Essay Comparisons

As I read through my Julius Caesar and Alchemist essay I am impressed with my ideas and content. My ideas are always relevant, and my content always supports my claims. Although I express my thoughts and ideas in a more concise manner in my Julius Caesar essay, I still believe that my Alchemist essay is quite impressive, especially having written it during the beginning of the year. One concept that I have clearly improved on is explaining what the quote means. Although I still maintain fluency when I embed my quotes, I lack further explanation, “The boy reached through the Soul of the World, and saw that it was part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles(145). Santiago’s open mind allowed him to follow his destiny instead of continuing the life he had adapted too.” As you can see I have simply skipped explaining the quote, and went directly to my claim. However, in the Julius Caesar essay I never fail to do so, “It must be for his death, and for my part, I know no personal cause to spurn him, but for the general. He would be crone’d: how that might change his nature, there’s the question. (Pg 63) Unlike the other conspirators, Brutus kills Caesar for he assumes that Caesar will be consumed by his ambition when he is crowned.”

I maintain a strong fluency in both my essays for I do not force my ideas or quotes. However, in my Alchemist essay I had to be more verbose to retain it’s fluency, in fact, my Alchemist essay was four pages, while my Julius Caesar was one and a half. In both essays I wrote what I believed was most dominant trait in my last paragraph, for Santiago it was his persistence, and Brutus his honor. The technique of writing about the most dominant trait last is appropriate because throughout reading my essays one works up to knowing the character better and better. In every paragraph for both essays I have strong transition sentences that allow my writing to flow. However, nobody being perfect I still must learn to be more concise.

Comparing my Alchemist essay, which I wrote in the beginning of the year, to my Julius Caesar essay that I have just written recently amazes me. I am proud of how much my reading comprehension has improved, and how much I have grown as a writer. Although my Alchemist essay is reasonably good I must take into consideration the amount of time it took for me to write it, while my Julius Caesar was a timed essay. I needed a lot of help to craft my thesis statement for my Alchemist essay, however in Julius Caesar I wrote my thesis statement in a couple of minutes yet both thesis are of the same quality.

When writing both essays I especially needed to reason critically. A character has many traits that make up their personality, so I needed to reason critically to choose the most dominant traits. Also, I had to be able to explain how the traits contributed to their journey, and back up my claim with evidence.