In our early days in IB English, we were encouraged to write practice essays in order to improve our own essay-writing skills. Our teacher gave us an excerpt from Jack and the Beanstalk, and we had to devise individual topics. I decided to choose the idea of Jack being rewarded as my central focus. As you will see, I was relatively clueless when it came to a thesis and essay structure.
Is Jack rewarded in Jack and the Beanstalk?
On the surface, it does seem that Jack is rewarded for killing and stealing, as his mother and him survive and he lives happily ever after, after he steals from the ogre and kills it. Of course, the author could have had many reasons for “rewarding” Jack after he stole and killed.
For one, Jack could have just merely been trying to feed his mother and himself. After all, he sold Milky-white for three “magic beans”, which his mother regarded to be worthless. He was then curious about the huge beanstalk that grew outside his house overnight, and decided to go into the ogre’s house
and stole a bag of gold. Jack and his mother would have starved to death without that gold, and the text never mentioned that the ogre even used the gold, unless you count carrying it as usage. Jack had to go back up for the second time as he ran out of gold (p106, column 1, paragraph 3), possibly through some bad investments, but nonetheless, they would have starved to death without that golden hen. The third time was more about greed, however. Perhaps, Jack is rewarded for being able to feed his mother and himself.
Another theory would be that it was just merely the survival of the fittest. Jack took advantage of the kindness of the ogre’s wife and used it to his benefit and stole from the “weak” (the ogre). He found out that the ogre took a nap after breakfast, and used that information to steal the gold and ultimately used the knowledge he gained to steal the hen and harp. After that, he had the capability (axe) to kill the ogre, so he did. Using this theory, Jack is rewarded because he survived while the ogre did not.
The third theory about if Jack was rewarded would be that he was just trying to be a good son, seeing as she had just recently beat on him (p 104, column 2, last paragraph). After that, Jack could have possibly been desperate to make up for the “mistake” of selling Milky-white for three magic beans. That was likely one of his motivations when he stole from the ogre, as it would have made his mother happy to have more gold. When he killed the ogre, that would have satisfied his mother because Jack stopped it from killing the two of them. From this perspective, it does seem Jack is rewarded for being a good son.
After these three theories, it does seem that Jack is rewarded, but not for stealing and killing. As humans, we believe those crimes are only done to humans due to the idea of human superiority. The ogre is not a human, so it can not be a victim of those crimes. On the surface, it does seem Jack is rewarded, but in reality, he never committed a crime against a human. If he never committed a crime, then he can not be seemingly rewarded.
Introduction
There is a lack of a clear thesis. “Many reasons” is far too ambiguous; in order to write a decent literary essay, you must have a specific focus grounded in literary analysis. In other words, your thesis is the main idea that you are trying to prove in this essay; it should be precise, to the point, and have literary relevance. You could talk about the dark and bloody imagery in Macbeth, for example, but you should not talk about something irrelevant like the attractiveness of Fleance.
You should also include more background information so the reader of your essay is better prepared for your focus. Obviously, you don’t need to summarize the entire piece of literature, but do include relevant details about the plot that relate to your focus and thesis so it doesn’t look like your thesis materialized out of thin air. For instance, if you chose bloody imagery from Macbeth, you would likely talk about major events in the plot in which bloody imagery is used prior to stating your thesis. Don’t just skip to the thesis like I did.
Last, but not least, you should also quickly summarize the main topics of your body paragraphs that you will use to prove your point so the reader has a mental road map of where you are going. In essence, just quickly summarize the topic sentences of your body paragraphs so the reader has a general idea of where this essay is headed. Don’t just give a general thesis without providing some inkling of where you are headed.
Quick tip: Don’t forget to state the title and author of the literary piece you are writing about. This is very important.
Body Paragraphs
The body paragraphs here are also somewhat flawed. In literary analysis, you should not present probable viewpoints, but instead choose one perspective and stick with it. Once you have that perspective, choose a couple of supporting points and then use those to prove your thesis. You shouldn’t just present multiple viewpoints like I did without indicating your clear support for one of them, or at the very least prove why they don’t work and why your preferred perspective is the best.
In addition, don’t underestimate the importance of textual references, literary devices and proper citation format–all of these lend academic credibility to your essay. For textual references, pick short and relevant quotes (use … if necessary to shorten the quote) to support your point. If you want to prove that there was a sense of something going wrong in Denmark, then you would likely use the famous quote “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” to support your claim. Don’t just parachute in your quotes; follow up by explaining the importance of the quote to your point and thesis. Don’t forget to link your points and evidence to literary devices–these help ground your essay in literary analysis. Examples include hyperboles, similes, metaphors, etc. Finally, use a proper citation format–ask your teacher how to cite quotes from the literary piece you are studying. Citations are useful for showing the teacher that you didn’t plagiarize the quote/passage from a random source.
Summary: Your point, evidence from a quote, explanation of quote, tie back to thesis
Conclusion
A conclusion should summarize all the major points and discoveries you have made in your body paragraphs and explain how they relate to the “big picture” of your thesis. Ensure that your points have been re-iterated and your thesis appears to be unshakable. If necessary, quickly elaborate how counterarguments have failed to deter your thesis.
Here’s an image summary of essay tips from an Australian university:
If you have any more tips or comments about this article, just comment below!
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Another tip: before even writing the essay, make sure you have an adequate plan! If you don’t know where you’re headed, how will your reader know?
Make sure that you have a thesis, body paragraph ideas, and a rough sketch of a conclusion before proceeding to the writing stage.
Unless, of course, you work best without a plan.
Aaaaargh! My eyes! Not the five-paragraph essay! Do yourself a favor and forget you ever even saw the darn thing, and you’ll be making your life that much easier for your college English professors.
Here’s what you really need: the thesis. Be able to articulate what your essay is saying in one sentence. You do not need to state that sentence bluntly in your first paragraph. In fact, you might be better off if you don’t. But every good piece of writing has that sentence hidden behind every sentence.
Case in point, look at the Gettysburg Address. Its thesis (summarized poorly, by me, in two minutes of thinking about it) goes something like this: “We are dumbstruck by the carnage, but the only way to honor our dead is to resolve to use their suffering to make our nation better.”
It’s an almost perfect short essay, but it doesn’t follow the five-paragraph form at all. There’s not even a statement of the thesis in the first paragraph. But every sentence serves to reveal the main point.
I would both agree and disagree with using a Gettysberg type approach for an essay. On one hand, having your thesis be implicit rhetorically in your introduction is very powerful, and being able to make arguments in that fashion is something to strive for while writing. On the other hand, if you start working towards that before establishing a decent structure to fall back on, writing often falls back entirely to style, which usually ends up more horrific than a painfully structured 5 paragraph essay.
But if you really want variety, I would pretty much just start with 6 paragraphs. It gives you a bit of extra time to synthesize the ideas of a five paragraph essay before coming to a complete conclusion, while still starting you off with good structure. Rhetorical flare comes later, with practice, and when done in that order brings with it less horrible pain.
[...] a thesis, some main points and a conclusion. (For a primer on writing an essay, check out this article on How Not to Write an English Essay) You need to be able to approach the prompt you chose with the kind of TOK thought that shows [...]