the double man essay

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Music Video Breakdown: Taylor Swift's 'The Man' Critiques Double Standards

“No men were harmed in the making of this video,” reads a disclaimer at the end of Taylor Swift’s new music video for “The Man.” This comment is particularly ironic considering that the video centers around Taylor Swift’s male alter ego, Tyler Swift, played by Swift herself — with the help of impressive makeup and hair styling. The forthright lyrics of Swift’s feminist pop song, the fourth single from her most recent album “Lover” in which she imagines how people would perceive her if she were a man, speak for themselves. “If I was a man, then I’d be the man,” she sings in the chorus. The witty and intelligent video emphasizes Swift’s power to help foster a culture of equality as she rejects the sexist double standards that have been imposed upon her for her entire career.

Tyler Swift is just like Taylor Swift in that he is attractive and successful, but he faces none of the endless critiques that Taylor does as a woman with those qualities. “I would be complex, I would be cool / They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to,” Taylor sings as her male counterpart is shown in a power pose before walking out of his office to effusive congratulations from his subordinates. On the way home, he manspreads on the subway, unconscious of his spatial occupancy as he lets his cigar ash fall onto the woman next to him.

“The Man”’s music video then continues to portray Tyler as an egoist on an endless power trip, one who is never called out for his selfish or rude actions. He’s shown yelling on a phone call while pacing the deck of a yacht, surrounded by beautiful young women suntanning in identical yellow bikinis. As these women thoughtlessly praise him during the pre-chorus, Taylor makes a more specific jab at the unfairness of double standards: “And we would toast to me, oh, let the players play / I'd be just like Leo, in Saint-Tropez.” While the song attacks all sorts of double standards, from working to parenting, a recurring theme seems to focus on the fact that Taylor has often been criticized for being a “serial dater.” Although she seems to have settled down with current boyfriend Joe Alwyn, Taylor’s long list of exes has famously brought her severe scrutiny. With this line, she envies the ease of Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating life. Famous for an extensive list of supermodel girlfriends under the age of 25, the most heat Leo gets for his love life is a casual dig at the Golden Globes from Ricky Gervais . “The Man” brings this double standard to life as Tyler is applauded as a womanizer, while Taylor was demonized for dating around .

Taylor’s criticism doesn't stop with her commentary on the gendered inequities of dating in the public eye. In one of the best scenes of the music video, Tyler accompanies his adorable toddler to a park, distractedly patting her head as he takes a phone call. Onlooking women swoon at his small and infrequent displays of fatherly affection, underscoring the fact that men face significantly lower societal expectations as parents. Tyler is allowed to be a distracted father because he’s “hardworking,” and the second he pays attention to his child, he’s perceived as the World’s Greatest Dad. By invoking the unjust culture of parenting, Swift adds more layers to her feminist pop song. All of this is set to a catchy, synth-laden, upbeat track, making “The Man” a bubbly, singalong pop song with pointed contrast between its melody and meaningful lyrics.

Toward the end of the video, Tyler throws an aggressive tantrum over a tennis match before we flash-forward 58 years to his marriage to a much younger woman. He forcefully stuffs cake in her face, embodying the unhealthy power dynamic between the two. After the song itself ends, the shot widens to show Taylor in a director’s chair. Tyler, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, asks if his acting was okay. “Could you try to be sexier, maybe a little more likable?” she requests, before turning to an actress who did nothing more than stand on the side of the tennis court. She rolls her eyes, and says “Excellent work over there, Lauren, that was astonishing.” With this final inversion of gender roles, Taylor perfectly captures the essence of her song: She calls attention to the normalization of overt sexism in the entertainment industry, unsubtly targeting every director who’s ever asked her to be “sexier” and cleverly urging viewers to challenge the status quo.

— Staff writer Jaden Thompson can be reached at [email protected].

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Montaigne on Trial

By Adam Gopnik

French writers of the airier, belletristic kind used to enjoy pointing out that Michel de Montaigne, the man who invented the essay, was born Michel Eyquem, in Bordeaux in 1533, and that the family name and estate survive to this day in the name of Château d’Yquem, the greatest of all French sweet wines. The connection feels improbable—as though there were a Falstaff Ale that really dates to Shakespeare’s Stratford—but also apt. Montaigne’s essays can seem like the Yquem of writing: sweet but smart, honeyed but a little acid. And, with wine and writer alike, we often know more about them than we know of them—in the wine’s case because it costs too much money to drink as much as we might desire, in the writer’s because it costs too much time to read as much as we might want.

“ Que sais-je ?” “What do I know?” was Montaigne’s beloved motto, meaning: What do I really know? And what do we really know about him now? We may vaguely know that he was the first essayist, that he retreated from the world into a tower on the family estate to think and reflect, and that he wrote about cannibals (for them) and about cruelty (against it). He was considered by Claude Lévi-Strauss, no less, to be the first social scientist, and a pioneer of relativism—he thought that those cannibals were just as virtuous as the Europeans they offended, that customs vary equably from place to place. Though some of his aphorisms have stuck, both funny (Doctors “are lucky: the sun shines on their successes and the earth hides their failures”) and profound (“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn”), he is not really an aphorist. He is, we think, a philosopher, and somehow accounted the father of modern liberalism, though he was aristocratic in self-presentation. We think of him, above all, as we do of Thomas More: a nice guy, an ideal intellect. S. N. Behrman, the American playwright and diarist, began but never finished a heroic play about Montaigne called “The Many Men,” which might have sealed him as the man for all seasons before the other guy got there.

Philippe Desan, in “Montaigne: A Life” (Princeton; translated from the French by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal), his immense new biography, dryly insists that our “Château d’Yquem” Montaigne, Montaigne the befuddled philosopher and sweet-sharp humanist, is an invention, untrue to the original. Our Montaigne was invented only in the early nineteenth century. The Eyquem family, in their day, made no wine at all. They made their fortune in salted fish—and Desan’s project is to give us a salty rather than a sweet Montaigne, to take the Château d’Yquem out of his life and put the herring back in. Montaigne, to Desan’s dauntingly erudite but sometimes jaundiced eye, was an arriviste rather than an aristocrat, who withdrew into that tower out of fear as much as out of wisdom, having ridden political waves and been knocked down by them in a time, in France, of unimaginable massacre and counter-massacre between Protestants and Catholics. His motto was safety first, not solitude forever. That new form, the essay, is made as much from things that Montaigne prudently chose not to look at or evasively pretended not to know as from an avid, honest appetite for experience. We confuse him with the truly engagé Enlightenment and Romantic writers who came long afterward, as they came to confuse his briny Bordeaux with their winey one.

The idea of a salty rather than a sweet Montaigne follows the contemporary academic rule that all sweet things must be salted—all funny writers shown to be secretly sad, all philosophical reflection shown to be power politics of another kind. Desan has many crudely reductive theories—the most insistent being that Montaigne wrote essays about the world right now because he was covering up the truth that in the past his family were merchants, not lords—but he is a master of the micro-history of sixteenth-century Bordeaux. He lists all the other recipients of the royal necklace that Montaigne was proud to receive in midlife, signifying his elevation to the knightly Order of St. Michael, and no one, we feel assured, will have to go back and inspect those records again. At the same time, Desan suffers some from the curse of the archives, which is to believe that the archives are the place where art is born, instead of where it goes to be buried. The point of the necklaces, for him, is to show that Montaigne rose from a background of bribes and payoffs; he doesn’t see that we care about the necklaces only because one hung on Montaigne.

He establishes convincingly, though, that the Eyquem family had long been in trade—and was quite possibly Jewish in origin on Montaigne’s mother’s side—and that Montaigne’s persistent tone of lordly amusement was self-consciously willed rather than inherited. The family imported herring and woad in large enough quantities to buy an existing estate and win a kind of ersatz ennoblement. That act of ennoblement fooled nobody—the old aristocrats knew the difference and so did your bourgeois neighbors—but it gave you license to start acting aristocratic, which, if continued long enough, began to blend seamlessly with the real thing. “Most of these new nobles preferred to stress their way of living in retirement on their lands, free from any visible commercial activity,” Desan writes. “Family history is usually not mentioned, to the advantage of the present and everyday preoccupations.” The merchant Eyquems, under Michel’s father, Pierre, became noble “Montaignes,” able to use a single name in signature. The son’s retreat to the château and the tower was, on this slightly cynical view, simply another way of advertising and so accelerating the family’s elevation.

But, we learn, the Montaignes, father and son, being the virtuous bourgeois they really were, played an active role in that parlement that the family had bought its way into. Here we begin to enter a more fertile vineyard of implication. The bureaucracies of justice and politics in which Montaigne found himself are, as Desan describes them, instantly familiar to anyone who knows the equivalent in contemporary France. They combined, then as now, a wild bureaucratic adherence to punctilio and procedure with entanglements of cohort and clan that could shortcut the procedure in a moment. Montaigne had to learn to master this system while recognizing its essential mutability or, if you prefer, hypocrisy. The forms had to be followed, even when there was no doubt that the fix was in.

This sense of doubleness—that what is presented as moral logic is usually mere self-sustained ritual—became essential to Montaigne’s view of the world. (Lawyers to this day seem particularly sensitive to the play between form and fact, which makes them good novelists.) “There is but little relation between our actions that are in perpetual mutation and the fixed and immutable laws,” a chagrined Montaigne wrote later. “I believe it were better to have none at all than so infinite a number as we have.” His most emphatic—if perhaps apocryphal—remark on the subject is still applicable. He is reputed to have said that, having seen the law at work, if someone accused him of stealing the towers of Notre-Dame cathedral he would flee the country rather than stand trial.

