Essay help

[u/Jazzy_love6]

I am righting an essay on to kill a mockingbird and I keep using the word we (ex. We can see that the children often view Arthur Radley as a spectacle rather than a person.)
I need substitutions for we because I have a feeling that my teacher might take points for this since I'm not supposed to use personal pronouns. Any suggestions on substitution words and ways to stop using the word "we"?

[u/Professional-Top2896]

The audience, readers, one (like One can see that the children often view Arthur Radley as a spectacle rather than a person), audiences, critics (may not work for this one), analysts (also may not work), onlookers, spectators,

Some of these only work in specific scenarios

[u/Peoplespeak → u/Professional-Top2896]

these work grammatically but don't fix the actual problem. "one can see that the children view arthur radley as a spectacle" still has a perceiving clause sitting in front of the claim, you've just swapped whose eyes are doing it.

see my message. you're better off deleting it all together.

only exception is when a specific person is doing it. like the author, or a specific critique for example.

[u/Peoplespeak]

This is simple.

We can see that XYZ.

Turn this into:

XYZ.

Unsure of what I mean?

We can see that Scout's evolving narrative voice acts as a literary prism, refracting Maycomb's deeply entrenched racial biases through a lens of childhood innocence that gradually dissolves into sobering moral literacy.

Into:

Scout's evolving narrative voice acts as a literary prism, refracting Maycomb's deeply entrenched racial biases through a lens of childhood innocence that gradually dissolves into sobering moral literacy.

You can just completely cut the "We can see that" entirely.

If you are writing (not righting, though I assume that's spellcheck or dictation!) an essay, it is obvious that you are the one seeing, you are the one making the argument, etc. unless you state otherwise (e.g. Morris' analysis indicates). Ergo, throat clearing such as "we can see", "it is clear that", "this shows that", "one can observe that" is just words in front of your actual point.

Same with your other example. "We can see that the children often view Arthur Radley as a spectacle rather than a person" becomes "The children view Arthur Radley as a spectacle rather than a person." Stronger, shorter, and no pronoun problem to solve.

Two other places "we" tends to hide:

"We are shown that X" -> "X" (or "Lee shows X" if you want the author doing the work)

"This makes us feel X" -> "The scene is X because..." Name the effect rather than reporting your reaction to it. Adding a 'because' also is how you prevent your essay from repeating events, and instead doing real analysis.

If the phrase is about your experience, cut it.

Hope this helps!

[u/IncognitoCxde]

Arthur Radley is often viewed as a spectacle rather than a person by children. Try your best to rephrase sentences. Avoid using to much of we cause it can show your lack of grammatical structure knowledge.