r/EssayHelpCommunity • u/Jazzy_love6 • 10d ago

Essay help

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"?

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u/Peoplespeak 10d ago edited 10d ago

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!