Montaigne was witnessing the beginning of the parallel paper universe of the French bureaucratic state, where euphemism allows interest, and sometimes evil, to take its course. But in his time these daily tediums were laid over the violently shifting tectonic plates of religious warfare. The struggles between Catholic and Protestant in mid-sixteenth-century France killed more than a million people, either directly or by disease. By the time the wars swept through Bordeaux, the issues had long since been swamped by simple tribalism, of the kind that has afflicted Christianity since the Arian controversy. It was a question not of two sides warring over beliefs but of two sides for whom the war had become the beliefs.

As the battles between those faithful to Henry of Navarre and those opposed to him went on in ever more intricate and absurd factional dances, Montaigne’s place within them was as treacherous as everyone else’s. Smart people got killed, and often. It was dangerous not only because your side might lose but because there were so many factions to keep track of. Early on, he wrote, cautiously, that it was a mistake to look to the fortunes of war for proof of the rightness of either side’s cause: “Our belief hath other sufficient foundations, and need not be authorized by events.” But events were in the saddle.

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The first stirrings of Montaigne’s deflecting, double-sided literary style appear in his 1571 eulogy for his closest friend, the philosopher Étienne de La Boétie. Though the eulogy is modelled on classical stoic death scenes reaching back to Plato’s Phaedo, its originality lies in Montaigne’s honest reporting of the comic absurdities of his friend’s passing, and of his own emotional ambivalence at his death. La Boétie, suffering from some kind of ill-defined infection, is shown to be less than admirably resigned. The delirium of his final hours led him to believe that he was back in court, declaiming: “The whole chamber”—that is, his bedroom—“was filled with cries and tears, which did not, however, interrupt in the slightest the series of his speeches, which were rather long.” La Boétie implored Montaigne to guarantee his “place”—meaning, presumably, his social position—to which Montaigne replied, in a black, punning moment out of a Samuel Beckett play, that “since he breathed and spoke, and had a body, he consequently had his place.”

Montaigne’s friendship with La Boétie helped convince him that religious belief is purely customary—that what we believe is what we are told to believe, but that our beliefs are still a duty to our social hierarchy. “Voluntary servitude” is the course that La Boétie recommends: obedience to the state or Church, with the inner understanding that this is a course we’ve chosen from social prudence, not from personal conviction. “We are Christians by the same title as we are either Périgordins or Germans” was Montaigne’s most forceful statement on this point.

Desan scolds both Montaigne and his friend—there is a lot of scolding of subject by author in this book—for thereby recommending or even inventing “the cornerstone of modern liberalism: individual freedom detached from any political or social action.” To say this, though, is surely to underestimate the originality of the position, or its audacity in its time. The assertion of individual freedom is a form of political action. As subsequent generations of intellectuals caught in violent irrational wars or under repressive governments have also learned, learning not to think foolishly is the first step toward sanity. (Live not by the lie, Solzhenitsyn urged his countrymen. Montaigne’s is the same idea, in a warmer climate with better wine.) Your mind belongs to you . Recognizing that everything is customary was not customary. Your body and your allegiance may indeed be given, prudently, to the state. But no one can make your mind follow suit: only a fool fools himself. The first step in dealing with the madness of the political world is not to let it make you crazy. “God keep me from being an honest man, according to the description I daily see made of honor,” Montaigne wrote.

Desan also scolds Montaigne, vis-à-vis La Boétie, on a literary point, complaining that Montaigne, having first been inspired to literary effort by a friend, allows the idea of friendship to dissipate in his later essays, which entail no friend but the reader. The essay becomes an impersonal form of intimacy, betraying a fear of passionate commitment and political engagement. But each written form creates its own reader. A sonnet is addressed to an indifferent object of passion; even if the actual lover warms up, the sonneteer can’t become too easily complacent—a dark lady suddenly sunny produces no one’s idea of a poem. So, too, an essay is always addressed to an intimate unknown. E. B. White, a modern Montaigne, who got there through Thoreau, was deeply attached to his wife, Katharine. But she makes few if any appearances in his essays (though she’s there, hypochondriacally, all over his letters). He wasn’t neglecting her—it’s just that if the essays were even implicitly addressed to a particular intimate they would become too specific. The illusion of confiding in the reader alone is what essayists play on. You’re my best friend, Montaigne, like every subsequent essayist of his type, implies to his readers. By dramatizing an isolation that can be cured only by an unknown reader, the confidences come to belong to all.

Montaigne made several attempts at his essais —the French word means, simply, “tries,” in the sense of experimental effort, though the English word “sketches” comes closer—and the bulk of the work of writing was done in the seven years following La Boétie’s death. Far from being rendered in elegant isolation, we now know, the essays were written while Montaigne took part in Bordeaux politics, travelled to Italy (where the book was briefly confiscated by Church authorities, and he was subjected to a withering examination and a warning), and, eventually, became the mayor of Bordeaux. When Montaigne tells us that his library is where “I pass the greatest part of my live days and wear out most hours of the days,” he was being poetical. The pieces were, it now seems, far more often dictated on the run than written in that tower, dictation being the era’s more aristocratic, less artisanal method of composition. (They still occasionally bear dictation’s marks of run-on breathlessness.)

Montaigne’s “Essais,” in any of their stages—they went through three editions in his lifetime—are one of those classic books that benefit from being read irresponsibly. Sit down to read them thoroughly step by step, even in the great contemporary English translation, of 1603, by John Florio (whose renderings I’ve mostly been using), and you will be disappointed, since the “argument” of the essays is often less than fully baked, and the constant flow of classical tags and quotations is tedious. Open more or less at random, though, and dip in, and you will be stunned by the sudden epiphanies, the utterly modern sentences: “Super-celestial opinions and under-terrestrial manners are things that amongst us I have ever seen to be of singular accord,” he writes, giving as an example a philosopher who always pisses as he runs.

Montaigne accepts, as no other writer had, that our inner lives are double, that all emotions are mixed, and that all conclusions are inconclusive. “In sadness there is some alloy of pleasure,” he writes in the essay called, tellingly, “We Taste Nothing Purely.” “There is some shadow of delicacy and quaintness which smileth and fawneth upon us, even in the lap of melancholy. . . . Painters are of opinion that the motions and wrinkles in the face which serve to weep serve also to laugh. Verily, before one or other be determined to express which, behold the pictures success; you are in doubt toward which one inclineth. And the extremity of laughing intermingles itself with tears.” Having two emotions at once is better than having one emotion repeatedly.

By giving life to this truth, Montaigne animates for the first time an inner human whose contradictions are identical with his conscience. “If I speak diversely of myself, it is because I look diversely upon myself,” he writes, in “On the Inconstancy of Our Actions.” In the writer’s soul, he maintained,

all contrarieties are found . . . according to some turn or removing, and in some fashion or other. Shame-faced, bashful, insolent, chaste, luxurious, peevish, prattling, silent, fond, doting, laborious, nice, delicate, ingenious, slow, dull, forward, humorous, debonair, wise, ignorant, false in words, true speaking, both liberal, covetous, and prodigal. All these I perceive in some measure or other to be in mine, according as I stir or turn myself. . . . We are all framed of flaps and patches, and of so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and every moment playeth his part.

Lists are the giveaways of writing. What we list is what we love, as with Homer and his ships, or Whitman and his Manhattan trades, or Twain and steamboats. That beautiful and startlingly modern list of mixed emotions suggests a delectation of diversities—he likes not knowing what he feels or who he is, enjoys having “wise” and “ignorant,” insulated by nothing but a comma, anchored together in one soul’s harbor. They bang hulls inside our heads.

Although those epigrammatic sentences can be arresting—“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which a man knoweth least”—Montaigne doesn’t think epigrammatically. What makes him astonishing is a sort of “show all work” ethic that forced thought as it really is, mixed in motive and meanings, onto the page. He seems wise, more than smart or shrewd—wise without being smart or shrewd. He can be embarrassing, as he was often thought to be in his time, in a way that recalls less a polished columnist than a great diarist, like James Boswell or Kenneth Tynan, incapable of being guarded, the way shrewder people are. When he writes about the joys of having sex with cripples, we feel uneasy, nervous, and then enlightened. Whatever he’s telling, he’s telling it, as Howard Cosell used to say, like it is.

Desan, writing only about the French Montaigne, avoids the question that, for an English speaker, is essential: the great question of Montaigne’s relationship to Shakespeare. Although Florio’s 1603 effort was the first English rendering of Montaigne’s essays to appear in book form, they had certainly been circulating in manuscript before that. In an introduction to a new edition of the Florio, Stephen Greenblatt tantalizes us with the suggestion that the relation exists, and shows how richly it can be teased out—and then responsibly retreats from too much assertion with too little positive evidence, willing to mark it down to the common spirit of the time.

Well, essayists can go where scholars dare not tread—a key lesson to take from Montaigne—and this essayist finds it impossible to imagine that Shakespeare had not absorbed Montaigne fully, and decisively, right around 1600. It is evident not in the ideas alone but in a delighted placement of opposites in close relation, even more apparent in Shakespeare’s prose than in his verse. Writing shows its influences by the contagion of rhythm and pacing more often than by exact imitation of ideas. We know that Updike read Nabokov in the nineteen-sixties by the sudden license Updike claims to unsubdue his prose, to make his sentences self-consciously exclamatory, rather than by an onset of chess playing or butterfly collecting. Hamlet says:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. And the balancing of opposites, the rhythm of assertion and counter-assertion, the sudden questioning turns, all of it seems irresistibly like Florio’s Montaigne, notably in the springy, self-surprised beat:

How often do we pester our spirits with anger or sadness by such shadows and entangle ourselves into fantastical passions which alter both our mind and body? What astonished, flearing, and confused mumps and mows doth this dotage stir up in our visages! What skippings and agitations of members and voice!

