I like the essay as a form.
Some of the worst speeches I’ve heard are the ones where the speaker tells what he will say, then says it, then tells what he said. Think about it. Haven’t you been forced to sit through such a speech? Haven’t you thought that it could have been over a lot sooner? Of course you have.
Such speeches are the verbal equivalent of the five-paragraph essay, following the same pattern that for decades has been imposed upon the essay by . . . someone. Such an “essay” could be over in one paragraph. That’s the way I see it.
I suppose the structured approach, the five-paragraph approach, came about as a help for young writers, but I have long considered it a corruption of a form in writing that ought to be infinitely (I’m pretty sure that’s the word I want) freer and more open than the five-paragraph structure allows. In fact, I blame the five-paragraph essay pedagogy for a multitude of writing ills and ugly attitudes, many of which I encountered as I taught freshman writing at Boise State University. I see it as a means for handcuffing young writers, imprisoning them, and it’s a dull prison indeed—the one where everyone has to write a dull essay, and it cannot have six paragraphs or eight or four, only five, and those five must do what I described above. And, by the way and as a result, everyone there in that prison hates to do it.
Essays can be formal, but, and thank goodness, they don’t have to be. They can be explorations or examinations or perorations, maybe, or simple attempts at writing out an idea. Which is what the word means. Essay=an attempt.
2 comments:
This is making me question my teaching of writing to my students. Actually my students are very young, so I teach them to write a 5-sentence paragraph. But the same question applies: Is the "topic sentence-detail-detail-detail-concluding sentence" paragraph really so sacrosanct?
Thank goodness you said this! I got good at the five paragraph essay, but I never liked it. Boring.
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