(Updated 7/19.)
So, what question is Essay 4 asking you to answer? Let’s rewind:
- Essay 1: analyze a Bush speech to explain how his rhetoric changes
- Essay 2: compare two sonnets to explain how Shakespeare treats one theme in two ways
- Essay 3: evaluate a Kincaid story to explain what it means
Each prompt has a surface question, but then forces you to dig beneath the surface a little bit. Do the same in your Hitchcock essay: use this exploration of suspense to explain something bigger, something general to Hitchcock’s oeuvre and not just these five films.
To this end, consider the following:
- (Added 7/19.) What does “suspense” mean for the purpose of this essay? Don’t turn to your dictionary for an answer—you already know the general meaning of the word; what you need now is the academic meaning: What does Hitchcock want his audience to suspend? Only when you’ve answered that question can you write effectively about how he gets us to suspend it.
- Organize your essay in 7 paragraphs: the introduction should be a one-sentence thesis but the conclusion should be heftier, explaining how the preceding paragraphs of analysis give us a useful new reading of Hitchcock; the middle 5 paragraphs should, of course, be distributed one per movie. You can contain a lot of information in a half-page paragraph.
- Pick unexpected scenes to analyze—if I’ve read 17 essays discussing the shower scene in Psycho before I get to yours, then you’re not as likely to blow me away with your analysis.
- Draft one paragraph a day, after the movie is shown and its details are fresh in your head.
- Once you’ve put together a full 7-paragraph draft, look for points of connection: what techniques do all these movies share? What techniques did Hitchcock develop (or invent) over the 37 years spanned by these 5 movies?
- Make a stab at a big analytical argument: what do these techniques teach us about Hitchcock the artist? Hitchcock the psychologist? Hitchcock the commercialist? Hitchcock the social critic? (These movies stretch from just after the rise of Hitler to just before the fall of Saigon: he has a lot of history on which to comment.)
- (Added 7/19.) The draft you turn in will be your final draft. This means you need to find a new audience for your first draft.
- Option 1: the Writing Center, if they have a spot on their schedule that you can make.
- Option 2: your peers—do you have a friend who is willing to tell you when you’re wrong? Trade your rough draft with him/her, and try to channel me: where would I write “To what end?” and “Be more specific”?
- Option 3: me. Although I will be grading midterms almost all of next weekend, I will try to answer short questions emailed to me: send me a thesis statement or a one-sentence analysis of a movie and I’ll try to give you some feedback, unless I’m drowning in AMND essays.
Tags: 2008, Alfred Hitchcock, Essay 4, Essay stuff, Writing Center