It’s not merely in the steady (and modern) use of exclamation points but in the sudden turns and reversals, without the mucilage of extended argument—the turn-on-a-dime movements, the interjections, the tone of a man talking to himself and being startled by what his self says back. The alteration in the inner lives of Shakespeare’s characters around 1600, as evident in “As You Like It” as in “Hamlet,” bears his mark—as in Jaques’s speech on the seven ages of man, which very much resembles Montaigne’s insistence that life-living is role-playing. (“We must play our parts duly, but as the part of a borrowed personage.”)

Indeed, the Frenchman Jaques, even more than Hamlet, and from the same year, is Montaignean man. In this case, a specific relation seems to exist between Montaigne’s great essay “On Cruelty” and the scene in “As You Like It” where Jaques is reported brooding on the death of a deer. Montaigne’s point is that when it comes to cruelty we should subordinate all other “reasoning”—stoic, of degree and dependency—to the essential fact of the stag’s suffering. We can reason our way past another creature’s pain, but, as we do so, such “reason” becomes the indicted evil. Jaques feels the same way. “We are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse / To fright the animals and kill them up,” he says, while “weeping and commenting upon the sobbing deer.” We are meant to find Jaques’s double occupation of weeping and commenting, feeling and keeping track of his feelings, mildly comic—Shakespeare being always convinced, in his English way, that the French are hypersensitive and overintellectual. But Jaques is not a ridiculous figure. He is conscience speaking through contradiction.

It was in the midst of all this that Montaigne was elevated to mayor of Bordeaux—an achievement, Desan shows, that was rather like getting appointed police commissioner under Tammany Hall. He wasn’t much of a mayor, although it was under his administration that the first protection and “control” of Bordeaux’s cru bourgeois was attempted, wine having crept up to become the city’s most important export, more important even than the salt fish that the family fortune had been built on. (It was a sign of the middle-class affluence that sped along in spite of the wars of faith.) His one attempted intervention in the religious conflict led to his being arrested and held in the Bastille, for a few hours, by extremist Catholics in Paris. He was released only after convincing the jailers of his Catholic bona fides. Fanaticism always seems foolish until it locks you up.

After his mayoralty, combining, as it did, the trivial and the terrifying, Montaigne moved away from political action, and Desan, in the end, is hard on his politics. “Montaigne’s humanism, as it was conceptualized starting in 1585, implies a renunciation of politics,” he declares, and elsewhere he sees in Montaigne a sort of false dawn of liberalism. Montaigne’s retreat was only a rich man’s way of getting off the highway before history ran him over. “Montaigne is supposed to be the best proof of . . . the victory of private judgment over systems or schools of thought,” Desan writes. “Modern liberal thought discerns in Montaigne the starting point of its history . . . but let us make no mistake: most of the strictly philosophical readings of Montaigne are the expression of a form of (unconscious) ideological appropriation that aims to place the universal subject on a pedestal, to the detriment of its purely historical and political dimension.”

This view is deaf to the overtones of Montaigne’s self-removal. To be against violence, frightened of fanaticism, acutely conscious of the customary nature of our most devout attachments—without this foundation in realism, political action always pivots toward puritanical self-righteousness. It is not that Montaigne is placed on a pedestal; it’s that we look up at him only to find that he is already down here with us. His houses are built on sand, rock being too hard for people, who are bound to fall. His moral heroism lies in his resilience in retreat, which allows him to remind us of our capacity to persevere. His essays insist that an honest relation to experience is the first principle of action. As a practical matter, this has been most actively inspirational at times of greatest stress. The German author Stefan Zweig, in flight from Nazism, turned first of all to Montaigne, writing, “Montaigne helps us answer this one question: ‘How to stay free? How to preserve our inborn clear-mindedness in front of all the threats and dangers of fanaticism, how to preserve the humanity of our hearts among the upsurge of bestiality?’ ”

Montaigne is present now in the things he feels and the way he sounds, and that is like a complete human being. He’s funny, he’s touching, he’s strange, he’s inconclusive. Ironic self-mockery, muted egotism, a knowledge of one’s own absurdity that doesn’t diminish the importance of one’s witness, a determinedly anti-heroic stance that remains clearly ethical—all these effects and sounds of the essayist are first heard here. We imitate the sound without even knowing its source. Good critics and scholars can teach us how to listen. Only writers show us how to speak—even when they tell us that it is best to whisper.

Montaigne’s writing has not been taken out of his time. It exists outside of his time. He is not plucked out to become a false father; he is heard, long past his time, as a true friend. He is an emotional, not a contractual, liberal. He didn’t give a damn about democracy, or free speech, or even property rights. Equality before the law he saw as impossible—not even aristocrats could get it. But he had a rich foundational impulse toward the emotions that make a decent relation between man and state possible. Here was a far-reaching skepticism about authority (either the ancients’ or the actual), a compassion toward suffering, a hatred of cruelty that we now imagine as human instinct, though all experience shows us that it must be inculcated. Montaigne, having no access to the abstract concepts that were later laid on this foundation, gives us deeper access to them, because he was the one who laid it. The liberalism that came after humanism may be what keeps his memory alive and draws us to him. The humanism that has to exist before liberalism can even begin is what Montaigne is there to show us still. ♦

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This ground-breaking anthology collects poems written by Australian poets who are migrants, their children, and refugees of Asian heritage, spanning work that covers over three decades of writing. Inclusive of hitherto marginalised voices, these poems explore the hyphenated and variegated ways of being Asian Australian, and demonstrate how the different origins and traditions transplanted from Asia have generated new and different ways of being Australian. This anthology highlights the complexity of Asian Australian interactions between cultures and languages, and is a landmark in a rich, diversely-textured and evolving story. Timely and proactive this anthology fills existing cultural gaps in poetic expressions of home, travel, diaspora, identity, myth, empire and language. [from Trove]

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Strivings of the Negro People

“It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

B etween me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, — peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards — ten cents a package — and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, — some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The “shades of the prison-house” closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps, but fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development.

This is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, and to husband and use his best powers. These powers, of body and of mind, have in the past been so wasted and dispersed as to lose all effectiveness, and to seem like absence of all power, like weakness. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan, on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde, could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people the Negro lawyer or doctor was pushed toward quackery and demagogism, and by the criticism of the other world toward an elaborate preparation that overfitted him for his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing, a-singing, and a-laughing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of eight thousand people, has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and has even at times seemed destined to make them ashamed of themselves. In the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; eighteenth-century Rousseauism never worshiped freedom with half the unquestioning faith that the American Negro did for two centuries. To him slavery was, indeed, the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In his songs and exhortations swelled one refrain, liberty; in his tears and curses the god he implored had freedom in his right hand. At last it came, — suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences: —

Shout, O children! Shout, you’re free! The Lord has bought your liberty!

Years have passed away, ten, twenty, thirty. Thirty years of national life, thirty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy ghost of Banquo sits in its old place at the national feast. In vain does the nation cry to its vastest problem, —

Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble!

The freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of lesser good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people, — a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly folk.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp, — like a tantalizing will-o’-the wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the decade closed, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. The decade fled away, — a decade containing, to the freedman’s mind, nothing but suppressed votes, stuffed ballot-boxes, and election outrages that nullified his vaunted right of suffrage. And yet that decade from 1875 to 1885 held another powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of “book-learning;” the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Mission and night schools began in the smoke of battle, ran the gauntlet of reconstruction and at last developed into permanent foundations. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself, — darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, — not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of filth from white whoremongers and adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.

A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcated disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil, — before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom “discouragement” is an unwritten word.

They still press on, they still nurse the dogged hope, — not a hope of nauseating patronage, not a hope of reception into charmed social circles of stock-jobbers, pork-packers, and earl-hunters, but the hope of a higher synthesis of civilization and humanity, a true progress, with which the chorus “Peace, good will to men,”

May make one music as before, But vaster.

Thus the second decade of the American Negro’s freedom was a period of conflict, of inspiration and doubt, of faith and vain questionings, of Sturm und Drang . The ideals of physical freedom, of political power, of school training, as separate all-sufficient panaceas for social ills, became in the third decade dim and overcast. They were the vain dreams of credulous race childhood; not wrong, but incomplete and over-simple. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever, — the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense, and as a guarantee of good faith. We may misuse it, but we can scarce do worse in this respect than our whilom masters. Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek, — the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think. Work, culture, and liberty—all these we need, not singly, but together; for to-day these ideals among the Negro people are gradually coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the unifying ideal of race, — the ideal of fostering the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack. Already we come not altogether empty-handed: there is to-day no true American music but the sweet wild melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales are Indian and African; we are the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal, dyspeptic blundering with the light-hearted but determined Negro humility; or her coarse, cruel wit with loving, jovial good humor; or her Annie Rooney with Steal Away?

Merely a stern concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

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How to Write a Double-Spaced Essay: Full Guide with Examples

MS word double spacing

Double spacing is an editing method that refers to the space between the lines of your essay. The tutor will ask the student to double-space to add the comments and editing marks. 

Double spacing happens to be the norm in essay writing. The student can change the spacing depending on the word processing programs. They could be Microsoft Word or Mac’s Pages word-processing programs. 

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What is a double spaced essay.

A double-spaced essay is an essay where the author formatted the space between the lines and the paragraphs using double spacing selection. Ideally, a double-spaced essay contains between 275 and 300 words per page depending on the font. The format is common to students and tutors as they use the space to make corrections. 

A double-spaced essay can carry 275 words per page.

It all depends on the page margins where you are placing your text.

Suppose your page is of standard size, then the words will increase naturally.

When you are using an A4-sized page, the same essay may contain fewer words. 

Notably, the author can write as many words as he or she desires. The only limit could be your ability. The shortest essay could range between 500 and 1000 words. However, any essayist could write thousands of words to expound on the provided topic. 

