Exemplification Essay

Exemplification Essay Requirements

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  Applying AXES to Exemplification

  Assertions

  eXamples

  Explanations

  Significance

  Each of your ideas will seem incomplete if you do not include in your body paragraphs the AXES aspects of analysis. In each body paragraph, try to follow this general structure: introduce your point or assertion; then support that point with evidence (i.e. provide a specific example); then analyze or explain how that example helps to prove your main point; then synthesize that point back with your overarching argument from the thesis statement by exploring the significance of that point.
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  Assertions

  Statements that contain an implicit argument and/or statements which link your arguments to each other and to your thesis. An essay without enough assertions will seem like a list of unrelated facts. On the other hand, a paper with too many assertions will seem unbelievable or overly strident unless you also provide…
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  Examples

  What evidence is there to support your assertions?  The more specific the examples, the more precise the analysis.  If you do not have any examples, the reader will constantly wonder where and how you derived your assertions and consequently may not accept them. An example, however, seldom speaks for itself, and so you also need to provide…
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  Explanations

  What does your example say about your assertion? Does it prove it or complicate it? Without any explanations, the reader is never clear as to how you see the evidence and is forced to second guess your intentions. However, if you simply state, support, and prove your intentions, the reader may respond with indifference unless you also provide…
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  Significance

  Why are your arguments important? How does the passage under scrutiny relate to the piece as a whole? What is important about the text for you, and how does it challenge or confirm your own beliefs? How might it have been received during the time that it was released? Too much emphasis on this area might make your paper seem like a sermon or a long anecdote in which you leave the text behind. These areas may be presented in a variety of orders and may at times overlap. Try to avoid bringing them up in a fixed pattern. Although you want to achieve a balance between each of these aspects, there are times when you may wish to emphasize one over another. However, too often what becomes emphasized is a blend of abstracted examples and general assertions that comes across as a repetitive description. Here is an all too typical example:

  In City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, the greatest director of all time, has created a masterpiece which brings up many issues that were relevant then and are relevant now. For example, he meets a blind flower girl who would not have even noticed him if she could see, thus showing us that love is blind. I can relate to this and would recommend this movie to everyone.

  The above paragraph has an example but passes over it rather than analyzes it. It has significance, but it is stated in general terms that everyone already knows. It simply does not engage the film in a rigorous manner. By sharpening our AXES, it is possible to chop up the previous paragraph and then put it back together in a multitude of ways. A more precise analysis appears below. Not only does the paragraph double in length, but it also focuses on a more specific and intriguing assertion. Which example is more fun to read? Which do you think was more fun to write?

  Chaplin’s set up of the initial meeting between the flower girl and the tramp is a literal representation of how “blindness” may make love possible, especially when society values the wrong things. The tramp, crossing a busy intersection, avoids a cop by moving through a parked limousine. Hearing a car door slam, the flower girl assumes the passenger to be wealthy and asks him to buy a flower. Since she is blind to first appearances, she does not simply dismiss him as one who does not have either the wealth or the dignity for such an extravagance. Once the tramp realizes this, he has hope that his affections may bring him love, something he probably felt was even more unattainable than a flower, given how he has been treated by the others up to this point in the film.

  The blindness sets up both the hope and the tragedy of their relationship and, to various degrees, all relationships. Often people fall in love with an image, “blind” to those qualities in the other person that would complicate that image. However, in a fuller light, that image becomes complicated when we are forced to see the other’s shortcomings. So we all have to choose which qualities and which shortcomings should have the most sway. I can only hope that when the flower girl eventually sees the tramp in his fullness that she will remember that those dressed more respectably simply passed her by, while the tramp took it upon himself to buy one of her flowers with his last coin.