The term interpretation means explaining a meaning of something, it can be an event, method or a piece of literature. By interpretive essay we mean an essay consisting about all the opinions, different perspectives of an event and making judgments about it. Here it should be noted that all opinions written about are formulated by the writer. In simple terms, interpretive writing is about expressing your opinions on the basis of your judgment through how you look at the event or something else like a literature. Let’s take the case, you are suppose to write an essay about literature, it may be a poem, novel, book, character or chapter of a book.
Why writing an interpretive essay? Especially for literature. A literature is a piece of the opinions and judgments of the author and it contains lots of hidden meaning and it varies according to the persons. For instance a book “the Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein published in 1964 is a children book but the meaning behind is quite dark, it is not inappropriate for kids but it exposes the human behavior of how we use our own people for our gain by expressing love to them. Just like that, according to many viewers Charlie Chaplin’s movies are tragic even if it comedy, it consists of dark comedy as we see poverty, illness, class-based society and other suffering after World Wars.
Writing interpretive essay is useful because you need to give your own meanings and opinions unlike exams as you write everything that was present in your textbook without analyses. In my opinion interpretive essays are more convenient for understanding student’s viewpoint and it also encourages student to do in-dept research about the topic or subject but interpretive writing is not suitable for every subjects especially at school levels.
After reading about interpretive essay a question is definitely going to arise, “how to write an interpretive essay”? Here the key of writing a perfect essay lies on understanding the novel or whatever it is. Readers are not going to ask you questions like in exams, they just expect you to demonstrate the ideas and hidden message incorporated in a literature. For example, the novel by Gaston leroux called “the Phantom of the Opera” is a mystery, gothic & horror and romantic novel. However, the viewpoints of situations, characters’ and events’ consequences on the novel, together creates the web of ideas where at one point you are scared of Erik (because he is an opera Ghost O.G and merciless killer) as he is described as a dead head due to deformities. His habit of fooling people by depicting himself ghost and reserving Opera Box number 5 is a villainy act, he fooled Christine Daae by calling himself “Angel of Music”. Further at point readers became fascinated by romance present in novel. Later author introduced the rage and ruthlessness of Erick by introducing the torture room and his madness of burning the whole Opera if Christine would refuse to marry him. After reading some chapters that were showing Erik as a demon, story goes to new direction, that how Erik let Christine go without killing any one. What he wanted for so long was some tears for his tragic life, a kiss on his forehead and he wanted Christine to love him but she was only feeling sorry for him. In the last chapter, Christen called him “Poor Erik” these words made Erik to let her go. So at this chapter, readers felt a tragic scene and here I felt sorry for Erik. (In my opinion Erik was not villain instead a hopeless man whose own mother abandoned him as a child). These all are my viewpoints about Erik and theses will help to write an Interpretive Essay about Erik.
The first step to write for an interpretive essay is to make opinions and that is completed, now another step is to write a short paragraph about information of novel like Author’s name, year of publication. As a writer is writing an interpretive essay he/she first need to include the ideas of others people on that novel by writing “some says” or “according to them”. Then write body of essay, here you write all about your ideas and the hidden message by referring important terms and paragraphs and the change in storyline. It should be noted that the ideas must be original and it should be able to present the insights and it must not be the mere summary of novel.
The structure of an interpretive essay is introduction, main body and conclusion like a simple essay but writer does not need to follow five paragraphs. When a person is writing this type of essay, writer need to acknowledge some questions that are going to emerge in person readers’ mind while reading an essay ;like these ideas are actually correct or just misconceptions of writer. But this happens when a interpreting some historical events or political but interpreting related to literature is beyond the correct and incorrect review. However, counterargument on basis of readers’ question is appreciated if writer includes it before writing the conclusion.
Thus, writing an interpreting essay includes understanding events and making judgments with different perspectives.