The standard font for a double-spaced essay should be 12. Such empowers the writer to create at least 200 words for each page. When you are writing using this 12-point font, it makes the paragraphs to be understandable. 

The college can penalize the student if he fails to stick to the instructions. As such, it is vital to work with 12 points when you are writing an essay.

When you are writing the essay, you can use any font type unless indicated in the instructions. If unsure, then you can select the Home tab as you click on the correct font icon. 

Why Double Space? 

We do double spacing to meet the requirements of the checker. Again double spacing is necessary to allow the teacher to comment on the feedback while evaluating the essay.

The essay should meet the desires of the reader and not the writer. You can read more about writing good essays in the guide about the contents and the structure.

Difference between Single and Double Spaced Essays

The double-spaced document involves creating additional space between the paragraphs. Such a format will feature two spaces where the writer will have to press the Enter button twice. The added space allows the teacher to make changes and other remarks. 

A single-spaced paper is where there is little white space between the paragraphs. For this case, the tutor can also give instructions to students to use that format when writing a particular essay. The author only presses the Enter button once. 

How to Write a Double-Spaced Essay

Whether writing a narrative report or an essay for your school, you should select a line for spacing your work. The double spacing design becomes great as it makes it easier for the author to get the flow of the text. 

One can double-space the work by making the correct parameters for the selected text or the entire document. Several word processing documents exist to help you double-space your work, as indicated in the following examples. 

Double-Spacing in MS Word 

Begin by opening the document that you are working with. It could be either a blank document or some needs text in it. 

• You can now create a default document to enable the whole document to stay double-spaced by following the simple procedure as
• Locate the toolbar and select the styles. 
• Right-click on the Normal on the Home tab
• Click on modify on the pop-up menu.
• Select the Formatting prompt and choose the Double-spaced button. 
• Choose OK to activate the Double spacing design. 
• Create a space within your document where you desire to double space.
• Highlight the text you desire to double-space. 
• Click on Paragraph spacing and Line.
• Choose option 2.0 to double-space the highlighted space. 

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How to Spice up Double-Spacing your essay

One can make the essay remain engaging and interesting by double spacing it. Some of the things that could make it appealing are as follows:

a) Using Short Sentences

The purpose of essay writing is to impress the reader. As the research study indicates, you should use short sentences to make your essay more readable. The reason behind short sentences is that they are easy to understand. 

It could be tempting if you settled on using a large and complex vocabulary in your essay construction. In practice, complex sentences make it hard for the reader to enjoy the flow.

The secret is writing short and meaningful sentences and coming up with some charming lines. This is one of the recommended ways to become a better essay writer because you present your points in precise sentences.

b) Use Ordinary Words 

The reader’s nature is that they appreciate small and ordinary words. Another thing is that the readers do not like to be exposed as having a vocabulary problem. You can make it more appealing by using simple common words. 

The reader will be interested in the article if it carries common words that they understand without any struggle. Such an engaging document will bring desirable outcomes. 

c) Structure Your Essay Properly

A well-structured essay should arouse the interest of the reader. Precisely, a well-structured essay is ever reader-friendly. The author should make the content to be in the right structure. Follow simple steps to ensure that your essay remains in the proper structure. 

For example, you should begin with the introduction but other content in the body and make your conclusion.

Such carries a standard format of organizing your work in an engaging manner. 

Suppose your essay is talking about what history is all about, then you should write what comes up first.

End with what came last to ensure you are achieving proper structure. 

d) Be Factual When Substantiating Your Claims 

The most common mistake the essayists make is writing what they only believe. The correct format is to substantiate those arguments with facts.

Never leave out empirical evidence because you do not believe in it. Such could make it easy to be undesirable. Also, avoid saturating the points with facts that appear too odd.

The writer should also be keen never to jump to conclusions.  Let the author present the point backed by utmost research and weight.

The essay should address what the reader should find interesting. For that matter, make strong arguments for increasing your authority as a writer. 

e) Keep Your Essay Relevant 

Suppose your essay lacks relevancy, then it may fail to score better marks. An irrelevant essay means that it lacks sense in the common application. You can increase its relevancy by writing hot topics. 

When you complete your essay, ensure you proofread it to fine-tune it for any deviations and errors. Become your first judge. Such tactics make you improve your writing as you move on.

You can retain your authority over the topic by sticking with the right facts. At that point, you will make any reader get glued to your piece. 

f) Choose Hot Topics

The purpose of writing an essay is to engage the reader. The essay could fail to be interesting if you are writing on a boring old topic. The challenge lies in selecting the hot topic.

The writer should be careful in selecting the right topic. It calls for doing enough research to come up with the right topic of study. When unsure, then you can seek guidance from your faculty to know the correct topic to research and craft the essay about. 

Benefits of Double-Spacing in Academic Writing

1. easy to read.

First, leaving extra space between lines improves readability and makes the content easier to absorb and follow. Additionally, double spacing allows for comments and suggestions from professors or fellow students within the text.

Additionally, it enhances the essay’s general appearance, making it more polished and pleasing. Also, double spacing makes it easier to insert adjustments or amendments, facilitating effective editing and proofreading procedures.

2. It Makes an Essay Longer

Double spacing might sometimes give the impression that an essay is longer. The content is dispersed and gets more words by widening the line space. When an assignment has definite duration requirements, this may be useful.

It is vital to remember that lengthening an essay unnecessarily without adding relevant material could hurt the writer’s overall quality and consistency.

3. One can read while underlining

Another advantage of double spacing in essays is that it makes it simple for readers to underline or highlight key passages.

Since there is more area between lines, readers can mark or comment on particular portions, making it simpler to interact with the text and grasp its main ideas.

Also, because the underlined passages act as visual indicators for essential content, this can be very helpful for studying, revisiting, or referring to the essay in the future.

4. Offers space for personal notes

The wider line spacing allows students to make notes or add additional thoughts to their essays in the margins or between the lines.

This provides a handy way to write notes, draw connections, or provide additional context for specific textual passages.

These private notes can improve the overall learning and engagement with the essay by acting as helpful references for discussions, edits, or subsequent study sessions.

5. Easy to Spot mistakes

The increased spacing between lines allows for clearer visibility of individual words, sentences, and punctuation marks. This enhanced readability helps identify typos, grammatical errors, and formatting inconsistencies.

With white space, the eyes can navigate the text more comfortably, enabling a more careful and thorough review.

As a result, double spacing facilitates the proofreading and editing process, leading to a higher chance of catching and correcting mistakes before the final submission.

6. The paper looks professional

In essays, double spacing gives them a more polished appearance. The wider line spacing makes the document’s layout neater and more streamlined.

Also, this formatting decision complies with accepted academic standards and improves the essay’s overall presentation, giving it a polished and expert appearance.

7. Conforms with most referencing styles

Many style guides, such as APA, MLA, and Chicago, recommend double spacing as a standard requirement.

When you adhere to this spacing format, your essay aligns with the guidelines and expectations of these referencing styles, ensuring consistency and conformity in your writing.

8. Promotes clarity of text

In essays, double spacing encourages text clarity. The legibility is improved, and word crowding is prevented by leaving more space between lines.

The reader’s capacity to discern between individual words and sentences is improved by the greater spacing, which lowers the possibility of misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

Effective communication relies heavily on clarity, and double spacing makes the substance of the essay easier to understand.

Watch this video to learn more about this.

Josh Jasen or JJ as we fondly call him, is a senior academic editor at Grade Bees in charge of the writing department. When not managing complex essays and academic writing tasks, Josh is busy advising students on how to pass assignments. In his spare time, he loves playing football or walking with his dog around the park.

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Lit. Summaries

• Biographies

The Duality of Identity: A Summary of W.H. Auden’s ‘The Double Man’

In his poem “The Double Man,” W.H. Auden explores the concept of duality in human identity. Through vivid imagery and complex language, Auden delves into the idea that individuals can have multiple, conflicting identities that exist simultaneously within them. This article provides a summary of Auden’s poem and its themes, offering insights into the poet’s views on the complexity of human nature.

The Duality of Identity: A Summary of W.H. Auden’s ‘The Double Man’

In W.H. Auden’s poem “The Double Man,” the speaker explores the concept of duality within one’s identity. The poem begins with the speaker describing a man who is both “saint and sinner,” suggesting that he embodies both good and evil within himself. The speaker goes on to describe how this duality can lead to inner conflict and confusion, as the man struggles to reconcile these opposing forces within himself.

Throughout the poem, the speaker uses vivid imagery to convey the complexity of this duality. For example, he describes the man’s heart as a “battlefield,” where opposing armies of good and evil clash. The speaker also uses religious imagery, such as references to angels and demons, to further emphasize the spiritual nature of this struggle.

Ultimately, the poem suggests that the duality of identity is a fundamental aspect of human nature. While it can be a source of inner turmoil, it is also what makes us human and allows us to experience the full range of human emotions and experiences. By embracing both our light and dark sides, we can achieve a greater sense of wholeness and self-awareness.

The Concept of the Double Man

The concept of the double man is a recurring theme in literature and psychology. It refers to the idea that individuals have two distinct identities or personalities, which can sometimes be in conflict with each other. This duality of identity is explored in W.H. Auden’s poem “The Double Man,” where the protagonist struggles with his inner demons and the external pressures of society. The poem highlights the complexities of human nature and the constant battle between our desires and our responsibilities. Through the use of vivid imagery and powerful metaphors, Auden invites readers to reflect on their own inner conflicts and the challenges of living in a world that demands conformity and obedience. Overall, “The Double Man” is a thought-provoking piece that offers a unique perspective on the human condition and the struggle for self-discovery.

