Many of you have asked for sample essays, to use as models for your writing for this class, particularly for the final paper. I have found a number of examples across the internet, and each of these sample papers offers you some models for how to compose a good analytic essay. However, each also has what are sometimes serious flaws; I have tried to point these out in my brief commentary on each. Please take a look at these samples with a critical eye; look at how they work well, but also at potential problems they might have.

Here is an essay on Ernest Hemingway from a College Tutoring Services website. It models basic structure, as well as developmental transitions from paragraph to paragraph, very well. And it shows you how to build paragraphs around key quotations from your source text. However, it has a major flaw: what it presents (in bold) as a thesis lacks almost any argument entirely. The "thesis" here is more like a topic statement. In your own critical writing, avoid terms like "uses," "demonstrates" or "deals with" in any argument statement. You need to say more exactly how or why this happens. Arguments evolve from claims about significance. Why does your interpretation of a text matter? Second, the essay actually does very little careful analysis; the opening paragraph says the writer is going to discuss "close observation," but then never points out how close observation is manifest in the passage that's cited. ALWAYS analyze the language and form of any material that you quote. So, while clearly written, this essay would have received a mediocre grade from me.

Here is a sample essay, a rhetorical analysis of another essay, "Father, Sons, and Hockey". On the plus side, here, the essay engages directly with the language and form (what the rubric calls "techniques and devices"), and there is a clear order of development in the paragraphs. However, again, despite the marker's praise for this piece, the argument statement or thesis is very weak. I'd suggest you think about how you might make it better, more critically focused. Inviting us to "pay attention" to a text isn't an argument. A better argument would address how the writer presents "facts" and why it's important to call that presentation into question. How do strategies based on presenting facts matter to the success of the rhetoric in that initial essay? Also avoid using cliches like "his heart is in the right place" in your own writing. They're ineffective, and undermine your own persuasive power.

Here is a sample essay analyzing a poem by Philip Larkin, "Home Is So Sad." The introduction and analysis are quite good. Notice how the essay builds toward its strongest point or claim. However, the argument statement is still a bit underdone. Notice the limp, meaningless language ("using . . to illustrate"): it would be much improved if the author said how and why the poem maps out the dissolution of hope, poetically or textually.

Click here for some sample essays, broken into parts with commentary. Note how what the page offers as "Satisfactory introductory paragraphs" are actually a mixed bag. Sample A is still pretty argumentatively vague ("reveals" how? and why should we care?), while samples B and C are a bit better. Still, think of ways you could give them better focus and relevance. Why is it significant that we recognize the setting as an antagonist in Updike's story, for example?

Many of the sample papers on this web-page are quite good. Look at the ways in which they narrow down to a single, focused contention, usually in response to a demand to understand how or why the story or essay or poem they're studying works. They are still sometimes flawed, and I'd invite you to consider how you might improve them, but they should give you some idea of how short undergraduate essays can be framed. I hope these samples help you to think about your own writing.