If you are making an argument, you can’t persuade without providing evidence. That is why your teachers are always asking you to quote from the text. You need to point out to your reader the textual examples that led you to your conclusions. In doing so, you hope to bring your reader to the same conclusions.
Picking good quotes is one skill; presenting quotes is another. If you want your reader to see the quote as you do, you need to be smart in how you present it.
There are two basic steps to skillful quoting:
“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (30). This quote shows that Marlow sees his steamboat trip up the Congo as more than just a geographical journey but a trip through time.
The example above violates Step #1. It is a well-chosen quote, and there is an attempt to explain its significance, but it comes out of nowhere.
These next two are effective:
For Marlow, the steamship is taking him not only up a river but “back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (30). Marlow is telling us that the journey is symbolic for something deeper.
For Marlow, the steamship trip up the Congo is also a journey through time: “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (30). Because everything, even the “vegetation,” is a metaphor, the reader understands that Marlow’s own journey is a metaphor.
Both have their strengths. I like how the first example gracefully weaves the set-up and the quote into the same sentence. This is made possible by trimming the quote. It is always advantageous to reduce a quote to its relevant core.
The last example is excellent of its use of surgical quoting: spotlighting individual words or phrases that illustrate your point.
Posted by Justin Wells : 12/04/2008