On Introductions

Intro­duc­tions, when used prop­erly, can be pow­er­ful devices to cap­ti­vate read­ers. Most often, unfor­tu­nately, our intro­duc­tions become trite and bland. We often fill the form with the sub­stance instead of allow­ing the sub­stance to deter­mine the form (though this ideal should be as equally applied to the greater essay, not sim­ply the intro­duc­tion). A few sim­ple mea­sures can be taken to con­sid­er­ably improve your introductions—though exe­cu­tion is always the dif­fi­cul­ties. It is impor­tant to remem­ber the pur­pose of intro­duc­tions. I hope to address this here, and later, exam­ine a few exam­ples, that while be far from being per­fect, achieve their intended purpose.

The great­est nov­els and works of fic­tion are writ­ten to con­vey a mes­sage. The con­struc­tion of the plot—and the char­ac­ters, set­ting therein—is sim­ply the medium by which the author attempts to con­vey that idea, that mes­sage. Sto­ries exist—aside from their pos­si­bil­ity of intrin­sic beauty—in order to induce a feel­ing of enlight­en­ment in the reader that often has lit­tle to do with the plot itself. When the sequence of events is stripped away from the novel, we are left with a few core themes that can be applied to other such sto­ries and plots. It is imper­a­tive that you under­stand this when for­mu­lat­ing your intro­duc­tion.
Are you writ­ing an essay con­cern­ing the sub­stance inher­ent in the fic­tion, or the medium? Most often, essays writ­ten as assign­ments are sub­stan­tive; that is, they attempt to show a preva­lent theme or explain analy­sis of a char­ac­ter. The focus on medium is a bit rare and these essays tend to explain why cer­tain writ­ers wrote the way that they did or why the plot is in the state that it is. If your essay is about the form or the medium, then you want to address the intrin­sic qual­i­ties of that form: for what pur­pose does this chap­ter serve? Why are cer­tain con­ver­sa­tions in another lan­guage? Why does the pro­gres­sion spo­rad­i­cally jump from set­ting to set­ting?
For all crit­i­cal essays, the pur­pose of your intro­duc­tion is to intro­duce the reader to the con­cept you will be lay­ing before him or her later in the body para­graphs. When your paper regards sub­stance, then you want to address—in the introduction—those “big ideas” or themes that the author con­veys through the novel. Let’s take a look at an exam­ple of mine, writ­ten as an intro­duc­tion to a “would-be” essay respond­ing to the fol­low­ing quote:

“That’s the whole bur­den of this novel– the loss of those illu­sions that give such color to the world so that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they par­take in the mag­i­cal glory”
F. Scott Fitzger­ald
(Refer­ring to The Great Gatsby)

Intro­duc­tion:

It has oft been told that those who returned from World War I–the advent of trench war­fare, mech­a­nized bat­tle, the likes–were calami­ties of a war not afflict­ing only the body, but the mind. Those who returned often met dis­placed wives and matured chil­dren with an air of pas­sive indif­fer­ence, albeit masked by the per­cep­tion of fam­ily love and a sup­posed alacrity for social responsibility–strangers in their own homes. Per­haps this is why they became so afflicted by exces­sive intox­i­ca­tion and con­sump­tion: in attempt to rec­on­cile with an irrec­on­cil­able past, the tragic solider lin­gered between two worlds; torn by the impos­si­bil­ity of return­ing to either one com­pletely. Gertrude Stein coined them, “the lost gen­er­a­tion”. Super­fi­cial­ity per­vaded the 1920s; a thin cloak of drunken rev­elry masked the pain and suf­fer­ing. The real tragedy of that era was their suf­fer­ing was marred by a veil. And when the veil ripped, torn in two, then, then we expe­ri­enced Fitzgerald’s “crack up”. Though Gatsby did not return from the soldier’s beloved war, the bur­den of an exis­tence between two immov­able world’s throbbed in his soul so that with every action, every move, he became some­how closer, yet far­ther from real­iz­ing his dream; the Gatsby ele­ment of tragedy.

The essay would pro­ceed to expand on Gatsby’s predica­ment and show how “with every action, every move, he became some­how closer, yet far­ther from real­iz­ing his dream”. It would be sub­stan­tive: illu­mi­nat­ing Fitzgerald’s per­spec­tive of super­fi­cial­ity in the 1920s; dis­il­lu­sion­ment in the Amer­i­can dream; et cetera. If the essay were con­jec­ture on why Fitzger­ald chose Gatsby as his pawn and moved him as he did, the essay would be one regard­ing the medium. Notice how, in the para­graph above, I don’t even refer to the novel The Great Gatsby until the end of the pas­sage. This allows for a more cre­ative open­ing few lines—sometimes referred to as the hook. By refrain­ing from even men­tion­ing the author or novel, I have the lib­erty to address the pre­sid­ing themes prop­erly. I focus on the dis­il­lu­sion­ment, though my the­sis regards Gatsby. I focus on one aspect of what Fitzger­ald was try­ing to say, instead of focus­ing on how he said it. I give the stage a back­drop. This also allows for an implicit thesis—which can be far more pow­er­ful than an explicit one. The implicit the­sis can be drawn out over sev­eral sen­tences and some­times, when the the­sis itself is too chunky or awk­ward to state alone, can be sim­ply implied. Fur­ther­more, by refrain­ing from address­ing the par­tic­u­lar case of Fitzger­ald and Gatsby, I have given the reader a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what the paper is about and how the con­clu­sion will tie it all together.

