Integrating quotations into an essay and using them
effectively.
Here is an extract of a student’s essay. This is the beginning of a paragraph:
“To the dance floor and the girls drifting like flowers”. Here it has associations with nature, the poet is referring to the girls as flowers.
The student presents a relevant quotation and a relevant observation but expression is awkward and repetitive. The order needs to change so that the quotation can be integrated into a sentence.:
The poet refers to “the girls drifting like flowers”.
This is much more concise and the point is made more
clearly. The student can now continue with a detailed exploration of ideas and
analysis of the effects of language:
The poet refers to “the girls drifting like flowers”.
The use of a simile, which compares the girls to natural and delicate
flowers shows the character’s way of seeing the world in relation to
the beauty of nature. The fragility of the girls is emphasised and we can
understand why he feels clumsy.
For these ideas to be made more convincing the quotation could be
longer. A slightly longer quotation would also provide an opportunity for
detailed analysis of a range of techniques. When using a quotation of more than
one line from a poem remember to keep the line structure of the poem:
The poet describes the farmhand watching the girls dancing,
But always his eyes turn
To the dance floor and the girls drifting like flowers
The simile comparing the girls to delicate flowers shows the character’s way of seeing the world in relation to the beauty of nature. The fragility and delicateness of the girls is emphasised by the verb “drifting” and we can sense that he feels clumsy with his “hairy hands”. The character’s feelings are shown in the words which open the stanza, “But always his eyes turn”, he seems reluctant to look and watch “but always” his eyes are drawn to the girls and he is compelled to watch them. The line describing the girls is much longer than the preceding and subsequent lines and this conveys how mesmerising he finds the sight of them on the large space of the dance floor, which he stands apart from. Sounds are important here too, the alliteration of “dance” and “drifting”, “floor” and “flowers” has an entrancing musical quality.