Metal Reviews

The thread for students. Exchange questions, help each other out. I'll start it off by posting one of my essays for criticism. Feel free to do the same, I promise I'll read it!



Because I want to show off, and because I want criticism on how to improve my writing, here it is. Tear it apart.

The great limitation of the human being is the fear of thinking for oneself, of relying on oneself, of abandoning all forms of support that the individual is convinced he needs. For Nietzsche, the great crutch of humanity is Christianity. In his 1888 book The Antichrist, he argued that as long as men feel the need to rely on religion to give them purpose, they will never reach their full potential. Pity is not a virtue, as it fosters weakness; religious lies distract people from the true purpose of living, that of self-empowerment and striving to the superhuman ideal; and a people that need to have a God to ensure their good behaviour and a Satan to take the blame for their bad behaviour will never learn self-reliance or any form of responsibility. In many ways, the Samsa family finds itself just as attached to its crutch, in their case Gregor, and will never make their lives worth living unless they abandon what they imagine to be a necessary support.
Gregor is not quite an ideal parallel to Christianity, obviously, as he is a conscious entity capable of forethought and setting himself objectives, and not a metaphysically based system of belief and ethics, but the effect that Christianity has on its believers and that Gregor has on his family can successfully be compared for psychosocial analysis. The relationship between the crutch and the cripple has a common function. For the Samsas, living in entreguerre Europe, filial duty and submission come as a natural way of life, and Gregor and his family never stop to question the financial arrangement of the household. It seems to be a natural product of their society that they all fit so easily and comfortably into this way of life. The harm that this blind acceptance has on Gregor is obvious, for it is he who bears the brunt of the work. But the obligation to maintain perceived social standards has a harmful effect on the family as well, although less noticeable than that on Gregor.
The family has become so used to Gregor working for them that their self-reliance has atrophied and withered away, like a hallucinogen user slipping further and further into his apparently sustaining lifestyle. They don’t even consider the possibility of any other working habit; they just assume that this is the best way for them. As such, they never attempt to engage in any activity necessary for their own survival. Gregor never does anything life-affirming because he is constantly working to bring in money for his family; his family never does anything life affirming because they never have to work to make their life possible in the first place. How can you give something value if you never have to struggle to have it in the first place?
Just as the Samsas unfalteringly accept the passive position on the receiving end of the bargain, so do many believers in Christianity unthinkingly accept the religious outlook on life as non-debatable fact. As Richard Dawkins so poignantly points out in the foreword to his book The God Delusion, the vast majority of people who live by Christian rules and Christian ideals do so only because it is the only thing they have ever known and because they didn’t know they could leave. This means that they are born and raised with belief in a certain set of moral perspectives, which condition not only their everyday actions, but their psychological makeup as well, and, according to Nietzsche, impede them from reaching happiness and their full potential as human beings. For Nietzsche religion is a lie that detracts from human value, and that to be truly respected as a person and achieve any sort of independence and strength, it is necessary to free yourself from delusional beliefs. Are you more moral if you act morally out of fear of divine judgement, or if you act morally out of a sense of personal morality and decency? Are you stronger if you live for yourself or if you live for an imaginary friend?
The Samsas experience a similar form of enlightenment and liberation, which leads to their improvement as human beings once their crutch is taken away from them with Gregor’s metamorphosis. During Gregor’s period as an insect, the family undergoes a period of confusion and fear, not unlike a believer having a faith crisis. Once Gregor finally dies, however, the family emerges from their home with new life, having been struck by a sense of hope, not unlike someone who views the world without reference to his previous faith. The new life, nay, the very joie de vivre is characterized in Grete, who represents “the confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when at the end of the ride their daughter got up first and stretched her young body.” (42)

I feel a sudden urge to listen to Deicide.

THERE IS DARKNESS
IN HIS EYES
AND YOU WON'T SEE IT
BEFORE YOU DIE

Yeah baby.

Well bearing in mind that I know absolutely nothing about either Nietzsche or Kafka, it seems fairly well written to me.

Is that all or just a segment? If the former, I'd say you need more of a seperate conclusion and introduction. Spell out as clearly as possible exactly why the comparison between Gregor dying and the loss of religious blindness works. I don't know whether you're handing this in on the assumption that the professor will know the story well enough to understand it all, but if not you would probably need to begin with the dull task of setting out key elements of Gregor's character and what happens etc. I don't mean an actual synopsis, just point out which plot and character elements are most important for your purposes.

