How to Write Better Essays

Alternatively, you may want to suggest the wider implications, or

what you believe to be the future trends: you may want to tell the reader

what you believe has to be done to solve the problems you’ve dis-

cussed, or predict what might happen if the problems are left unre-

solved. This might pick up on the broader issues that go beyond the

limits of the essay, but which you have suggested in the introduction

might become our ultimate concern.

Say, for example, you were writing an essay on the ethical implica-

tions involved in human cloning. In the introduction you might have

pointed to the broader, long-term fears that we might be encouraging

the development of a world in which children can be manufactured by

parents according to their own ideal blueprints, rather like going along

to a genetic supermarket to select the characteristics you most want

in your children. In the conclusion, after your discussion, you may have

decided that this really is a problem that needs to be faced now before

it is too late, or you may want to conclude that the problem has

been overstated. Either way, both would be appropriate as long as they

don’t go beyond the strength of the arguments and evidence you have

presented.

Similarly, if you were discussing a literary text, you might suggest that

the implications of the issues you’ve raised go beyond the scope of your

essay. For example, if you were answering the question, ‘How can the

description of the need for distance at the beginning of chapter 19

ofAdam Bede square with the novel’s more general emphasis on novel-

istic sympathy?’ (Harvard), you might suggest that a study of George

Eliot’s other novels, like Silas Marner andMiddlemarch, would be inter-

esting to see if this apparent contradiction runs throughout her work.

Conclusions 199

In a nutshell

You can do any of the following:

• give your opinions as long as they match the strength of your
  arguments;


• summarise the main points;


• pick up the theme of the introduction;


• suggest wider implications;


• predict future trends.

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