{"id":3577,"date":"2016-11-21T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kibin.com\/blog\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2019-02-10T12:51:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T20:51:14","slug":"how-to-write-a-critical-essay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kibin.com\/essay-writing-blog\/how-to-write-a-critical-essay\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Write a Critical Essay the Most Critical Prof Will Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

I absolutely love film. But I don\u2019t absolutely love bad<\/i> films. So you can understand why I appreciate good film critics. They essentially save me from wasting my life in two-hour increments.<\/p>\n

Although critics can be quite critical (read: negative) at times, they aren\u2019t always this way. In fact, they can be downright gushing when a film deserves it. But when they go negative, it can be brutal(ly funny).<\/p>\n

The critics tend to get a bad rap because of this, but they are just being honest\u2014and well, the truth hurts sometimes. Perhaps this is one of the things your professor has taught you.<\/p>\n

Like film critics, critical essays can be misunderstood because of the most common definition of \u201ccritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Simple definition of critical:<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

1. expressing criticism or disapproval<\/p>\n

2. of or relating to the judgments of critics about books, movies, art, etc.<\/p>\n

3. using or involving careful judgment about the good and bad parts of something<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although the first definition is the most common, you will focus on the third when writing a critical essay. So let\u2019s learn how to write a critical essay the most critical professor will love.<\/p>\n

Focusing Your Critical Eyes<\/h2>\n

A critical essay is not a summary of a text. Instead, it’s a close analysis<\/a> of what makes that text tick. This doesn\u2019t mean there won\u2019t be moments of summary. There will be.<\/p>\n

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A critical essay isn’t a summary of a text. It’s a close analysis of what makes that text tick.<\/a><\/div>\n

Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

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However, summary will not be the main focus of your critical essay. That distinction belongs to your analysis of the work.<\/p>\n

There are several ways to analyze a work for a critical essay, and they tend to fall into three common categories<\/a>: evaluate, describe, <\/i>and interpret. <\/i><\/p>\n

Evaluate<\/h3>\n

This is your chance to be a critic in the most well-understood sense. When evaluating a text, you will be answering the basic question of whether the work is good.<\/i><\/p>\n

Of course, this isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds.<\/p>\n

For example, you may believe, like Peter Keough<\/a>, that the most recent Transformers<\/em> movie was \u201cthe cinematic equivalent of being tied in a bag and being beaten by pipes,\u201d but that doesn\u2019t change the fact that the grunting guy doing squats at your gym saw it three times.<\/p>\n

When evaluating a text for your critical essay, you will need to dig deeper, of course, focusing on the specific aspects of the text that you like or dislike, putting your evaluation into context, and using examples from other works to highlight the differences.<\/p>\n

These types of critical essays can be a lot of fun, but your opinions and the reasons behind them must be clear to the reader.<\/p>\n

Describe<\/h3>\n

A critical description will focus on the nuts and bolts of a text. In other words, you will analyze the strategies that the author used to tell his or her story.<\/p>\n

This will involve focusing on certain elements of a story, such as the setting, characters, or themes. However, when describing something critically, you’ll often have to go deeper than this, focusing on the literary devices and techniques<\/a> used in the text.<\/p>\n

For example, how does Tolkien\u2019s use of diction lend itself to The Lord of the Rings<\/i>? Or how does Orwell use personification to better tell the story of Animal Farm<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Instead of focusing on whether the work as a whole is good or bad, you\u2019ll be focusing on how the story works. This will often require some context<\/i>, which means looking at the text through the lens of its genre and the time period in which it was written.<\/p>\n

Interpret<\/h3>\n

Instead of looking at the specific elements of a story or evaluating the quality of the work as a whole, an interpretation focuses on the message present in the text, which is usually the main reason the author wrote the piece.<\/p>\n

When interpreting a text, consider these questions:<\/p>\n

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  • What is the author trying to tell us, the readers?<\/li>\n
  • Is there something we can learn from this work?<\/li>\n
  • What was the author trying to say about the time in which the work was written?<\/li>\n
  • What does it say about the world we live in now?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    These are all viable questions to answer when writing a critical interpretation of a text, but none of them are easy to answer\u2014much like it’s hard to understand how anyone paid M. Night Shyamalan to make The Happening<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n