rhetorical analysis

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/569/emily-dickinsons-my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun--revealing-the-power-of-a-womans-words

In Kathleen E. Gilligan's essay she dissects the poem "My Life has stood-a Loaded Gun-“ written by Emily Dickinson. She writes a very well-educated essay, but there are some mistakes. She has a well written introduction, although it is kind of long, she gives you some background information on whom Emily Dickinson is and the type of poems she writes. Her thesis is very clear and you can tell where he is going with the essay. In her first body paragraph she doesn’t really stay on topic of what her thesis is about. Her thesis is about a specific poem Dickinson has written and her first paragraph is talking about other poems she has written that really have nothing to do with her thesis. While she does a good job on breaking down the poem and explaining what it means, Gilligan does not use very many quotes that are useful to make her point. I noticed she uses examples like “Me”(4). And that does not really need to be quoted because it isn’t showing evidence. She should have used better lines from the poem that actually do something for her essay. She does not have the same structure in her essay that I was taught to write my essays in. I was taught that you give two concrete details in each body paragraph and give a good amount of commentary on each one; She does not do that and it sort of throws me off. However, her essay does show that she has a very good understanding of poems and that she knows how to analyze them. Gilligan’s essay doesn’t flow very well and she does not really have any topic sentences. She basically just makes a new paragraph but does not go to another topic. I was taught that you need to have a strong topic sentence at the beginning of each body paragraph, so for her not to have any topic sentences makes her essay weak. Her conclusion is very good though, she states the main ideas of her essay and she restates her thesis in her conclusion which I was taught to do as well. I feel that her introduction and her conclusion are very strong and for me that is what saved this essay from being a disaster.