The Two Sides of the Self

The concept of the duality of identity is not a new one, but it is one that has fascinated philosophers, psychologists, and writers for centuries. In his poem “The Double Man,” W.H. Auden explores this idea in depth, examining the two sides of the self and the struggle that often arises between them. On one hand, there is the rational, logical side of the self, which seeks to understand the world through reason and analysis. On the other hand, there is the emotional, intuitive side of the self, which is driven by passion and instinct. These two sides of the self are often in conflict, and it is this conflict that Auden explores in his poem. Through vivid imagery and powerful language, he shows us the struggle that we all face as we try to reconcile these two sides of ourselves, and he reminds us that it is only by embracing both sides that we can truly understand who we are and what we are capable of.

The Struggle for Identity

The struggle for identity is a common theme in literature, and W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man” is no exception. The poem explores the idea of duality within a person’s identity, and the internal conflict that arises as a result. The speaker in the poem is torn between two versions of himself, one that is confident and successful, and another that is insecure and self-doubting. This struggle for identity is something that many people can relate to, as we all have different sides to ourselves that we present to the world. However, the poem also suggests that this duality can be destructive, as the speaker’s inability to reconcile these two sides of himself leads to a sense of isolation and despair. Ultimately, “The Double Man” serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of self-acceptance and the dangers of denying or suppressing parts of our identity.

The Role of Society in Shaping Identity

Society plays a significant role in shaping an individual’s identity. In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with his dual identity, which is influenced by the societal norms and expectations of his time. The protagonist’s identity is shaped by the society’s perception of masculinity, success, and conformity. The pressure to conform to societal norms often leads individuals to suppress their true selves, resulting in a fragmented identity. The protagonist’s struggle highlights the importance of understanding the impact of society on an individual’s identity and the need to create a more accepting and inclusive society.

The Influence of Childhood on Identity

Childhood experiences play a significant role in shaping one’s identity. The way a child is raised, the values and beliefs instilled in them, and the relationships they form with family and peers all contribute to the development of their sense of self. In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with the duality of his identity, which can be traced back to his childhood. The traumatic events he experienced as a child, such as the death of his mother and the emotional neglect from his father, have left a lasting impact on his psyche. As a result, he has developed two distinct personas, one that is confident and successful and another that is insecure and self-destructive. This duality reflects the internal conflict that arises from childhood experiences and how they shape one’s identity.

The Search for Authenticity

In today’s world, the search for authenticity has become a prevalent theme. People are constantly seeking to find their true selves and to live a life that is genuine and true to their innermost desires. This search for authenticity is not a new phenomenon, however. In fact, it has been a recurring theme throughout history and literature. One such example is W.H. Auden’s poem “The Double Man,” which explores the duality of identity and the struggle to find one’s true self. The poem tells the story of a man who is torn between two identities, one that is socially acceptable and one that is true to his innermost desires. This struggle is one that many people can relate to, as we all have different sides to our personalities and often feel the pressure to conform to societal norms. The search for authenticity is a journey that requires self-reflection, honesty, and courage. It is a journey that can be difficult and challenging, but ultimately rewarding. As Auden’s poem suggests, the key to finding one’s true self is to embrace both sides of our identity and to find a balance between them. Only then can we live a life that is authentic and true to ourselves.

The Fear of Losing Identity

The fear of losing one’s identity is a common theme in literature and psychology. It is the fear of losing the sense of self that one has built over time, the fear of becoming someone else entirely. In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” this fear is explored through the character of Edward, who is torn between his two identities. He is a successful businessman by day, but at night he becomes a different person, a poet who is more in touch with his emotions and creativity. Edward’s fear of losing his identity is evident in his struggle to reconcile these two sides of himself. He fears that if he fully embraces his poetic side, he will lose his success in the business world and the respect of his colleagues. At the same time, he fears that if he continues to suppress his poetic side, he will lose touch with his true self and become a mere shell of a person. This duality of identity is a common struggle for many people, and Auden’s exploration of it in “The Double Man” is both thought-provoking and relatable.

The Importance of Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance is a crucial aspect of one’s identity. It is the ability to acknowledge and embrace all aspects of oneself, including flaws and imperfections. Without self-acceptance, individuals may struggle with low self-esteem, self-doubt, and a lack of confidence. In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with accepting his dual identity, leading to a sense of inner turmoil and confusion. However, through self-acceptance, he is able to come to terms with his two selves and find a sense of peace. This highlights the importance of self-acceptance in not only understanding oneself but also in finding inner harmony and contentment.

The Double Man in Literature and Culture

The concept of the double man has been a recurring theme in literature and culture for centuries. From the doppelganger in German folklore to the split personalities of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the idea of a person having two distinct identities has fascinated and intrigued audiences. In W.H. Auden’s poem “The Double Man,” this duality of identity is explored in depth, as the speaker grapples with the idea of being both himself and someone else entirely. This theme has been explored in various forms of media, from films like “Fight Club” to novels like “American Psycho.” The double man represents the struggle between one’s true self and the persona they present to the world, and it continues to captivate audiences to this day.

The Relevance of Auden’s Work Today

The work of W.H. Auden continues to be relevant today, particularly in the exploration of the duality of identity. In a world where individuals are constantly bombarded with conflicting messages and pressures to conform, Auden’s examination of the struggle between one’s public and private selves remains poignant. Additionally, his use of language and poetic form continues to inspire and influence contemporary writers. As society continues to grapple with issues of identity and authenticity, Auden’s work serves as a valuable resource for reflection and understanding.

The Impact of ‘The Double Man’ on Auden’s Career

One of the most significant works in W.H. Auden’s career is undoubtedly “The Double Man.” This poem, published in 1941, explores the duality of identity and the struggle to reconcile conflicting aspects of oneself. It is a deeply personal work that reflects Auden’s own struggles with his sexuality and political beliefs.

“The Double Man” had a profound impact on Auden’s career, both in terms of his personal life and his literary reputation. The poem marked a turning point in his career, as he began to move away from the political and social commentary of his earlier works and towards a more introspective and personal style.

In addition to its literary significance, “The Double Man” also had a significant impact on Auden’s personal life. The poem was written during a period of great turmoil for Auden, as he struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality and his political beliefs. The poem reflects his own internal struggles and the conflict between his public persona and his private desires.

Despite its personal nature, “The Double Man” was widely praised by critics and readers alike. It cemented Auden’s reputation as one of the most important poets of his generation and helped to establish him as a major literary figure. Today, it remains one of his most celebrated works and a testament to his enduring legacy.

The Literary Techniques Used in ‘The Double Man’

In “The Double Man,” W.H. Auden employs various literary techniques to convey the theme of duality and the complexity of identity. One of the most prominent techniques used is the use of imagery, particularly the contrast between light and dark. This is evident in the opening lines of the poem, where the narrator describes the “two-fold life” of the protagonist, one in the light and one in the dark.

Auden also uses symbolism to represent the duality of identity. The protagonist’s two identities are represented by the two different names he goes by, “John Citizen” and “Mr. X.” The former represents his public persona, while the latter represents his hidden, darker side.

Another technique used by Auden is the use of repetition, particularly in the refrain “I am two.” This repetition emphasizes the theme of duality and reinforces the idea that the protagonist is struggling with conflicting identities.

Overall, Auden’s use of literary techniques in “The Double Man” effectively conveys the complexity of identity and the struggle to reconcile conflicting aspects of oneself.

The Symbolism of the Double Man

In W.H. Auden’s poem “The Double Man,” the concept of duality is explored through the symbolism of the double man. This figure represents the two sides of a person’s identity, the public and private self. The double man is both a physical and metaphorical representation of the internal struggle between these two identities.

The double man is described as having “two heads, one facing forward, one backward,” which represents the conflicting desires and motivations of the two identities. The forward-facing head represents the public self, the one that is presented to the world, while the backward-facing head represents the private self, the one that is hidden and kept secret.

The double man is also described as having “two hearts, one beating, one still,” which represents the emotional conflict between the two identities. The beating heart represents the public self, which is driven by external factors such as societal expectations and the desire for acceptance. The still heart represents the private self, which is driven by internal factors such as personal values and desires.

Overall, the symbolism of the double man in “The Double Man” highlights the complexity of human identity and the internal struggle between our public and private selves. It serves as a reminder that we are not just one person, but rather a combination of multiple identities that are constantly in conflict with each other.

The Significance of the Title

The title of W.H. Auden’s poem, “The Double Man,” holds significant meaning in understanding the theme of duality in identity. The term “double” suggests a split or division within oneself, indicating the presence of two distinct personas or identities. This duality is explored throughout the poem, as the speaker grapples with the conflicting aspects of their own identity. The title also alludes to the concept of the doppelganger, a literary motif in which a character has a double or identical counterpart. This adds another layer of complexity to the poem’s exploration of identity, as the speaker may be struggling not only with internal conflict but also with external forces that threaten to disrupt their sense of self. Overall, the title of “The Double Man” serves as a fitting introduction to the poem’s exploration of the multifaceted nature of identity.

The Double Man and the Human Condition

In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with the duality of his identity. This theme is not only relevant to the character in the story, but also to the human condition as a whole. We all have different sides to our personalities, and it can be difficult to reconcile them. The protagonist’s struggle is a reflection of our own internal conflicts. The story serves as a reminder that we are all complex beings, and that it is important to embrace all aspects of ourselves in order to live a fulfilling life.

The Double Man and the Search for Meaning

In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with the duality of his identity. He is torn between his desire for a meaningful life and his fear of the unknown. The search for meaning is a common theme in literature, and Auden’s work is no exception. The protagonist’s journey is a reflection of the human experience, as we all grapple with the question of our purpose in life. The double man represents the two sides of our nature, the rational and the emotional, the logical and the intuitive. It is only by embracing both aspects of ourselves that we can find true fulfillment and meaning. Auden’s work is a reminder that the search for meaning is a lifelong journey, and that we must be willing to confront our fears and embrace our true selves in order to find it.

