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like a panic: as if an enemy was in the garden with her” (Doris Lessing, “To Room 19” 2306) [Writer selects evidence]. This “enemy” is a threat to Susan’s carefully planned and structured life, and so she attempts to avoid nature. This becomes an interesting idea as the story clearly shows that Susan longs to yield to that “enemy” and to destroy her ordered existence. [Explains quoted evidence, selecting a particular word that organizes thinking in the text and that she proceeds to apply to the text as a whole] Susan decides she must have a holiday to free herself from the bondage that her children represent, and so she goes on a walking tour of Wales. But she never can truly be unfettered; even on a mountainside, her family is capable of dragging her back to her obligations. In this case, the telephone becomes Susan’s downfall, as Lessing writes, “Susan prowled over wild country with the telephone wire holding her to her duties like a leash” (2313). [Distinguishes organizing contrast in the language of additional evidence (freedom in nature vs. entrapment in domesticity) and uses it to develop claim] […] Susan is forced to deal with an unfaithful spouse instead of being the adulterous one herself. In her mind, sex does have close ties to nature, but she chooses to ignore it as her husband has hurt her by acting upon his passions. It does not seem to be a coincidence that room 19 is entirely green; the curtains, the bed, and the wicker chair all share the same hue. And when Matthew practically forces Susan to create an imaginary lover, she selects the name Michael Plant, an obvious reference to the natural equaling the sensual. [Locates additional evidence to confirm the pattern and further develop her claim]

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Try This 8.3: Using Textual Evidence

Here is another excerpt from the paper on women and nature. Study the passage and answer the following questions. Where do we see the writer’s general claim about the evidence? Where does she select the feature of the text she wants to focus on? How does the cited evidence organize her thinking—on what pattern or organizing contrast?

Chopin also applies the imagery of birds to her heroine, symbolically alluding to Edna’s wish to fly, in a sense, from all her responsibilities. Edna refers to her new home as the “pigeon house,” a place where she thinks she has evaded her husband and children. She asserts her independence in this new dwelling, throwing parties and working on her art. Perhaps the greatest reference to Edna’s tie to birds occurs right before she kills herself. Chopin portrays the scene, “A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.” This bird comes to represent everything Edna has endured up until her breakdown, her suicide “down, down to the water.” Edna can never reconcile her natural sexual instincts, her “broken wing,” with the civilized world she inhabits; society will not let her merge the two domains, and so she resolves to die.

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WHAT DO THE FACTS REALLY TELL US?

In the realm of analysis, there are precious few smoking guns and absolutely reliable eyewitnesses. When there are, you have an open-and-shut case that probably does not need to be argued. It makes sense, then, to avoid thinking that a particular use of evidence is strong and good because the evidence is clearly true and factual, whereas another use of evidence is weak and inadequate because it’s possibly untrue and not factual. Most analytical uses of evidence are a matter of making inferences, interpreting the evidence with subtlety and respect.

To a significant extent, decisions about the value of evidence depend on the kind of claim you are making (how broad, for example, and how conclusive) and the genre you are writing in. What could be appropriate and valid for writing a magazine profile of residents trying to rebuild a poor urban neighborhood might not be appropriate and valid for supporting policy decisions or sociological theories about people in such neighborhoods. The strength of such