Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [73]
The conflict between the P.O.U.M. and the rest of the Communist parties was that the P.O.U.M. was staunchly dissident; they were anti-Stalinist and criticized his Purge Trials of the late ‘30s, a huge issue considering that the Soviet Union’s support of the Spanish Communists’ efforts was deemed so crucial. In addition, unlike their counterparts in the P.S.U.C. or Socialist Party of Catalonia, they were very much supporters of the revolution and believed it was a necessary end to the war already underway. The Communists’ aim was to win the war and suppress the coming revolution, believing military efficiency to be superior to revolutionary chaos. These ideological differences, which seem so small to an outsider unfamiliar with party politics, led to the eventual persecution of the P.O.U.M. when the Communists seized power.
[…] The question of revolution or no revolution became the biggest issue within the resistance movement and the failure to reach a consensus combined with the vicious power struggle this resulted in weakened the left critically; the war was no longer about defeating the evil of Fascism, but about petty ideological differences between those who were united by that noble, all-consuming cause.
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Try This 4.7: Looking for Significant Difference or Unexpected Similarity
Choose any item from the list. After you’ve done the research necessary to locate material to read and analyze, list as many similarities and differences as you can: go for coverage. Then, review your list, and select the two or three most revealing similarities and the two or three most revealing differences. At this point, you are ready to write a few paragraphs in which you argue for the significance of a key difference or similarity. In so doing, try to focus on an unexpected similarity or difference—one that others might not initially notice.
1. accounts of the same event from two different newspapers or magazines or textbooks
2. two CDs (or even songs) by the same artist or group
3. two ads for the same kind of product, perhaps aimed at different target audiences
4. the political campaigns of two opponents running for the same or similar office
5. courtship behavior as practiced by men and by women
6. two clothing styles as emblematic of class or sub-group in your school, town, or workplace
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5. SEEMS TO BE ABOUT X BUT COULD ALSO BE (IS “REALLY”) ABOUT Y
Be suspicious of your first responses.
Use the formula “seems to be about X”
to try on alternative ways of understanding.
This is a useful freewriting prompt that helps students get beyond their first impressions and helps them to see that meanings are inevitably plural and that things mean differently in different contexts.
Like the other heuristics in this toolkit, this last one, “Seems to be about X,” prompts you to move beyond potentially superficial explanations—to go deeper. When we begin to interpret something, we usually find that less obvious meanings are cloaked by more obvious ones, and so we are distracted from seeing them. In most cases, the less obvious and possibly unintended meanings are more telling and more interesting than the obvious ones we have been conditioned to see.
The person doing the interpreting too often stops with the first “answer” that springs to mind as he or she moves from observation to implication, usually landing upon a cliché. If this first response becomes the X, then he or she is prompted by the formula to come up with other, probably less commonplace interpretations as the Y.
Step 1: Start the interpretive process by filling in the blank (the X) in the statement “This subject seems to be about X.” X should be an interpretive leap, not