Why have quotations in a critical
essay?
They help to explain/highlight
/clarify the point you are making.
They are evidence that you
• have a close understanding of the text
• can relate aspects of the text to the points
you make
• Quotations should not be too long
• They should highlight/reinforce/explain the
point you are making
• Do not use This shows
• Do not start a sentence with a quotation
• Make a comment before quoting
Verbs to use to introduce the
quotation
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
portrays
conveys…
evokes
displays
Reveals
suggests
illustrates , highlights , reinforces.
The manner in which the character is portrayed…
The author reveals the character’s insecurity ,
sadness , joy etc.
• The author has been successful in portraying…
You must insert the
quotation correctly.
There are 2 different methods but both
methods can be used in your essay.
• METHOD 1 (see example 1on next slide) )
• Make a comment about an aspect of the text
you have read and add a colon instead of a
full-stop
• Take a new line, indent slightly and then
open inverted commas
• Quote and then close inverted commas
• Take a new line and attempt to analyse
aspects of the quotation which you find
particularly effective.
Example 1
Dahl has been successful, via careful wordchoice, in portraying the love that Mary
Maloney has for her husband :
–
“She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man ,
and to feel almost as a sunbather feels the sun that
warm male glow that came out of him to her when
they were alone together.”(p.28)
The word “luxuriate “makes it sound like he is
for her a really special indulgence and the use
of the simile helps create an almost passionate
intensity to her feelings for him.
METHOD 2
At times you may prefer to add quotation in a
sentence without taking a new line.
Dahl effectively conjures up the greedy hunger
of the policemen by describing their voices as
being “thick and sloppy because their
mouths were full of meat” which is successful
in highlighting the greediness of the men as they
fill their stomachs.
• Look at this example:
Puff is quite a greedy young boy as he claims
that he had breakfast and dinner all at once.
Johnny calls him “fat guts” as he is always
going on about what he has eaten. It is quite
funny when Puff belches and then says
“Excuse me, that’s the pickles”. Nevertheless,
he is a good, loyal friend to Johnny as he helps
Johnny stand up to the bullies.
Owen describes the soldiers as “bent double,
like old beggars under sacks” which is a
tremendously successful simile to portray how
ragged and unkempt they are and the fact that
they are weighed down by their heavy burden.
He goes on to convey how they are unhealthy
and resemble old witches when he says
“coughing like hags”. This imagery really
helps highlight the unappealing appearance of
the men experiencing first-hand the horrors of
war.
Have a look at a model paragraph on
Curley’s wife from the novel “Of Mice
and Men” . Notice how it subtly combines
comments, textual evidence and personal
response.( Also note how quotations can
be very short but effective.)
There is only one woman on the ranch,
mysteriously referred to throughout the
novel as “Curley’s wife”. I think
Steinbeck’s decision to give her no name
really helps emphasise how she is
considered more a possession of Curley’s,
than a person in her own right. The
ranchers are wary of her , referring to her
as “jailbait “and “tart” so I was intrigued
to see if these labels were justified.
Her physical appearance ,when we first see, her
is indeed eye-catching:
“She had full rouged lips and wide –
spaced eyes , heavily made up. Her finger
nails were red .Her hair hung in little
rolled clusters , like sausages.”
Obviously, she has spent time on how she looks
but I think that Steinbeck wants her to be
interpreted as a lonely, young woman craving
attention .
Uncle Ernest is devastated by the threats
of the two police-men that he will end up in
court if he dares to see the girls again. The
author’s use of the phrase “the earth
sliding away from under his feet” is
superb at conveying how he feels as if he
no longer has any steadfast foundation on
which to build his life.
The forcefulness the impact of despair has on him is
conveyed in the phrase “a wave of panic crashing into
his mind “ . It is obvious he does not want to return to
the life of loneliness which he has been so accustomed
to because of its “unbearable familiar emptiness”. How
sad it is that he is unable to release any tears and get rid
of the pent- up emotion! However, Ernest is a man who,
we know, has experienced great trauma on the
battlefield during the war and left shell-shocked, he is
unable to express himself as portrayed in the phrase
“He wanted to cry but could not “.
The ending of the story is very poignant as we have
Uncle Ernest in the depths of despair , returning to his
old life in a “crowded noisy bar” where, ironically he will
be alone and resigned to a life of drowning his sorrows in
alcohol every evening. The author is successful in
portraying how the alcohol lures him in with the effective
imagery in the phrase “a beautiful heavily-baited trap
of beer pots “which will ensnare him so that he will lose
himself in drink and never again try to forge relationships
and interact with the outside world in any meaningful
way. It is a terrible tragedy for Uncle Ernest because he
is not really living, just existing , earning enough to pay
his bills, get drunk every night and resign himself to
“oblivion” which, interestingly, as the last word of the
story encapsulates his state of mind after his ordeal.
