2.4 The Importance of Defining a Focus

In setting up your own written or spoken arguments, you need to pay particular attention to defining the focus very clearly. Remember that you are in charge of the argument; you can define it in any way you like, indicating what you are looking at and what you are not looking at. Doing this properly will make constructing the argument very much easier to do properly. If you fail to define the focus, then the reader may legitimately ask why you have not looked at some things included in the general subject.

For example, suppose you wish to write an essay on Hamlet. This is a huge general subject, and you cannot proceed until you have determined what precisely you wish to examine in this large and difficult work of literature (and what you wish to leave out). So you will need to reflect upon what exactly in the play you wish to examine. The process of sorting this out may take a number of steps.

Suppose, for instance, you wish to look at the role of women in Hamlet. That narrows down the subject matter considerably, since there are only two women in the play. But you need not stop there. Do you wish to narrow the focus any more, for example, onto a consideration of one female character, Ophelia? And you can proceed from there to narrow the focus even further onto one aspect of Ophelia's life, her relationship with her father. If you wish the narrowest possible focus, you can further limit the essay to an examination of Ophelia's relationship with her father as it is revealed in a single scene or part of a scene.

By going through this process, you have taken a very large and complicated subject (which you would not be able to deal with satisfactorily in a short essay or even a large research paper), and selected from it a very specific part which will be much easier to manage in the written argument. In fact, as a general rule, the more narrowly and clearly defined the focus is, the easier the essay will be to write.

Remember to take charge of the argument at this stage. It is your case to make, and you can define it as narrowly as you wish, provided you are still looking at something important enough to enable you to make a case.

Students are frequently reluctant to narrow the focus because they are worried about not having enough to say (especially in research papers). Thus, they set themselves from the start an impossible task by choosing to set up the argument on a very wide topic. This mistake you should avoid at all costs.

It is much better to argue in depth and at length about a narrowly defined topic than to offer a superficial cursory look at something much wider. Make sure you understand this point, particularly in setting up a research paper. For example, a paper which looks in detail at, say, the opening three pages of Descartes argument in the Meditations and which confines itself to that small portion of the text will almost invariably produce a more manageable and persuasive paper than one which attempts to deal with the entire content of that complex work.

Students who do not define a clear and narrow focus for the paper almost always end up doing rather poorly, because they commit themselves to a subject too large for detailed treatment in a short paper.

Here are some more examples (in point form) which illustrate the transformation of a very large general subject, through a series of steps, into a sharp and particular focus.

Essay 1
General Subject: Pollution
Focus 1: Air pollution
Focus 2: Acid rain
Focus 3: Acid rain in BC
Focus 4: Acid rain in BC: effects on lakes and rivers
Focus 5: Acid rain in BC: effects on fresh-water fish
Focus 6: Acid rain in BC: effects on trout in the Cowichan River.

Essay 2
General Subject: Alcoholism
Focus 1: Alcoholism in the family
Focus 2: Alcoholism in the family: teenage drinking
Focus 3: Alcoholism in the family: teenage drinking in Nanaimo

Essay 3
General Subject: Popular music
Focus 1: Bob Dylan
Focus 2: Bob Dylan's early lyrics
Focus 3: Bob Dylan's first two albums: their impact on styles of song writing.
Focus 4: Bob Dylan's first two albums: their impact on styles of writing folk songs.

Essay 4
General Subject: The French Revolution
Focus 1: The causes of the French Revolution
Focus 2: The immediate causes of the French Revolution
Focus 3: The immediate causes of the French Revolution: the economic problem

Essay 5
General Subject: Modern Sports
Focus 1: The excessive salaries of top players
Focus 2: The excessive salaries of top players: the NBA
Focus 3: The excessive salaries of top players in the NBA: the New York Knicks

Essay 6
General Subject: Hamlet
Focus 1: The women in the play
Focus 2: The women in the play: Ophelia
Focus 3: Ophelia's relationship with her father
Focus 4: The scene in which Ophelia and Polonius first discuss Hamlet.

Notice what is happening in these lists. The opening subject, which is very large and vague, is being transformed into a very specific narrow sub-topic, which the essay is going to look at. You should always end up with a focus which is much more narrowly defined but which is manageable in a short argument.

An examination of the examples above indicates some of the ways in which you can narrow down the general subject. In dealing with a work of literature, for example, you can limit the focus by looking at a particular character or a particular scene or both. If the general subject is a social issue, you can restrict the focus geographically (by looking, say, only at BC or Nanaimo) or demographically (by considering only teenagers)

This process of narrowing the focus is absolutely essential. The failure to do it properly is a major cause of problems in student essays and especially research papers. Do not say you have not been warned.