a Letter to Emily

A peer response to Emily’s Sonnet Explication

Emily, your essay was full of great evidence, MLA and sentences such as:

“In these two questions, the narrator challenges and demands to know why the young man is only using his beauty for himself and suggests that he is supposed to share and spread his beauty among other people” (Slusher 2)

Out of the many attributes I found your essay to have, only a few of them were harmful to the strength of your essay, among them was a cornucopia of repetition, troublesome wording, and an question of purpose.

Repetition was a larger part of your essay, but it was not done skillfully. Your beautifully worded thesis has the phrase “direct address and multiple questions” (1) embedded into it, but the exact same wording of “direct address and multiple questions”(1) is used directly after in the next paragraph. Another instance of repetition is of an idea; most of your evidence is followed by reasoning explaining that the narrator is upset at the man for not having and heir. I marked this piece of reasoning as good in your first body paragraph, but that was before I read the same pice of reasoning in the next paragraph, including the use of it in two sequential sentences:

“This passage is explaining that when the young man is dead, what mark of his beauty can he leave behind in the world. The narrator is hinting that the young man should have heirs so that his beauty can live longer.” (2)

I had this same problem when writing my essay and I fixed it by re-analyzing my poem, specifically the line that I got my reasoning , to find new points. The last instance of repition I found was of the phrase “the narrator” (1), which I found to be repeated in your essay 30 times. These little instances of rep...

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... also tells him that he needs to spend his beauty by sharing and giving” (1), the word “also” should be cut out because it is repeated in the next sentence, rather than saying he also…. the narrator also, you could say he….. and the narrator also. Once the unnecessary parts of your paper are cut out you can fit your argument into the three page limit.

Emily, your essay had many great points and topics, the only things keeping your essay from reaching its full potential are aimless repetition, misleading diction, and idle sentences. Once you rid your paper of these few hindrances, you will have an impeccable argument. My advice for you is to review my suggestions and then correct based on your own preference (do not feel obliged.)

Hope my advice has helped,

Josephine Evans

Works Cited

Slusher, Emily. Sharing the Wealth. Portland: Catlin Gabel School, 2014. Print