Use of quotes in your paper

You always hear me saying, “don’t summarize,” “use specifics,” “you need quotes from the text,” but why? Why do you need to use specifics? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you USE a quote to benefit  your paper?

A Quote as support vs. use of summary as support

Rios cleverly uses a point-by-point comparison and varied sentence structure to show the differences between how things used to be and how things are now, since the proverbial rug has been pulled out from underneath them. He talks about how everything changed from the teachers to the girls to school in general, and this change is shown by his sentence structure. He alternates long sentences to describe the problem and short sentences to punctuate the change. This is very effective.

Rios skillfully uses a point-by-point comparison to show the differences between how things used to be and how things are now, since the proverbial rug has been pulled out from underneath them. “There were teachers now, not just one teacher, teach-erz, and we felt personally abandoned somehow.” The phonetic spelling of “teach-erz” emphasizes that it was no longer one teacher, who they knew and trusted taking care of them; on the contrary, the “erz” sarcastically stresses that multiple teachers are not the answer to their crisis of transition, thus making them feel “abandoned.” The next point in his comparison is how they viewed the presence of females…

A Quote as inspiration

 What the reader must understand is that to say Fitzgerald is simply talking about the American dream is myopic. As James Miller puts it, “It [The Great Gatsby] transcends its time to reveal something about America, American character, and the American dream.” Specifically, it reveals the American character when yearning for our (American) dreams. Look at what the characters in this novel can justify to themselves in the name of achieving their dream – scandal, cheating, lying, destroying the lives of those with whom they come in contact. Tom Buchanan, for example…

A Quote as refutation

Gatsby is an all aspects a tragic character, but to make the jump that he is somehow a Christ-figure is a stretch. Douglas Taylor argues that, “Fitzgerald develops the general character of Gatsby’s experience to correspond with that of the life and agony of Christ.” While their optimism in their dream for the world and their martyr status may be unarguable parallels to draw other comparisons between a selfless, giving man who lived by The Golden Rule and a self-absorbed, lovelorn man who believes if he has gold he can rule is absurd. Looking at the characters. of Christ and Gatsby, their motivations, and their actions the plausibility that this was Fitzgerald’s intent diminishes exponentially. Look at their character to begin…