction above, context takes one sentence: who McCrae was, when he wrote, and who speaks. Context is useful when it explains something in the text. It is padding when it retells history the reader can find anywhere.

• Useful: McCrae wrote in 1915, early in the war, which helps explain why the Dead can still speak of a quarrel to be taken up.
• Padding: a paragraph about the battles of 1915.

Also keep the speaker and the poet separate. The poem is spoken by the Dead; write the speakers demand, not McCrae demands, unless you are discussing his choices as a writer (McCrae gives the Dead...).

The alternative interpretation

A Grade 11 essay is stronger when it takes on the best version of a different reading and answers it. You can give it its own paragraph or weave it into a body paragraph. Use four moves:

1. State the other reading fairly, with the evidence that supports it.
2. Concede what is true in it.
3. Respond with evidence: what does that reading fail to explain?
4. Return to your thesis, now strengthened.

A model alternative-interpretation paragraph:

Some readers may see the poem as straightforward wartime encouragement, and the poem was indeed widely quoted during the war to support the war effort. The commands of the final stanza, "Take up our quarrel" and "hold it high" (lines 10, 12), certainly sound like a recruiting appeal. However, this reading cannot account for why more than half of the poem, nine of its fifteen lines, is spent on loss before the cause is even mentioned. The Dead never name the cause, describe the enemy or mention victory; the only reward they imagine is being able to "sleep" (14). Read in full, the call to arms is less a celebration of war than a plea from the grieving, which is why it continues to move readers who do not share its wartime purpose.

The conclusion: significance, not summary

In Grade 10 you learned to echo, synthesize and extend. In Grade 11, focus the extension on significance: what does your reading change? Return to the tension you raised in the introduction and show that it has been resolved, or that it is the point. Do not add new evidence, and do not begin with In conclusion.

A model conclusion:

"In Flanders Fields" asks more of its readers than remembrance. By letting the Dead first recall the dawns, sunsets and loves they lost, McCrae turns their final command into something personal, and the image of a torch thrown from failing hands makes the obligation impossible to set down. The poem's lasting power may come from exactly this tension: it is spoken by people who want to rest, and it insists that their rest depends on the living.

Drafting to criteria

Before you draft, reread the teacher's criteria (rubric or success criteria). As you draft:

• Draft from your claim spine. Start with any body paragraph; many writers draft the introduction last.
• Keep moving. If you need a quotation you cannot find, write [QUOTE: torch line] and keep going; fill it in later.
• Check each paragraph against the Thinking criteria: is there analysis, not just evidence?
• Save versions (Flanders_v1, Flanders_v2) so you can compare and recover cut material.

A first draft is supposed to be imperfect. The next lessons on voice, sentences and revision are about making it better.