The Double Man and the Quest for Wholeness

In W.H. Auden’s “The Double Man,” the protagonist struggles with the duality of his identity and the quest for wholeness. The double man represents the split between the conscious and unconscious self, the rational and irrational, and the public and private persona. The protagonist’s journey towards wholeness involves reconciling these opposing forces and accepting the complexity of his identity. Through this process, he learns to embrace his flaws and contradictions, ultimately achieving a sense of unity and self-acceptance. This theme of the double man and the quest for wholeness is a common motif in literature and psychology, reflecting the universal human experience of grappling with the complexities of the self.

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How to Plan & Write IELTS Double Question Essays

IELTS double question essays are also known as ‘direct question’ or ‘two questions’ essays. They are distinguished by two characteristics:

• They have one statement with two different questions after it.
• The questions may or may not be linked.

Here are 3 examples:

1) Fossil fuels are essential for producing electricity, powering industry and fueling transportation. However, one day we will reach a point when all the world’s fossil fuels have been depleted.

How can we conserve these resources?

What are some alternatives to fossil fuels?

2) Some parents buy their children whatever they ask for, and allow their children to do whatever they want.

Is this a good way to raise children?

What consequences could this style of parenting have for children as they get older?

3) The arts, including art, music and theatre are considered to be important in society.

Do you think the arts still have a place amongst our modern lifestyles?

Should the arts be included in the school curriculum?

In this lesson, I’m going to demonstrate step-by-step how to plan and write IELTS double question essays.

Here’s what we’ll be covering:

• 3 Common mistakes
• Essay structure
• How to plan
• How to write an introduction
• How to write main body paragraphs
• How to write a conclusion

Want to watch and listen to this lesson?

Click on this video.

Click the links to see lessons on each of these Task 2 essay writing topics. 

Once you understand the process, practice on past questions. Take your time at first and gradually speed up until you can plan and write an essay of at least 250 words in the 40 minutes allowed in the exam.

3 Common Mistakes

These three errors are common in IELTS double question essays.

• Not answering both questions fully.
• Not outlining both answers in the introduction.
• Mistaking it for one of the other essay types.

Many students make the mistake of only answering one of the questions, or focusing more on one question than the other which leads to an unbalanced essay. Both these errors will seriously affect your score for task achievement.

You must outline everything you are going to write about in the introduction. This is your blueprint for the whole essay. I’ll show you how to do this and get your essay off to a great start.

It’s easy to mistake IELTS double question essays for one of the other four types of Task 2 essays, especially opinion or discussion essays. Each should be answered in a slightly different way.

Analysing the question properly is essential to avoiding this error. I’ll also show you how to do this and give you a simple 4 part structure for planning your essay.

Essay Structure

Let’s look at this essay structure straight away. You can use it to write any IELTS double question essay. It’s easy to learn and will enable you to quickly plan and write a high-level essay.

1)  Introduction  

•   Paraphrase the question 
•   Outline sentence – state your answer to both questions

2)  Main body paragraph 1 – Answer question 1

• Topic sentence – state your answer
• Explanation – develop the idea
• Example – give an example

3)  Main body paragraph 2 – Answer question 2

4)  Conclusion Summarise both questions and answers

This structure will give us a well-balanced essay with 4 paragraphs.

We now need some ideas to add to the structure and we’ll have everything we need for our essay.

How To Plan IELTS Double Question Essays

Here’s the question we’re going to be answering in our model essay followed by the 3 steps of the planning process.

Fossil fuels are essential for producing electricity, powering industry and fueling transportation. However, one day we will reach a point when all the world’s fossil fuels have been depleted.

• Analyse the question
• Generate ideas
• Identify vocabulary

# 1  Analyse the question

This is an essential step in the planning process and will ensure that you answer the question fully. It’s quick and easy to do. You just need to identify 3 different types of words:

• Topic words
• Other keywords
• Instruction words

Topics words  are the ones that identify the general subject of the question and will be found in the statement part of the question.

Fossil fuels  are essential for producing electricity, powering industry and fueling transportation. However, one day we will reach a point when all the world’s  fossil fuels  have been depleted.

So, this question is about ‘ fossil fuels ’.

Many people will do this first step of the process and then write about the topic in general. This is a serious mistake and leads to low marks for task achievement.

Now that we know what the general topic is, we need to understand exactly what aspect of fossil fuels we're being asked to write about.

The  other keywords  in the question tell you the specific things you must write about. For IELTS double question essays, these will often be in the instructions, that is, the actual questions.

How can we  conserve  these resources?

What are some  alternatives  to fossil fuels?

By highlighting these words, it’s easy to identify the topics. Your essay must only include ideas relevant to these ideas.

The  instruction words  are the questions themselves. These tell you exactly what type of information is required and each will become the topic for one of the two main body paragraphs.

The first body paragraph will answer the first question (How?) and the second body paragraph will answer the second question (What?).

# 2  Generate ideas

The next task is to generate some ideas to write about.

There are several different ways to think up ideas. I cover them fully on the  IELTS Essay Planning  page.

We’re going to use the ‘friends technique’. This is the method I prefer as it allows you to take a step back from the stress of the exam situation and think more calmly.

Here’s how it works. Imagine that you are in a casual conversation with a friend over a cup of coffee and they ask you this question. What are the first thoughts to come into your head? Plan your essay around these ideas.

Doing this will help you to come up with simple answers in everyday language rather than straining your brain to think of amazing ideas using high-level language, which isn’t necessary.

You might want to try this yourself before reading on for my ideas.

Here are my ideas as I thought of them:

How can we conserve these resources? 

• Become more energy conscious & more energy efficient
• Use more renewable energy sources – solar panels
• All new homes should be built with solar panels on
• Use car less – walk, cycle, public transport, only travel when really necessary
• Energy-efficient light bulbs
• Solar power
• Wave energy
• Tidal energy
• Biomass energy
• Geothermal energy

Don’t spend long on this as you only need one or two ideas.

There is so much to write about this topic that we have to be very careful we don’t try to include too many different ideas and just end up with a list for each question rather than a well-developed essay.

Choose one main idea for each part of the question. My advice on making your selection is to choose ideas that you can quickly think of examples for.

Here are my choices:

• Use car less – walk, cycle, public transport
• Natural forces – solar & wind power, wave & tidal energy

We’re almost ready to start writing our IELTS double question essay but first, we have one other small task to do.

# 3  Vocabulary

During the planning stage, quickly jot down some vocabulary that comes to mind as you decide which ideas you are going to write about, especially synonyms of key words. This will save you having to stop and think of the right language while you’re writing.

For the ideas I’ve chosen, useful words will include:

• sustainable  
• renewable energy
• energy-efficient

With that done, we can focus on the first paragraph of the essay – the introduction.

How To Write an Introduction

The best introductions to IELTS double question essays have a simple 2 part structure:

1)   Paraphrase the question

2)   Outline sentence – state your answer to both questions

• Have 2-3 sentences
• Be 40-60 words long
• Take 5 minutes to write

1)  Paraphrase the question

Start your introduction by paraphrasing the statement part of the question.

Question statement:

Paraphrased question:  

The world is currently reliant on oil, coal and natural gas for the majority of its energy requirements but there will come a time when these run out.

We are simply saying the same thing in a different way and using different vocabulary.

2)  Outline statement

Now we need to add an  outline statement  where we outline the two main points that we’ll cover in the rest of the essay, that is, the answers to the two questions.

We need to be very specific about what we are going to write about.

Here's a reminder of the ideas I’ve chosen to answer the two questions:

• Natural forces –solar & wind power, wave & tidal energy

Outl ine statement:  

This essay will discuss how we can help to prevent our non-renewable resources from becoming depleted by using our cars less frequently and it will name some natural forces that can be harnessed to generate power.

Note my use of synonyms to replace key words in the question. You don’t have to replace every key word but do so where possible whilst ensuring that your language sounds natural.

So, let’s bring the two elements of our introduction together.

     Introduction

This introduction achieves three important functions:

• It shows the examiner that you understand the question.
• It acts as a guide to the examiner as to what your essay is about.
• It also helps to keep you focused and on track as you write.

The two ideas in your introduction will become your two main body paragraphs.

Main body paragraph 1  –  Use car less – walk, cycle, public transport

Main body paragraph 2  –  Renewable energy / natural forces – solar & wind power, wave & tidal energy

How To Write Main Body Paragraphs

Main body paragraphs in IELTS double question essays should contain 3 things:

• Explanation –  develop the idea

Main Body Paragraph 1  – Answer question 1

The  topic sentence  summarises the main idea of the paragraph. That’s all it needs to do so it doesn’t have to be complicated.

It plays an important role in ensuring that your ideas flow logically from one to another. It does this by acting as a signpost for what is to come next, that is, what the paragraph will be about.

If you maintain a clear development of ideas throughout your essay, you will get high marks for task achievement and cohesion and coherence.

We’ll now take the idea for our first main body paragraph and create our topic sentence.

Main body paragraph 1  –  Use car less – walk, cycle, public transport, only travel when really necessary

Topic sentence:  

Conserving energy is a responsibility of every individual and an important way in which we can all do our bit is to use more energy-efficient means of transport. 

Next, we must write an  explanation sentence  that develops the idea.

Explanation sentence: 

The easiest way to do this is to leave the car at home and walk or cycle to our destination if it isn’t too far away, or take public transport for longer journeys. Another way to reduce our fuel consumption is to car share.

Finally, we add an  example  to support our main point. If you can’t think of a real example, it’s fine to make one up, as long as it’s believable. The examiner isn’t going to check your facts. Alternative, you could add another piece of information to support your idea but an example is better.