It also could be a bit opinionated for an academic essay. The only source other than Kafka or Nietzche you bring in is Dawkins, which may be fine, but it's probably better to keep a critical distance from him rather than talking about how poignant the God Delusion is.

Apart from that, is this



reference to drugs relevant to the piece or is it your own poetic license? If the latter, I dunno how it fits in an academic piece of work.

Anyway, please bear in mind that I don't know about your subject and I'm hardly the worlds greatest academic myself... my supervisors think a lot of my writing sucks so don't take the things I say as gospel.

Serious-cat-ly, Rio's right. Actual quotations might help, if you can fit them into the flow well, and is the essay exclusively on Neet-she's Anti-religion, because it seems like you've focused on that mostly.

Well, it's a group assignment, and part of the guidelines was to avoid summaries, as the teacher knows the story well enough. My topic was a comparison between Nietzsche's anti-religiosity and the characters in the Metamorphosis (which, coincidentally, you should read, it's extremely short and very very good).


There are no drugs in the literary work, it's my own comparison. Is it too poetic?

^Too not-academic mainly.

It works but The Anti-Christ isn't my first choice when it comes to Nietzsche. A comparison to the Genealogy of Morals would've been interesting but I don't know how it'd work.

You're essay isn't too bad; the ideas seem to be right on. Maybe describe how the family relies on Gregor and maybe draw comparisons to Christians' weaknesses. The ending, the turning point for the family, the Nietzschean embrace of life needs to maybe be explained a bit more, fleshed out.

What's not-academic? Bear in mind that I'm 18 and writing this for a pre-college IB diploma course (my classmates are 16-17), so the standard isn't that high, but if you have advice I'd love to hear it.

The reference to Christians being on hallucinogenics and the reference to the "poignancy" of Dawkins aren't academic, I would say. It seems a bit like your own preconceptions are coming through too much and you're not adopting enough critical distance.

It probably doesn't matter too much at the 18 yr old level, but you want to structure in an introduction and conclusion. This is very important for any and all academic work. The introduction should explain why you have chosen to study this specific question and make the comparisons you have done. Not to mention, precisely what the specific question is, as above you leave it a bit too much to the intuition of the reader to work out what your key enquiry is.

The conclusion should summarise your arguments and say something like "therefore it is clear that..." or words to that effect.

They don't have to be long at all; even just a couple of sentences.

I have to write a stupid 10 page essay about loneliness and depression in the elderly.

lame sauce.

It's not comparing Christians to drug users, it's comparing the Samsa's dependancy onto Gregor to a drug addiction.

There has to be a better metaphor for dependence than just drug addiction.

Sure there is, it's just what I happened to think of.

Well you may want to consider one of the other options. The reader builds an emotional response and when they see drug use equated to samsa's family equated to christianity, the emotion may not be good for your grade. Plus Dawkins is such an iffy character to quote.

I could substitute him with Harris... Or maybe Russell.

I have to do macroanalysis of 4 Bach pieces. Bach did some crazy shit.

Harris is probably worse, but Russell probably better.

What's involved in a macro-analysis?

semenary hehe

looks good Fridge. if i'd written it, i would have talked more about adherence to tradition rather than Christianity specifically, but it works pretty well. just some random other comments:


i'm not sure if this sentence is grammatically correct. lists usually need to be tacked on to another sentence. it does have complete sentences inside the list though, so i'm not sure how that works.


i would split this sentence into two, probably starting with "The effect Christianity has on its believers..." because that's the subject of the paragraph.



i've been warned by my teachers against rhetorical questions, unless you answer them later in the paper.

In 4 part voice writing, it's going through the piece, marking all the chords and their inversions in roman numeral notation, and identifying marking all the nonharmonic tones. It's kinda tedious, but it really helps you see what goes on in a piece.

And my printer wouldn't print out the sheet right, so I have to go on writing each and every note on a piece of my own staff paper. Buh.

So it's just basic notation? Do you use it as a diving board for more in depth analysis?
Sorry for the questions, but I'm considering studying composition at the Conservatory instead of trying to find something decent to do at a University.