Chapter 6: One Last Time Before You Go: The Conclusion and Final Review
In Conclusion
Your conclusion is as much a final assessment of your essay as it is a final commentary on the essay you are analyzing. It is vital at this point to reread the article and reread the essay you have written before writing your conclusion. Your task here has been to not just write but to justify your reading of this text. Your conclusion should constitute that final moment where you drive home what you perceive to be at stake in this text and how you believe the author best delivered that message.
Our analysis of “The Ultimate Communications App” is that Justice’s concerns over a perceived misunderstanding of the power of language is what drives this text. Justice is motivated to write about this misunderstanding because it leads to a missed opportunity to unite diverse groups in a mutually beneficial conversation that could encourage them to work together to preserve the very “Earth’s biosphere” that could serve as “a commons” for us all. We also appreciate Justice’s use of language to convey its importance. In our conclusion then, we should make obvious how Justice proves the importance of language through a presentation of language in an innovative way that only further demonstrate how versatile and vital it is:
Example
Conclusion
Justice does well to present language as “The Ultimate Communications App,” for in the technologically-driven, always-connected world of his intended audience, access to the latest, most innovative internet and smartphone applications is almost always regarded as advantageous. The pretence of promising a new and free communications app that “can be used by almost everyone” and “works anywhere and anytime, night or day” is used by Justice to engage and enrapture his audience who presumably would be interested in an application that appears to be the manifestation of a “level-playing field” offering everyone equal access to the world’s information. Though readers will eventually realize that Justice has “lied” and has not invented a new communications app, they will have likely also realized that they have already completed the “four years” required to properly “download” language and are already well-equipped to not only share but also contribute to humanity’s “enduring knowledge.” Justice’s demonstration that the creation of an ultimate communications app would be welcomed almost universally is coupled with his eventual revelation that this “app,” language, has existed for centuries and has been mastered by billions. Justice thereby inspires his audience to use their mastery of language to connect across the “manifest diversity” of their shared biosphere and foster the innate human desire for community and communication.
You will notice in our conclusion that we cite passages from “The Ultimate Communications App” that we have not cited before. This is intentional. While you do not want to begin an entirely new argument in your conclusion, you should still aim to say something new–to build upon your argument with new evidence. Review the material you have gathered in your earlier readings of the article and decide what evidence would work best with the final point in your conclusion. In our case, a rereading of our third storey reminds us of our claim that Justice’s paper is really a “call to arms” to his readers. Keeping that metaphor in mind as we reviewed our notes, we were reminded of the passage in which Justice reveals to his readers that they are already sufficiently “armed” to respond meaningfully to this call:
Example
There are only two things that may be problematic with it: my new app takes about four years to download. Yes, you heard correctly, not four minutes but four years. And usually, only ridiculously young kids know how to download it, but, like I said it takes about four years. During that time, the system needs constant maintenance and TLC.