Having trouble with understanding an essay ("Is This the Promised End?")

Hi,

I'm having trouble understanding the essay, "Is This the Promised End?" by Joyce Carol Oates. This link provides the essay text online: usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/lear.html

I need to summarize the main points in paragraphs, and the thesis. However, I cannot completely grasp the meaning of the essay and have read it repeatedly for hours on end. I have a university deadline, and have resorted to this as a last option. Any help will be GREATLY appreciated, and I personally thank whoever takes the time to help me! Thank you once again.

Sara

Try rewriting the essay, breaking down all of the longer, complex sentences into short, single clause ones. It will take you a while, but by the time you're done, you should have an excellent understanding of the essay.

I can see why you are having a hard time! The essay is very densely written, with lots of long sentences. That it is online, rather than on paper, compressed into such a tight space, makes the task even more difficult, as there are more line breaks than there would be in a standard page layout.

Sean's idea is good. Go sentence by sentence until you understand each, jotting down your understanding of what each sentence means in short, simple sentences.

Joyce's paragraph-long first sentence, for example, probably could be broken into four or six short statements.

Another thing you can do when you don't understand a text is to Google the name of the author and the title of the text to see what (if anything) others have written about it. This can't substitute for your own reading, but it can sometimes help to see how other people have understood what you are trying to understand.

Another problem is that Joyce's essay is extremely erudite, making reference to all manner of events and characters from other pieces of literature. Use Wikipedia or a similar source to get a quick idea of what Joyce means when she refers to some character or mythical figure you've never heard of.

Concentrate on the beginning and the end, remembering that most essayists introduce their main theme at the beginning and/or summarize their main theme at the end. For sure, the most important things are almost always at the beginning or the end, with the body of the essay reserved for arguing and proving the points that the essayist is making. It's okay if you don't grasp every nuance of the body paragraphs so long as you understand the primary message(s) of the essay.

If you want to post your own summary here, for us to compare against the original, please do!

Also, bear in mind that a lot of critical writing, as the essay you are reading is, is written in deliberately complex, pretentious language. Often, the academic diction makes simple ideas seem more complicated than they really are. And sometimes, they allow sentences that say nothing meaningful to seem as if they made sense. So, if as you write your summary, you find that after rummaging through the essay to find its contents, they are less impressive than you would have expected, do not be too surprised. It is also possible that, once the author's ideas have been reduced to a more easily understandable form, some of them may seem a bit silly to you. Try not to let that throw you.

Yes, the essay is really quite surprising to me in its impenetrability. Oates generally writes much more clearly. Though she also writes under (who knows how many) other names and deliberately different styles. I wonder if that's what she was doing here, playing with the conventions of the lit crit genre?

It's possible, but how could anyone tell? :-)

Literary criticism in its current form tends to be largely meaningless, an exercise in illusion and pretension. Have you heard the one about the English professor who got so sick of this that he simply threw together an literary criticism piece using the largest words he could find, constructing sentences with them that were grammatically correct in their structure, but pure nonsense in their content? He actually got the essay published in a respectable academic journal, and had to write in afterward explaining what he had done. The story is probably apocryphal, but no one who has read a lot of literary criticism would be absolutely willing to bet money on it.

A book some people might find interesting:

Hi Sean and Simone!

Thanks for your replies. Fortunately, I have decided not to do that assignment and have chosen another to do (we had a choice to choose between assignments). I find it easier all over. However, I am reluctant to post my essay here as I feel others could use my work for their own personal use. Is it possible to have this thread deleted after my work is edited?

Technically, no. The idea is that the essay remains here, with the feedback on it, so that people can learn from it. If you are worried people might copy it, make sure to sign up here with your real name, so that your name and the date you posted your work appear along with the essay. That way, you can prove that the essay is really yours even if someone does try to copy it.

Thanks for replying Sean. I decided not to post my essay, but I will frequently check this site for any updates. Thanks again! :)

That's your choice, of course. For what it's worth, I've found that student fears that other people will steal their work are largely unfounded.