What Happened to your Train of Thought?
Was anyone else confused at how Henry Nash Smith wrote his essay? I'm saying the content was bad, it was very good, but the structure of the essay seemed very random at points. Wait, I just commented on the structure of an essay... You know what? I'm not even going to make a comment on that.
"And at the last moment it is revealed that Jim was freed two months earlier before through the highly implausible deathbed repentance of his owner, Miss Watson" (324).
This was a lengthy essay, but I couldn't help coming back to this quote. Writers aren't perfect, but it doesn't soften the blow when even a minor plot point is resolved in a sloppy fashion. A character has to go through so much crap to get something resolved, only to discover it was already resolved. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
In terms of the structure of the essay, I think that's pretty common with literary criticism articles. Each one is different, though.
As for your later point, I agree that that's something that can work sometimes and not others. I think it does work with this novel simply because of the overall tone. There is so much irony in this novel that it makes sense that there would be irony in the resolution.