It is interesting to note how parts of his plans are
very lucid and well-thought out, as suggested by
the long flowing sentences. At other times there
is the sense that he is planning things as he
goes along , suggested by phrases like “Let me
see; let me see".The brevity and the repetition
increases the immediacy ,the sense that Iago is
not too far ahead of his adversaries and it is this
ability of his to remain calm and think logically
under pressure that is admirable
Iago holds the stereotypical view that
black men are almost animalistic in their
love-making and he hates Othello as he
suspects that “the lusty Moor” has had a
physical relationship with his wife ,Emilia:
“I hate the Moor
And it is thought abroad that twixt my sheets
He’s done my office.”
A very well chosen quotation.
Look at how this short quotation is fully explained,
analysed and evaluated
At the start when Juliet says “O serpent heart,
hid with a flowering face”, she is comparing
Romeo’s heart to that of a snake , a particularly
odious , evil creature which succeeds in
concealing its horror with the guise of a perfect
flower. The phrase alludes to the serpent in the
Garden Of Eden who with a show of goodness
enticed Eve to eat the apple and consequently
damn all humanity.
The mood of the letter starts to change with a transitional couple of
paragraphs where Keane tells his young infant how his birth has
made him reevaluate his life:
“Your coming has turned me upside down and inside out.”
He talks about how “in a world of insecurity and ambition and
ego, it’s easy to be drawn in , to take chances with our lives”
and “gamble with death”.Daniel’s sighing and gurgling has made
him state, ” I wonder how I could ever have thought glory and
prizes and praise were sweeter than life” .The reader is then
bombarded by anecdotal evidence from Keane’s experiences in
war-torn countries which swiftly erodes the feeling of contentment
evoked in the opening paragraphs.
Keane tells us how he is “pained, perhaps
haunted is a better word” by the memory of
each suffering child and how it is” suddenly so
vivid now”. He goes on to focus on individual
cases of children who have been “ hurt and
abused and killed”. We hear about Ando
Mikail, only ten who died from napalm burns and
how he cried out in pain and the wind blew dust
in his wounds. This is a shocking image of a
child crying beseechingly for help, but to no
avail.
It is a shame that her husband is an
alcoholic and we learn how the “cancer of
alcoholism” ate away at him .There is no
blame of the man that he was an
irresponsible husband and father but that
achohol had got a hold of him in its vicelike grip and how he lived a life remote
from his family “living and dying for the
bottle”.
Shakespeare is successful in portraying the dilemma that Juliet is in
when she learns that Romeo has killed her cousin , Tybalt:
“O serpent heart , hid with a flowering face
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave
Beautiful tyrant , fiend angelical”
It is significant how each line contains contrasting images. This
effectively conveys how Juliet thinks that Romeo appears good and
virtuous but that this is just a mask which conceals the evil that lurks
beneath. So many oxymorons in her speech clearly shows how
upset and preoccupied she is with her beloved husband’s dual
personality. The audience cannot help but feel sorry for Juliet as
only hours earlier she had demonstrated her love for Romeo by
going behind her parents’ backs and marrying him in secret , only to
be informed by the Nurse that he has Tybalt’s blood on his hands.
Juliet compares Romeo to a dragon - a
dangerous, fearsome mythological creaturewhich lurks underneath “so fair a cave”. The
oxymorons in the line “ beautiful tyrant, fiend
angelical” are also effective in showing how
Romeo can make himself out to be pure and
perfect. This idea is continued in “dovefeathered raven” and “wolfish-ravening
lamb” as doves and lambs symbolise purity and
goodness whereas ravens and wolves
symbolise evil and darkness.
If you quote from a poem or a piece of Shakespearean
verse, you must only take a new line when the poet
takes a new line.
There is the sense that Don Pedro, when he returns from war, has finally
has time for affairs of the heart :
“But now I am return’d and that war thoughts
Have left their places vacant; in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires”
However, you can insert it into the body of
your sentence if use is made of the
forward slash to indicate that Shakespeare
took a new line.
When Iago says in his first soliloquy,”I
hate the Moor/ And it is thought abroad
that ‘twixt my sheets he has not my
office” , the audience is made aware of
another reason why Iago loathes Othello.