Example sentence:

Whenever my friends and I get together for coffee, we agree to meet up at a café that we can each get to without having to drive our cars there. We usually go on foot or ride our bikes. If everyone made small decisions like this, it would make a real difference.

That’s the 3 parts of our first main body paragraph complete. Here’s the finished paragraph.

We now follow the same process for our second main body paragraph.

Main Body Paragraph 2  – Answer question 2

Again, we’ll now take the idea I’ve chosen for this paragraph and create our topic sentence.

Main body paragraph 2  –  Renewable energy / natural forces –   solar & wind power, wave & tidal energy

Topic sentence:

The most sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels are the generation of power from natural forces such as the sun, wind and oceans.

Now for the  explanation  where we expand on this idea.

Explanation sentence:

S olar and wind power are already widely used across the world but it is wave power and tidal energy that have the greatest untapped potential to provide for our energy needs in the future.

Finally, an  example  to support our main point.

A report recently commissioned in the United Kingdom estimates that tidal energy could meet as much as  20% of the UK’s current electricity demands once the technology being developed is operational. Wave energy converters are expected to prove equally successful in the long-term.

That’s the 3 parts of our second main body paragraph complete. Here’s the finished paragraph.

Now we need a conclusion and our IELTS double question essay is done.

How To Write a Conclusion

The conclusion is a summary of the main points in your essay and can often be done in a single sentence. It should never introduce new ideas.

If you're below the minimum 250 words after you’ve written your conclusion, you can add a prediction or recommendation statement.

Our essay is already over the minimum word limit so we don’t need this extra sentence but you can learn more about how to write a prediction or recommendation statement for IELTS double question essays on the  Task 2 Conclusions  page.

The conclusion is the easiest sentence in the essay to write but one of the most important.

A good conclusion to an IELTS double question essay will:

• Neatly end the essay
• Link all your ideas together
• Sum up your argument or opinion
• Answer the question

If you achieve this, you’ll improve your score for both task achievement and cohesion and coherence which together make up 50% of the overall marks. Without a conclusion, you’ll score below band 6 for task achievement.

You can start almost any final paragraph of an IELTS double question essay with the words:

• In conclusion

        or

• To conclude

Now all you need to do is briefly summarise the main ideas into one or two sentences.

Here’s a top tip . Go back and read the introduction to the essay because this is also a summary of the essay. It outlines what you are going to write about.

To create a great conclusion, you simply have to paraphrase the introduction.

Introduction:

Here is the same information formed into a conclusion:

That’s it. We’ve completed our essay. Here it is with the 4 paragraphs put together.

Finished IELTS double question essay.

     (351 words)

Go through this lesson as many times as you need to in order to fully understand it and put in lots of practice writing IELTS double question essays from past exam questions. Practice is the only way to improve your skills.

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More help with ielts double question essays & other task 2 essays.

IELTS Writing Task 2  – T he format, the 5 question types, the 5 step essay writing strategy & sample questions. All the key information you need to know.

The 5 Types of Task 2 Essay   – How to recognise the 5 different types of Task 2 essays. 15 sample questions to study and a simple planning structure for each essay type.

Understanding Task 2 Questions  – How to quickly and easily analyse and understand IELTS Writing Task 2 questions.

How To Plan a Task 2 Essay  – Discover why essay planning is essential & learn a simple 4 step strategy, the 4 part essay structure & 4 methods of generating ideas.

How To Write a Task 2 Introduction  – Find out why a good introduction is essential. Learn how to write one using a simple 3 part strategy & discover 4 common mistakes to avoid.

How To Write Task 2 Main Body Paragraphs  – Learn the simple 3 part structure for writing great main body paragraphs and also, 3 common mistakes to avoid. 

How To Write Task 2 Conclusions  – Learn the easy way to write the perfect conclusion for a Task 2 essay. Also discover 4 common mistakes to avoid.

Task 2 Marking Criteria  – Find out how to meet the marking criteria in Task 2. See examples of good and poor answers & learn some common mistakes to avoid.

The 5 Task 2 Essay Types:

Step-by-step instructions on how to plan & write high-level essays. Model answers & common mistakes to avoid.

   Opinion Essays

   Discussion Essays

  Problem Solution Essays

  Advantages & Disadvantages Essays

  Double Question Essays

Other Related Pages

IELTS Writing Test  – Understand the format & marking criteria, know what skills are assessed & learn the difference between the Academic & General writing tests.

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How to Write a Double-Spaced Essay and Score an A for it

Many guidelines for formatting essays, as presented in rubrics, recommend double-spacing as one of the proper formats for standard comprehensive essays . For instance, when you receive the assignment instructions, essay prompts, or other academic homework assignment instructions, the Spacing of the work is usually specified.

The common spacing specifications include a 1.5 spaced essay, single-spaced essay, and a double-spaced or 2.0 spaced essay. In most cases, instructors will insist that your essay must be typed and double-spaced on standard-sized 8.5" by 11" paper, with margins of 1" on all sides.

In this detailed guide, we focus on the definition of a double-spaced essay, how to double-space an essay on MS Word or Mac Pages, and how to spice up that essay so that you score higher marks.

What is a double-spaced essay?

Here is the meaning of a double-spaced essay : A double-spaced essay is a standard essay written on a standard-sized (8.5" x 11") paper with a one-inch margin around the paper formatted with double spaces between the lines that make a paragraph with no extra spacing between paragraphs.  

In terms of word count, a double-spaced essay contains either 275 or 300 words in total per page, depending on the font used. Formatting a paper in double-spacing makes it easier for the tutor to read through the essay, make corrections within the left spaces, and follow through with ideas in your essay.

The number of words in a double-spacing essay also depends on the page margins you have set for your text. For instance, if you use A-4 sized page, an essay will have fewer words, the same as an A3 page. However, a standard-sized age with one-inch margins all around should have 275 words as a standard.

With short essays being between 250 words and 1000 words, with the most common in college being a 500-word essay, you can write as many words as you wish depending on the scope of the question, essay prompt, and the topic.

In most instances, students are advised to use font 12 points of 11 depending on the font type you are using. Failure to format your essay in the required Spacing might lead to penalties ranging from deduction of grades to poor grades.

As you set out to write or edit your essay, ensure that you choose a font that your professor advises. But this should only be the last thing you do as you polish your essay. For instance, some students find it comfortable writing with a given font, say Arial font 13, and then converting to Times New Roman font 12 when editing.

What is the significance of Double Spacing in essays and assignments?

You are probably wondering why we double-space essays or why it is the preferred standard for essays you write in high school and college. Below are some of the top three reasons why teachers want essays to be double-spaced.

• Double-spacing makes it easier to read through the document quickly as the lines do not blur together.
• Double-spaced essays are also reader-friendly. A reader can easily read and trace the points in your essay without needing extra aids or larger fonts.
• Double-spaced essays or assignments are also preferred because they leave whitespaces where the instructors can write comments on the paper.
• Another reason is that double-spaced essays give you (the essayist) enough room to communicate to your readers. The Spacing enhances the spatial mode of the essay or paper, making it easier to spot main points, read without getting lost or straying into other lines, and use one's fingers.

Double-Spacing vs. Other tyles of Spacing for Essays

When writing an essay, report, dissertation, annotated bibliography, or research paper for school, you should be aware of the type of Spacing required. There are three types of Spacing for school assignments: single, 1.5, and double Spacing.

A double-spaced paper or document, which is the most common, entails creating 2.0 spaces between lines in a paragraph without spaces between paragraphs. Double-spacing is a norm of most college assignments; even dissertations and theses are mostly double-spaced.

A 1.5 spaced essay or document means that the lines or sentences in a paragraph are spaced 1.5 mm from one another without spaces between paragraphs.

Finally, a single-spaced paper has little white spaces between the typed lines in the paragraphs. The lines within the paragraph are spaced 1.0 from one another. This means that there is little room for comments, remarks, or feedback from the professor. You should only use single and 1.5 spacing if your instructor advises so.

If you have typed your paper and realize that you have the wrong spacing, do not worry. You can do the Spacing of an essay or document either on a word document or on a Mac, as we shall explain shortly. The good news is that you can do this at any point in your writing process. The process will differ depending on the program you are using. Let's explore widely.

If you are wondering what a double-spaced essay looks like, have a look below.

Here is how single Spacing should look like in an essay:

Pages vs. Spacing Chart

To try to bring things to their perspective, here is a table comparing word count to Spacing. It can help you plan your essays.

You can simply conclude from the table abov e that a single-spaced page has the exact word count as twice a double-spaced paper.

How to set Double-Spacing on your Computer

Some people prefer to use other font styles and formats when writing, then edit the entire document to the required format and Spacing later, which is okay. Others like to keep everything organized from the beginning, which means setting double-spacing from the onset. Whether on Mac Page's word processor or MS word processor, here are some steps to take.

Pages on a Mac

If you are using a Page's word processor on a mac, you can follow these steps to double-space your paper:

• Highlight the text that you wish to double-space
• Click on Inspector, a blue button on the top right of your window
• In the new window, select the Text tab or the "T."
• Find the section labeled Spacing and type 2 into the box to the right of the slide bar.

On Microsoft Word Processor

If you are typing your assignment on a word document, follow the following steps to double-space it:

1. Select the text that you wish to change its Spacing

2. Under the Home tab , go to the Paragraph Click on the small arrow in the bottom left corner, as shown below.

3. A new window will pop up with various settings, including general, indentation, and Spacing, as shown in the figure below.

4. Click on the line spacing drop-down arrow

5. Select " Double " from the list

6. Check the " Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style ."

7. Press OK to execute the changes and save

The process is more or less the same for all Microsoft word processing versions. 

