How to make your point in an English Lit essay

When I began the A Level English Literature course, I was daunted by the prospect of having to bring the thoughts and ideas in my head together on one page as a clear, concise, well-explained essay.  Each title we were set for homework seemed utterly overwhelming and I dreaded Sunday afternoons, most of which I had to dedicate entirely to sitting at the computer, agonising for hours over every word.  I struggled on through the AS, but by the time I came to the final A2 exams, I felt I had pretty much mastered the essay-writing technique and I could sit down and write one, without almost having a break-down.  I found that the key to a 'good essay' is choosing a few points (that answer the question) and then explaining them with coherence and clarity, whilst also including relevant quotations and critics (if required by your exam board).  Easier said than done, of course, so I'm going to try and give you an example of the general principle, using one of my essays about the Gothic novel Frankenstein.

The title of this essay is 'Society makes its own monsters'. How far do you agree with this as an assessment of Frankenstein? 
Although you may not be studying Frankenstein, or even the Gothic, the techniques should hopefully be transferable to other texts/genres.

In the introduction, it is important to outline to the reader the points you are going to cover in your essay.  This will give your essay a clear structure and each paragraph that follows should focus on a different one of these points.  In this example, the first paragraph of my essay focuses on the creature (the being created by Dr Victor Frankenstein) and the ways in which he is shown to have become monstrous due to the influence of society.  In order to do this, I firstly need to show the change in his character and link this to the actions of society:

Firstly, when the creature was 'born' into the world, he was of a kind nature and a good heart.  This is shown by the 'joy' and 'pleasure' he experienced when discovering the natural world around him.  As the critic Jane Bathard-Smith said, 'He is a passive, grateful absorber of nature's offerings'. Furthermore, he says 'the girl enticed my love', meaning that he was once capable of producing caring feelings towards humans.

Here, in the opening section of my first paragraph, all I am saying is that the creature is portrayed as having a good character when he first comes into the world.  I have backed this up with quotation from the text, as well as a critical viewpoint.  Next, I need to explain how the creature's character is shown to change, remembering to link this directly to society:

However, after he was 'attacked' and made 'miserable...from the barbarity of man', he began to realise 'the fatal effects of this miserable deformity'.  He is rejected by society due to his monstrous appearance, which implies a criticism of society's shallow values.  A quote that truly sums up the creature's feelings of rejection and change in character is, 'I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?'

In order to access the maximum number of marks in my exam, I need to link every point I make back to the Gothic, because that is the overarching focus of this particular paper. I go on to do this, as well as exploring some linguistic and grammatical features in the text, which is also vital if I want to achieve a good mark:

This introduces the Gothic feature of isolation, as the creature was forced to isolate himself due to man's prejudice towards him.  This sentence is split into past and present and it is interesting to note that the creature says that his 'soul glowed with...humanity'.  He uses the word in the same way that he uses 'love', as though 'humanity' is a strong, positive emotion that is able to be felt.  However, he has learnt that humanity is almost the opposite of that, as it has produced such negative emotions of 'sorrow' in the creature. Therefore, perhaps this sentence emphasises the destruction of his past naivety and innocence by society.

This final sentence brings my point back to the question and shows the reader that I haven't wandered off in another direction with my answer.  These three sections make up the first paragraph of my essay, in which I state, develop and give evidence for a clear point.  In the remainder of my essay, I go on to introduce another point about the effect of society on the creature and then three points about society's impact on Victor Frankenstein.  I split my essay in this way because I decided to explore the idea that both these characters can be described as 'monsters', which I discuss in my introduction.

Hopefully this example has demonstrated how to make and develop your points in an essay.  It's all very well having the ideas, but getting them down on paper in a way that will get you the marks is often a lot trickier!

Please feel free to ask me any questions by commenting below.  But first, check out this squirrel: 

(http://cute-animals.vidzshare.net/)