With an analysis thesis in hand, the essay follows the writer’s moves. The most useful plans go through the text in order, or take one major strategy per section, always with short quotations and commentary.
Key idea
Why it works
Plan for an essay on Douglass’s oration
- Introduction: the situation (July 5, 1852; Rochester; an anti-slavery audience; a holiday celebrating liberty) and the thesis.
- Move 1, the modest opening: “has stronger nerves than I have”; effect: goodwill and trust.
- Move 2, the refusal to argue: “Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery?”; effect: treats the answer as obvious, which makes any defense of slavery look absurd.
- Move 3, the turn: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?”; effect: separates the speaker from the holiday and turns the celebration into an indictment.
- Conclusion: how the moves build from trust to indictment.
Quoting in analysis
Quote a few words, not whole paragraphs, and weave them into your sentences: Douglass asks his listeners what “your 4th of July” means to a slave. Then spend more words on commentary than on quotation.
Worked example: One body paragraph
- Topic sentence names the move and its job: Douglass finally separates himself from the celebration.
- Quotation: he calls it “your 4th of July,” not ours.
- Commentary: the pronoun shuts him out of the holiday, and the audience, who invited him to celebrate, must face why.
- Tie to purpose: this prepares them for the indictment to come.
Answer: “Douglass finally separates himself from the holiday. By calling it ‘your 4th of July,’ he shuts himself out of the celebration his hosts invited him to join, forcing them to ask why a free man of their own town cannot share it, and preparing them for the indictment that follows.”
Common mistake