I have an essay due for my HS senior English final. Don't have any friends so its available here [Imperialism, Vietnam, and Sacred Soldiers] if I could get some feedback. I changed the name of myself and the teacher for privacy; the prompt is "How do varying perspectives, points of view, and narrative techniques define the diverse experiences of a conflict?", "the conflict" being the Vietnam War. The "two sources out of ten" comment is referencing a project for this essay where we had to write notes on ten assigned sources for the final. Most sources are from my own research/reading. Unfortunately it does have to be 12 pt and double spaced even though that gives you like five words a page.
Edit: don't mind the "we are challenged with" bit at the beginning, it's been removed in the actual document
Just saw this. I agree the prompt is circular but I don't know exactly what you mean by "farcically idealist." Can you explain a bit more?
It almost implies that the points of view/perspectives/narratives themselves primarily shape the conflict, which I think is generally congruent to the idealist assertion that "ideas change the world"
Edit: IMO the implication comes across as "primary" because the prompt specifically includes POV/perspectives/narrative and excludes material forces and conditions. Although you did say this was for English class lol
How much time do you have left to work on this? I'm largely concerned with the relevance of your essay to the given prompt, you're drawing on a lot of historical material and little attention is given to literary perspectives which I would find problematic if I was an English teacher. There's a lot of ways to elaborate on this, but I think in short you'll understand me when I say you've written a History essay, not an English one, and in light of this you probably need to consider sufficient revision.
Now, if I were to critique this as a history essay.
@MF_COOM was alluding to this same thing, but I'm going to put it in harsher terms - this paper is written dogmatically in favour of the Marxist-Leninist interpretation. Now the ML one is something that I agree with, but you would be served much better directly dismantling the liberal perspective at points rather than writing in favour of the ML perspective in a manner that comes off as uncritical at points. Consider for example, the Domino Theory - the underlying premise of Domino Theory is Democratic Peace Theory. You can use the example of the Korean War to demonstrate the farcicality of democratic peace! There just... isn't really sufficient discourse with liberal justifications for all the points you discuss. Is that a word limit issue? In general, you're writing like Lenin. Academia and the pedagogical system doesn't want stylistic Lenins, they want a Glantz or Citino.
Holy smoke, English teachers have to read and mark essays of this length from all their students? That's crazy.
I'm reading along and I'll make some style recommendations, but each recommendation will be a new comment because HB times out on me pretty quick.
To start, I think you should remove the sentence starting "a dialectical approach...", it doesn't seem to do any work in the paragraph and dialectical can mean different things to different readers - if your audience isn't commies it can be confusing at best, alienating at worst. You can use dialectical materialism without talking about the fact that you're using it.
The first sentence on the second page (that begins at the end of p1) is needlessly wordy. To start you should cut "in the final case" but moreover the whole sentence should be simpler and more to the point. There's something good here, but you're not making your point clear the way you've phrased it.
P2 sentence that begins "In short..." cut "somewhat" it weakens the sentence but doesn't add anything in exchange
Also remove "...in particular"
Also p2 "the pretexts of the moribund forces will fall asunder" is pretty purple, to the point of not being clear exactly what you're trying to say. The argument you're building seems strong, you don't need a thesaurus to mystify you want the opposite.
Actually this whole sentence is weak. What group? What phenomena? Doesn't seem to flow from the previous sentence.
P2 last sentence; remove "specifically", "generally" and "somewhat".
In fact, control F and find the other times you use these terms - 95% of the time they are junk, so cut them unless the sentence needs the qualifier.
P3 paragraph 1 - you are making a lot of broad truth claims without support. This would be fine in a speech, but in an essay you're probably going to get dinged for this.
I think it's cool you want to start this with a bang, but this might be a bit ambitious - this kind of language is fine between comrades but if your reader isn't of a similar sentiment it's likely to fall flat. I don't know what your specific instructions are, but this style of essay isn't usually a time to pontificate, but to construct evidence-based arguments with your sources as the tools.
Also you just used "moribund" twice in two pages - I'd suggest using it zero times.
Oh and you maybe shouldn't assume your teacher knows who you're talking about if you just say "Fukuyama". If you want to talk about him you should at least use his full name and cite it, and explain what "End of History" is meant to mean. (I'm assuming you haven't read him in class)
Reading it again I think you should cut the whole paragraph. I know, I'm sorry, but good editing is about knowing which of your babies to kill - I know you put work into this but the next paragraph works as the first one.
Okay I have to go live my life actually, so I'm going to leave you with some general critique:
•There is something here. You've got the potential for a high 90s essay, but it has some weaknesses to be worked out. I don't know how senior English teachers mark even where I live much less what the standards are there, but my guess (which isn't totally ignorant but I don't want to get into why) is that as this stands I'd expect you to get a high B on this, or maybe a low A, based on the standards I'm used to where I live.
•You sometimes add extra words that the sentence doesn't need. Print out the essay and get a red pen - go through and ask yourself if a sentence might not be just as clear, if not clearer, without it. Do the same thing with entire paragraphs. Less is more, unless you're trying to hit a word count. If you are, use the word count to flesh out or justify some of your more polemical claims (see the next point).
•Good writing is about empathy. If you want a good grade on this, I think you should ask yourself how convinced you would feel by this essay if you weren't already three tracts into Lenin. What claims would you need to be supported with a source before they convinced you? What terms would require some explanation or context? Being right doesn't matter - an essay is a path you're building for your reader to follow so they can get to where you are, but to get them to the end of the path they need to feel assured the path is going to take them somewhere they want to go. The length and nature of the path depends on how far you expect your audience to start from your initial position.
•If you have the time, I would suggest another draft. The grammar and spelling seem fine but this kind of reads like a well-edited first draft, mainly because the thread of your argument kind of wavers a bit.
Sorry I have to go - I hope I wasn't being too critical I genuinely think this is good I just kind of want a comrade to be great. You're probably cooler than all your classmates and your teacher. Keep up the good work and good luck!
You were too critical and now I am crying. Red pen is a good suggestion. Somewhat is definitely junk, I got into a habit of using it after reading On Authority.
English teachers have to read and mark essays of this length from all their students? That’s crazy
I had a similar thought, but I think OP @robinn might have gone beyond length requirements in order to better deliver his argument. It's hard for me to imagine a high school teacher imposing a 20 page or so minimum when their students often can't sequester as much time for a single class/assignment like college students can. But hopefully his teacher is cool with how much he wrote lol
I think it's great that you posted this. I annotated it with some comments
Password to access the annotated version is
xzhz4S+H5e5D9y6d
Others feel free to chime in if you have feedback on my feedback!
Edit: The file will automatically delete after 7 days by the way, on Jun 7, 2023, 2:31 AM UTC
a 🤓 nitpick is that 'subaltern' is the generally preferred term within continental theory, at least form what i've read. i've only really heard 'global south' within explicitly marxist spaces. periphery is fine too.
Nah that's fair. I honestly appreciate the correction. Does "continental theory" imply that World Systems Theory falls under the academic umbrella of continental philosophy?
Edit: also do you think my objection to using "third world" lies on overly technical grounds, like is that distinction not strictly relevant?
World Systems specifically isn't directly linked to it but they're more or less adjacent from my understanding. Keep in mind I only did philosophy as an undergrad so I could be misremembering shit. For a university essay I would probably nitpick the Third World part too but it doesn't matter for a high school one.
I appreciate the info. Yeah that makes sense with high school vs college
