Commentary and the Line of Reasoning: Study Guide (English Literature 3.7)

What commentary is

In Topic 3.6 you wrote a thesis. Commentary is how the essay defends it. It is your explanation of the relationships among three things:

1. the evidence (details or quotations from the text),
2. the line of reasoning (the sequence of claims in your essay), and
3. the thesis (the overall interpretation).

A quotation does not argue anything on its own. Commentary tells the reader what the quotation shows, how it shows it and why that matters to the claim and the thesis. Evidence is effective when the commentary explains the logical relationship between the evidence and the claim, and sufficient when its quantity and quality give apt support. You will return to choosing evidence in Topic 3.8.

Evidence, paraphrase and commentary

Consider a sentence about Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”.

Type	Example	What it does
Evidence	Macbeth says time “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day”.	Supplies a detail
Paraphrase	Macbeth says that time moves slowly each day.	Restates the evidence
Commentary	The verb “creeps” and the adjective “petty” give time the movement of a small creature and the weight of something trivial, so that the days seem both slow and meaningless.	Interprets how the words work

Commentary is the third type. It uses words such as “suggests”, “shows”, “so”, “which means” and “because”, and it names a choice the writer has made.

Levels of commentary

A short ladder helps you judge your own writing.

Level	What it does	Example
1. Paraphrase	Restates	“He says tomorrow is slow.”
2. What it shows	Names the effect	“This shows that time feels slow to him.”
3. How it works	Explains the writer’s choice	“The repetition of ‘tomorrow’ and the verb ‘creeps’ make time seem endless and mean.”
4. Why it matters	Links to claim and thesis	“…so Macbeth’s loss of meaning, which the play has built since the murders, is expressed in how he feels time itself.”

Aim for levels 3 and 4 in every body paragraph.

The line of reasoning

A line of reasoning is the logical sequence of claims that together defend the thesis. It is the route your argument takes. Good lines of reasoning have features like these:

• Each claim supports the thesis directly.
• The claims are ordered, so that one prepares for the next (from simple to complex, from early to late, from cause to effect, or from a surface meaning to a deeper one).
• The claims do not repeat each other.
• Commentary makes the links explicit (“This leads to…”, “More than a change of mood, this is…”).
• A claim may qualify or complicate an earlier one (“although…, the narrator also shows…”) when the text requires it.

A line of reasoning is communicated through commentary. Without commentary, the reader sees a pile of quotations; with it, the reader sees an argument.

Worked example 1: evidence-to-commentary in a public-domain play

Thesis (for this example): In Act 5, Macbeth’s language shows that the murders have emptied his world of meaning.

Evidence: after hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death, Macbeth says:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Step 1: What it shows. Macbeth describes life as repetitive, short and without purpose.

Step 2: How it works.

• The threefold “tomorrow” repeats like the days it names, and the verb “Creeps” with “petty pace” makes time small and slow.
• “brief candle” and “walking shadow” turn life into something that is quickly lit and quickly gone, and a shadow has no substance of its own.
• The “poor player” who “struts and frets his hour” compares life to bad acting that disappears when it is over.
• The final comparison, “a tale / Told by an idiot”, sets “sound and fury” against “Signifying nothing”, so that noise and energy are given no meaning.

Step 3: Why it matters. Earlier in the play Macbeth acts in the belief that the throne will give him lasting value. Here every image of life is empty or temporary. The speech therefore supports the thesis because Macbeth’s own images remove the meaning that his actions were meant to secure.

Step 4: Combine into a paragraph.

Macbeth’s response to news of his wife’s death shows that the murders have drained his world of meaning. The repeated “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” mimics the days it names, and the verb in “Creeps in this petty pace” makes time both slow and trivial. As the speech continues, life becomes a “brief candle”, a “walking shadow” and finally “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing”: each image is quickly lit, insubstantial or without sense. These images matter because Macbeth killed to gain something lasting; now every image of life undermines the idea that anything he has done could last or mean something, so his language itself exposes the cost of his ambition.

Step 5: Check. The paragraph has evidence in short embedded phrases and three levels of commentary: what the speech shows, how particular words work, and why they matter to the thesis.

Worked example 2: fixing thin commentary (public-domain short story)

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (1894), as Mrs. Mallard sits alone, she feels something “creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air”, and then “a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’”

Claim: Chopin presents Mrs. Mallard’s new feeling as a force from outside that overcomes her will.

A thin version:

Mrs. Mallard feels something coming out of the sky. She whispers “free, free, free!” This shows she feels free.

Diagnosis. Sentence 1 paraphrases; sentence 2 only quotes; sentence 3 repeats the quotation. There is no how and no why.

A stronger version:

Chopin presents Mrs. Mallard’s new feeling as a force from outside that overcomes her will. The feeling is “creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color”, which gives it the movement of something that approaches her from the world, not from her thought. The verb “creeping” suggests that it advances before she can name it, and the list of “sounds … scents … color” shows it arriving through all of her senses at once. When she “abandoned herself” and whispers “free, free, free!”, the repeated word, spoken “under her breath”, marks a feeling she cannot control or conceal. The commentary on these details supports the claim that the feeling is not a decision but a change that happens to her, which prepares the story’s later contrast between this private freedom and what others expect of her.

What improved. The second version quotes less and explains more. It names the choice (“creeping”, the list of senses, the repeated word), says what each does, and links the result to the claim and to what follows.

A line of reasoning in outline (public-domain novel)

Thesis: Austen shows that Elizabeth’s change is a change of self-knowledge, so that the novel treats insight into oneself as the condition for judging others fairly.

A line of reasoning in three claims:

1. Claim 1: At the outset Elizabeth’s confidence in her own judgement shapes how she reads others. (Evidence: her early firm opinion of Darcy, and her phrase in Chapter 36, “I, who have prided myself on my discernment!”)
2. Claim 2: Darcy’s letter forces her to turn that judgement on herself. (Evidence: “She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.”)
3. Claim 3: Her new self-knowledge is presented as the cause of her fairer judgement. (Evidence: “Till this moment, I never knew myself”, and her changed view of Darcy afterwards.)

The claims are in order of the character’s development, they do not repeat, and each supports the thesis. Commentary then links them: the first shows what she believes, the second shows what breaks that belief, and the third shows what replaces it.

Strong and weak commentary

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“This quotation shows his state of mind.”	Names no choice; vague	“The repeated ‘tomorrow’ makes his days seem to run on without end or point.”
“Macbeth says life is meaningless.”	Paraphrase	“By calling life ‘a tale / Told by an idiot’, Macbeth turns his own story into noise without sense.”
“This supports my point.”	Asserts without showing	“This supports the claim because every image of life here is brief or empty, which is what the murders were meant to prevent.”

Common misconceptions

• “A longer quotation is more evidence.” What matters is what you do with it. Short, well-chosen phrases with commentary are stronger.
• “Commentary is a summary of the evidence.” Commentary interprets and explains the writer’s choices.
• “Commentary belongs at the end of the essay.” It belongs after every piece of evidence.
• “A line of reasoning is the same as a list of points.” It is a sequence in which each step builds on the last.
• “Transitions are decoration.” Transitions that say how one claim leads to the next carry the logic.
• “More paragraphs mean a better essay.” A tight line of reasoning of three well-explained claims beats six loose ones.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, Selecting evidence and controlling composition, deals with choosing what to quote and writing clearly. To revisit how a thesis is formed, see From claim-and-evidence paragraph to defensible thesis.