You can also adjust the line-spacing from the toolbar on your Microsoft word processor . This is probably the best way if you are one of those that want a page with double-spacing from the onset.

1. Under the Paragraph section of the Home Tab , locate the line-spacing button .

2. Click on the button to expand it as shown below.

3. Choose 2 . 0 for double-spacing , 1.5 for 1.5 line-spacing, and 1.0 for single spacing.

4. Click on OK to make the paper double-spaced.

How to Write a Double-Spaced Essay: 9 Steps to Take

Suppose you are assigned to write a double-spacing essay and you are wondering how to proceed, here is a little cheat sheet to keep you going. We asked our top essay writers and here were their exact recommendations; they can help you craft a double-spaced essay or assignment.

1. Read the essay prompt

The first thing you should always do when assigned to write a double-spaced essay is to thoroughly read the assignment prompt. It helps you unpack the question, brainstorm on a good topic, and pick the best topic for your essay. additionally, you also get to understand the Spacing, font type and size, and length/wordcount of your essay. It is an integral step in writing an essay.

2. Select a good essay topic

After reading the instructions, you need to rewrite the question on your own terms, conduct some research, evaluate the viable topics, then choose a hot topic for your essay. depending on your area of study, select a topic that is neither too narrow nor too broad. Go with a topic that is easy to find resources and one that you have genuine interest in writing a paper. If you are left with the option of selecting a topic on your own, select a topic that is relevant to the subject of study.

3. Use appropriate evidence

We cannot insist less how much it is important to cite all the sources that you use in an essay. First, failure to cite sources used in an essay could amount to plagiarism, which is a punishable offense in higher education and even professional realms. Therefore, you need to manage your in-text citations and reference list to ensure that your paper has some scholarly rigor. Citing facts paraphrased, quoted, or summarized from a source bolsters the arguments in the paragraphs of your essay. It brings in a string of a scholarly streak that makes the paper flow, make sense, and support your thesis statement.

4. Present your facts well

When planning for your essay or writing an essay outline/structure, you ought to have thought of the scaffolding of your essay. An essay scaffold refers to the order in which you present your arguments, themes, or texts in an essay. Have some semblance of organization in your essay. As an essayist, ensure that you substantiate your claims using proper evidence.

Instead of casually presenting an idea because you do not believe in it, use the available empirical evidence to make the essay even more desirable. It is also appropriate not to jump into unwarranted or unsupported conclusions.

If you do so, let it be on grounds of the evidence presented to support your thesis statement. Equally, your essay must always address the readers, so focus on what would interest them. From the title to the reference page, ensure that your readers are well-entertained and hooked.

5. Have a good essay structure

Apart from determining the order of argument, ensure that your essay is also well-structured. A comprehensive essay with a definite structure intrigues the readers. It also simplifies the writing process because everything falls into its rightful place.

You will have a laser-sharp focus on a structured essay than an essay you write haphazardly. Such an essay (a poorly-planned essay) will probably miss a thing or two. But when you have an essay outline , your chances of intriguing your readers increased. In short, a well-structured essay is reader-friendly.

Instead of beginning with the introduction, like anyone else, why not begin with the body paragraphs. Because you have a preliminary thesis, your body paragraphs can be developed without the introduction.

You can then finalize the writing process by tweaking the thesis into a final thesis, based on the arguments on the body paragraphs, and then writing a catchy introduction.

When you have your introduction, you can now finalize the writing process by writing an equally catchy conclusion that leaves your readers yearning for more.

As long as you maintain the standard format of a three-paragraph or a five-paragraph essay, whichever order you use to write does not matter provided the quality of the essay is met.

Choose the essay scaffold depending on the type of essay you are writing. For instance, you can use Toulmin, classic argument method, or Rogerian approach when writing an argumentative essay . similarly, you can choose to use chronology or point-by-point contrast when writing a classification or compare and contrast essay .

6. Use simple vocabulary

When writing any essay, it is not the chance to measure who knows what vocabulary. Instead, it is a chance to present facts from research to reinforce your ideas and thoughts on a given topic. Resist the temptation of using tough words to impress your teacher. Simplicity always wins when it comes to essay writing. Write in plain and simple language.

Use the ordinary words that makes it easier for your instructor to read and flow with your ideas. They never have the time to peruse a thesaurus, and even if they do, you would probably irritate their appetite leading to poor grades.

Use simple common words to communicate with the audience. Most engaging and top-grade essays are written in simple language. Students who write simple papers end up scoring better, as long as the facts are presented, flowing, and well organized.

7. Use short and long sentences

Every piece of assignment you write is meant to impress your readers. Using short sentences and long sentences blended together makes an essay readable. Short sentences are brief, easy to understand, and allow for easier navigation.

Although sometimes it is tempting to use complex sentences, they are counted as run-on or ambiguous sentences. When writing, this should not trouble you. However, when editing the paper, shorten the long sentences that have empty but complex vocabularies. It narrows down to simplicity again.

All our writers are better because they have mastered the art of balancing short and long sentences. With such a craft, you can convince even the toughest professor on earth for the best grades.

Brevity, coherence, accuracy, composition, and clarity comes from a mastery of how to use short sentences. So, try to practice often and use this approach for success in your essays.

8. Balance your paragraphs

To achieve a perfect paragraph in an essay is akin to getting an A+. It is not hard although it is something that most people struggle with.

Ensure that your topic sentences achieve cohesion and coherence. Cohesion means a good flow while coherence means achieving a sense of the whole. Your paragraphs should transition into one another.

Each paragraph should present a single idea linked to the order. Check out our guide on the PEEL paragraphing format . We also have a checklist for a good essay paragraph . A paragraph is an indispensable or irreplaceable node within a coherent sequence of logic. They are the building blocks of the essays. So, make them count.

Finally, your paragraphs need to be balanced in terms of number of words. Remember, by default the body paragraphs comprise 80% of the entire word count. This means that if you are writing a five-paragraph essay, the three body paragraphs should be spread to cover for the same.

9. Edit and format correctly

The writing process is no doubt the hardest part. Since it comes with researching, reading, and critical thinking, by the time you are done chances are that you are exhausted and probably fatigued. If you make the mistake of rushing directly to edit and format the paper, you'll probably make mistakes. It is the sole reason why it is good to plan an essay � allocate some good time for editing and polishing the essay or any assignment for that matter.

Now, when you're done with writing, take some much-deserved break. You can go for a walk, have a nap, watch your favorite show, activate your social media and plug back, or visit a friend, whatever will ease your mind.

After the rest, spend some quality time objectively reading, editing, and formatting your essay. focus on spelling, grammar, stylistic, and organization mistakes. You should also check the right Spacing, fonts, and font type. If you find the process consuming and tiresome, you can use our essay editing service. We have keen editors who can always help.

After everything is okay, check your paper for plagiarism, and submit it before the deadline.

Parting Shot!

To this end, you now understand what a double-spaced essay is, how to set double Spacing on your Computer, and how to make a double-spacing interesting enough to earn you a better grade.

Whether you are writing in MLA, Harvard, APA , or Chicago, the process remains the same. If you need tips on how to make an essay longer , check out our guide on the same. We also have various guides that can help you become a better essay writer.

Related: How to indent in an essay or paper.

Otherwise, if all you need is someone who can assist you with writing a well-researched, refined, and polished school essay, we have excellent and talented writers on the wait. Place an order through the form on our homepage and experience a perfect essay help you have never seen before.

Gradecrest is a professional writing service that provides original model papers. We offer personalized services along with research materials for assistance purposes only. All the materials from our website should be used with proper references. See our Terms of Use Page for proper details.

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Former TikToker Convicted of Killing Wife and the Man He Thought She Was Cheating with in 2021

Ali Abulaban was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, and will be sentenced on June 28

A former TikTok star from San Diego has been convicted by a jury for the 2021 murders of his estranged wife and the man he thought she was cheating with.

Ali Abulaban was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for his wife, Ana Abulaban, 28, and her male friend, Rayburn Barron, 29, on Wednesday, May 29, reports local affiliates NBC 7 , CBS 8 , and Fox 5 .

In court, Ali, who performed skits under the handle Jinnkid and had nearly 1 million followers on TikTok, became emotional after hearing the verdict, wiping tears from his face as the gallery cheered, NBC 7 reports.

Ali confessed to killing Ali and Barron during the trial and has been in prison since the October 2021 murders. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 28 and could receive up to life in prison.

The jury began deliberating after closing arguments on Friday, May 24 — about a month after the trial began — and returned with the guilty verdict Wednesday morning, per Fox 5 and NBC 7.

He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, using a firearm, as well as a special circumstance charge for killing multiple people, according to NBC 7.

While deliberating, the jury decided he was guilty of first-degree murder, "an intent to kill with malice aforethought," instead of second-degree murder, which is "intending to do so with malice, not premeditated," criminal defense attorney Gretchen Von Helms said, per CBS 8.

Ali and Ana had been having issues in their marriage at the time of the killings, prosecutors previously said. He was living in a hotel and had been stalking Ana after she told him to leave their apartment.

Deputy District Attorney Taren Brast said ahead of the trial that Ali was convinced Ana was cheating on him, so he snuck into the apartment when she was away and downloaded an app with a listening device on his 5-year-old daughter's iPad, according to the  Los Angeles Times . 

Ali previously said that while listening to the app, he heard Ana talking to another man. He went back to the apartment, shot Barron three times and struck Ana in the head.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. 

During the trial, Ali's mother Dalal Warra testified that moments after the crime, he called her and confessed to committing the double murder.

Ali also took to the stand on May 21 and testified that his and Ana's relationship was tumultuous, and confessed to using drugs. He also admitted to physically abusing Ana in a previous incident, stating, "I was just very impulsive."

The two were together for seven years and shared one child.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to  thehotline.org . All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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