Write a 500-750 word essay using description as the chief method of development. Follow the guidelines for formatting as described in Notes on Essay Writing.
Writing Assignment
•Purpose: to inform
•Method of Development: description
•For a topic for description, see the list at the end of Chapter 3, Description, in The Longman Reader. Choose one, or choose another topic that you would prefer to use. Be sure that you are writing a descriptive essay, not a narrative.
Reminders:
•Brainstorm for topics.
•Accumulate as many details as you can about your topic, and then sift through them, discarding those that are irrelevant, weak, or unrelated to the impression you would like to convey.
•Organize your ideas.
•Use vivid language and varied sentence structure.
•Your outline must be included with your essay submission.
Writing Approach
As your text points out, “Description can be a supportive technique that develops part of an essay, or it can be the dominant technique used throughout an essay” (Nadell, Langan, Comodromos 72). In this essay assignment, description will be the dominant technique used to develop a distinct impression of your topic. Remember that description must appeal to the senses: taste, touch, sound, sight, smell. While you need not appeal to every sense in your essay, be sure to give the reader enough description so that he/she can be a part of your topic’s development. You may certainly use figurative language in your descriptions – simile, metaphor, personification, etc. In any case, be aware of your audience (your classmates) and your tone. Your choice of words may greatly influence your reader’s impression of your topic. Be careful to present your topic as you would like it to be interpreted.
Applying AXES to Description
Assertions
eXamples
Explanations
Significance
Each of your ideas will seem incomplete if you do not include in your body paragraphs the AXES aspects of analysis.
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Assertions
Statements which contain an implicit argument and/or statements which link your arguments to each other and to your thesis. An essay without enough assertions will seem like a list of unrelated facts. On the other hand, a paper with too many assertions will seem unbelievable or overly strident unless you also provide…
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Examples
What evidence is there to support your assertions? The more specific the examples, the more precise the analysis. If you do not have any examples, the reader will constantly wonder where and how you derived your assertions and consequently may not accept them. An example, however, seldom speaks for itself, and so you also need to provide…
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Explanations
What does your example say about your assertion? Does it prove it or complicate it? Without any explanations, the reader is never clear as to how you see the evidence and is forced to second guess your intentions. Yet, if you simply state, support, and prove your intentions, the reader may respond with indifference unless you also provide…
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Significance
Why are your arguments important? How does the passage under scrutiny relate to the piece as a whole? What is important about the text for you, and how does it challenge or confirm your own beliefs? How might it have been received during the time that it was released? Too much emphasis on this area might make your paper seem like a sermon or a long anecdote in which you leave the text behind. These areas may be presented in a variety of orders and may at times overlap. Try to avoid bringing them up in a fixed pattern. Although you want to achieve a balance between each of these aspects, there are times when you may wish to emphasize one over another. However, too often what becomes emphasized is a blend of abstracted examples and general assertions that comes across as a repetitive description. Here is an all too typical example:
In City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, the greatest director of all time, has created a masterpiece which brings up many issues that were relevant then and are relevant now. For example, he meets a blind flower girl who would not have even noticed him if she could see, thus showing us that love is blind. I can relate to this and would recommend this movie to everyone.
The above paragraph has an example, but passes over it rather than analyzes it. It has significance, but it is stated in general terms that everyone already knows. It simply does not engage the film in a rigorous manner. By sharpening our AXES, it is possible to chop up the previous paragraph and then put it back together in a multitude of ways. A more precise analysis appears below. Not only does the paragraph double in length, it focuses on a more specific and intriguing assertion. Which example is more fun to read? Which do you think was more fun to write?
Chaplin’s set up of the initial meeting between the flower girl and the tramp is a literal representation of how “blindness” may make love possible, especially when society values the wrong things. The tramp, crossing a busy intersection, avoids a cop by moving through a parked limousine. Hearing a car door slam, the flower girl assumes the passenger to be wealthy and asks him to buy a flower. Since she is blind to first appearances, she does not simply dismiss him as one who does not have either the wealth or the dignity for such an extravagance. Once the tramp realizes this, he has hope that his affections may bring him love, something he probably felt was even more unattainable than a flower, given how he has been treated by the others up to this point in the film.
The blindness sets up both the hope and the tragedy of their relationship and, to various degrees, all relationships. Often, people fall in love with an image, “blind” to those qualities in the other person that would complicate that image. However, in a fuller light, that image becomes complicated when we are forced to see the other’s shortcomings. So we all have to choose which qualities and which shortcomings should have the most sway. I can only hope that when the flower girl eventually sees the tramp in his fullness that she will remember that those dressed more respectably simply passed her by, while the tramp took it upon himself to buy one of her flowers with his last coin.