How to Read an Essay

The word essay has its roots in the Latin exigere, which means “to weigh out or examine.”  Generally, essays offer reflections, explanations, analyses or arguments written from the author’s point of view.

As you read the Bonner, Hughes, Garvey, and Locke essays, ask yourself the following questions:

1.  What type of essay is this?  Although writers frequently mix forms, infusing narrative and expository essays with vivid descriptive passages, we can identify several categories of essays:

• Narrative: Narrative essays relate a series of events or experiences—often from the writer’s life—that convey insights or offer a particular portrait of a more general experience or social circumstance.
• Descriptive:  Descriptive essays create a sensory depiction of a place or object, expressing insights through an appeal to the reader’s senses.
• Expository:  Expository essays explain, define, or provide information.
• Argumentative: Argumentative essays make and support claims with the primary purpose of persuading an audience of the claim’s validity.

3.  What assumptions does the writer make?  What beliefs or values lie beneath the argument?  

4.  If the essay is argumentative, what evidence does the writer offer to support his or her claim?  If the essay is narrative, descriptive, or expository, what details does the writer use to clarify the explanation, appeal to the reader’s senses, or convey insight?

5.  How does the writer peak your interest in the introduction?  How does the writer crystallize his or her purpose in the conclusion?

6.  What rhetorical strategies does the writer use: comparison/contrast, cause and effect, definition, classification, analogy, exemplification?

7.  How is the essay organized?  Can you identify major sections or ideas?  How does the writer move from one point to the next?  Why do you think that the writer structures the essay in a particular manner?

8.  What is the writer’s tone—formal, informal, personal, ironic, sarcastic, serious, humorous?  Is the tone consistent throughout the essay?  Can you identify a passage that exemplifies the writer’s tone?

9.  What type of imagery, symbols, metaphors, and other figurative language does the writer use?  Is the language concrete or abstract?  Does the essay allude to other literary works?  What themes or motifs appear throughout the essay?

10.  Hoes the essay draw on specific details of its context?  What historical, political, or cultural references does the essay make?  How does the essay’s purpose speak to particular contexts?  Where did the essay first appear?  How might the publication venue have influenced the content and purpose of the essay?  What do you know about the writer of the essay?  What connections can you draw between the writer’s life and the content and purpose of the essay?

11.  Why did the author write the essay?