The Five-Paragraph Essay is Born Again
by Aodhán Ridenour
(Opinion) (THIS essay was NOT published in The Rocket; Pt. 1 "The Five-pargraph Essay is Dead" was published November 2024 in The Rocket).
Some of you reading this may remember my Opinion article from last month’s issue of The Rocket, wherein I declared the ubiquitous, basic, unexperimental form of critical essay “Dead” with a capital “D.” And here I am to tell you it is Born Again.
Just this afternoon, I was tutoring a freshman student in the Writing Center. She was writing a classic argumentative essay about an issue at the school, MLA style. We brainstormed for about twenty minutes, then I got up to plot some kind of outline on the whiteboard in magenta dryerase ink.
Her subject, a university utopia where boneless wings are offered as a stand-by option at Quaker for a meal swipe. “Quaker is a wing place, why can’t I get wings?” We compared IUP prices and SRU prices, finding the price varies greatly depending on how many meals you get. We talked about Pathos, Logos, and Ethos, and how the goal of persuasion is to spark a change of heart or soul in the reader. Then I suggested she tie everything together in a neat conclusion.
After sitting down again, I looked up at the whiteboard, beaming at our work, and she said, “Okay, so these three are the body paragraphs, and I can write an introduction.” There it was, spanning across the room, scribbled into her notebook: The 5-Paragraph Essay, alive and well.
On several of my major projects this semester, I personally struggled to determine a “focus.” This is like rule #1 and I’ve been ignoring it for years. My efforts to “follow my flow” have led to some truly experimental essays, and a lot of thumbs ups. Though amidst all the flamboyant, whimsical, expansive skeletons and lyricism, I lost a bit of my edge. I lost my functionality in the broader context. I was magnifying a square inch of pixels when I should have been pausing occasionally to view the entire canvas. Now I’ve got a burn hole on my laptop screen.
As one of my most supportive professors once told me, “Sometimes it helps to put the work of art into a frame.” The 5-Paragraph essay serves a primordial purpose just like a dissertation, a grant proposal, a cover letter, or a table of contents. To kill it is to forget where we came from, and to forget where we came from is to ignore our knowledge.
So, in its honor, today, I bow to the 5-Paragraph essay, and appolgize for killing it before. There is a time and a place for the hyper-structured bureaucratic juggernaut, and every serious writer should be able to put one together on the fly. If anything, to point things out to people in power who need to know.
One thing is for sure: a solid, air-tight “hamburger essay” will help you get a higher score on the SATs. It could also help your clarity of thinking, teach a friend about the health benefits of naps, or, who knows—with enough signatures—bring back boneless wings at Quaker for a meal swipe. 🐻❄️