an Essay on an Essay about Essays

"The mediaeval man thought in terms of the Thesis, where the modern man thinks in terms of the Essay. It would be unfair, perhaps to say that the modern man only essays to think - or, in other words, makes a desperate attempt to think. But it would be true to say that the modern man often only essays, or attempts, to come to a conclusion. Whereas the mediaeval man hardly thought it worth while to think at all, unless he could come to a conclusion. That is why he took a definite thing called a Thesis, and proposed to prove it." G.K. Chesterton 'On Essays'

I apologize for the title of this entry, but it at once captures the purpose of this essay while also naming the Inception-like nature of its purpose. Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote over 4,000 essays between 1874 & 1936. On a weeklong trip to Costa Rica filled with hours on a plane between Fort Lauderdale & San Jose, I read fifty essays by G.K. Chesterton. One such essay concerned essays, or rather, a specific problem that Chesterton saw with essays & essayists in his generation. The above passage from 'On Essays' spells out Chesterton's problem. When the practice of writing essays becomes a project to arrive at a conclusion, writing essays becomes a process of written thought-processing that may or may not lead to a conclusion worth thinking. To an older generation of writers, the process of formal writing started with a Thesis (the final outcome of one's thought process). In this essay, I follow Chesterton's thesis and advance my own: if Chesterton saw a problem with essays as attempting conclusions, then today's problem with students aversion to writing essays is a failure to attempt to attempt conclusions worth thinking.

The Problem of the Process

My first introduction to a proper thesis did not occur until college. Until then, I falsely believed that the purpose of writing academically was to find a thread between an array of sources, and the writer's job was to string together direct quotes from sources in an organized way. At the end of this process, you might find something new you didn't know before. It was a shock, then, for a professor to ask me what I thought about Sam Harris and expect me to defend my position. I quoted Harris well, but I failed to say anything substantial. Apparently my flashes of specified knowledge did not amount to a proper conclusion about the man's work.

Chesterton's problem with the essay process amounted to a re-structuring of the relationship between writing & thought. He would look at my high school essays and discover a moderately-well-read student with very little argumentative power. Now, half my work of writing involves crafting & re-crafting  a thesis. "What is worth saying about this subject & how do I articulate/defend it well?" For Chesterton, as far as I can tell, that is closer to the process of writing to which we ought to aspire. It requires finished thought before the writing.

Now, Chesterton's 'On Essays' was not intended to be an account against the writing of essays. Rather, he intended to name a particular problem in the process, the problem of short-cutting the thinking & writing process by making them essentially one and the same. The problem with that process is it leaves the reader with what might be a conclusion worth thinking, but more so, it leaves the writer with the exact same thing. If the reader is disappointed, certainly the writer should be much more so. But Chesterton also saw that the problem with the process might stem from & ultimately contribute to a problem of the people.

The Problem of the People

When Mrs. Craft instructed me to write an essay about A Tale of Two Cities when I was in eighth grade, I now believe she was inviting me to discover something beautiful in the book. The purpose of essays for most students, it seems, concerns the process of discovery. Discovery is the greatest ally for the educator: simply telling a student something is no fun, and don't worry, the look on their faces after a lecture full of 'telling' will surely reflect this reality.

Yet, Chesterton saw that the danger with essays laid not so much in the essay itself, but in the person writing the essay. All writing is a process of discovery, and in turn, it forms the person doing the writing & thinking necessary to discover something worth saying. There is one kind of discovery in writing to find a conclusion. There is another kind of discovery in articulating a thesis & defending it. The former discovery is an invitation to a richer account, the latter discovery is the discovery of maturity & mastery of thought.

If people in Chesterton's day erred in treating essays as an attempt towards that initial discovery, then people in our world err in treating essays with contempt. Students in my generation, from what I remember, preferred good old multiple choice over essays, and should we be required to write an essay, it was a game to fill in as much information in the allotted time. People today, particularly students, tend, on the whole, to treat writing essays with contempt. If we inherit the problem that Chesterton named in 'On Essays', then we might be experiencing the next step of the problem of the process. We might become a people who contempt essays. Contempt will short-cut an attempt to write an essay, in turn never opening that initial discovery which invites one into maturity & mastery. If Chesterton is correct, and I happen to believe he is on this issue, then my responsibility is to think & write well, not merely for the sake of writing a good essay, but to become the kind of person who matures & masters thought worth thinking. I will be the first to tell you that I have far to go on any sort of maturity & mastery of thought. But for now, it starts with an essay a day.

-HGM