Let’s look at another exam­ple. I wrote this intro­duc­tion as an opener to an essay on Shakespeare’s forg­ing of Ham­let and why he con­structed the play the way that he did.

In order to appease pub­lish­ers and the gen­eral public—I can only assume—many con­tem­po­rary writ­ers have let go of cer­tain aspects of their prose. Per­haps edi­tors have deemed cer­tain pas­sages, or entire chap­ters, as super­flu­ous or con­vo­luted and muddy, and have struck those pieces to man­u­fac­ture a final, lin­ear prod­uct. This process of com­mer­cial­iza­tion must be some­what tax­ing on the writer. He must aban­don some of his impetu­ous ideas to revi­sion, and in an obscure way, his book loses a bit of its truth—or at least a part of the entire truth the writer seeks to con­vey. His deep­est thoughts may be the most con­tra­dict­ing, or con­fus­ing, or pecu­liar, but that the writer felt the urge to put them to paper should sig­nify that some­thing important—congruous with the essence of what the writer means to say—lies between those lines of text. In the end, the writer may assent, and toss out “the rub­bish”, but he does so with a heavy heart.
Many of our grand­est ideas come to us in brief moments of ecstasy. To some of us, these thoughts—or often in this case, a sin­gle coher­ent thought—crash down upon our minds like a great wave; to oth­ers, these thoughts buzz about our heads like flies, and we are unable to make sense of them—let alone one—unless we are for­tu­nate enough to catch and slowly fos­ter them to com­pre­hen­sion. Despite the means by which those thoughts come to us, at these pin­na­cles of rev­e­la­tion, we become absolutely over­whelmed with passion—an emo­tion that knows no bounds or lim­its, an emo­tion “that cries out in the soul, throbs inces­santly in the mind” and excites the heart. It is a pas­sion that leaves us hun­ger­ing for more, a pas­sion that com­pels us to progress, but to leave noth­ing behind. It is this pas­sion that is cen­tral to both Shakespeare’s forg­ing of Ham­let and the char­ac­ter of Ham­let himself.

Here, I actu­ally break the intro­duc­tion into two seem­ingly unre­lated para­graphs. The essay as a whole per­tains to the form of Ham­let, but I intro­duce it in a way that could almost be applic­a­ble to any com­men­tary on form. I start with my own thoughts on the process of writ­ing, edit­ing, and pub­lish­ing. This analy­sis hardly per­tains exclu­sively to Shakespeare’s forg­ing of Ham­let, but it is cer­tainly applic­a­ble. Once again, I refrain from men­tion­ing Shake­speare or Ham­let until the final sen­tence, yet this time, the the­sis is a bit more explicit. I con­sol­i­date my big idea (the force of pas­sion) into one cul­mi­nat­ing sen­tence. How­ever, remem­ber that it is not nec­es­sary to inte­grate your the­sis into this same posi­tion. The two exam­ples I’ve illus­trated sim­ply hap­pen to do so. Your the­sis could appear any­where in your intro­duc­tion, or even later in your paper. It’s all up to you.
When writ­ing about sub­stance, the most com­mon mistake—though there are exceptions—is men­tion­ing the medium too early. Do not start your essay with “In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises”. You will lose your read­ers. Take the time to explore; use artis­tic lib­erty in your prose. Intro­duc­tions can be equally as pow­er­ful as con­clu­sions and are often under­ap­pre­ci­ated because they are not done with the same pas­sion or intent to let the sub­stance find the form (as opposed to fill­ing the form). Of course, take all of this as you wish. The dif­fer­ences between sub­stan­tive essays and those regard­ing the medium can be quite sub­tle. Often, it is dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish between the two. More­over, the type need not dras­ti­cally affect your intro­duc­tion. There is no branded “intro­duc­tion for sub­stan­tive essays” or “intro­duc­tion for essays per­tain­ing to the medium”; the best thing to do is sim­ply keep in mind which cat­e­gory your essay falls into and write an intro­duc­tion that does the body of your paper justice.

• Photo by Marco Mur­ray / Used with Per­mis­sion