The purpose of using classification in an essay is to organize the material so that it can be easier to analyze and explain. As a writer, you use this categories to usually justify or explain your thesis. These categories are almost like examples/ proof. By the end of your essay in your conclusion paragraph, the writer realizes what he/she was trying to say all along but that is really deeply hidden in the thesis. In other words, the thesis says what you want to say, but it really reveals something else about the reader.
For example in "Going to the movies", Toth classifies the movie dates (types). She has four different cases when she goes to the movies. The first three she goes with different guys, and the last case she goes alone. She uses categories like economics (who pays), transportation, type of movie, body language, chemistry (i.e. touching), snacks, and post-movie experience. Throughout the essay, the reader get the sense of the different type of guys she's goes with and how she feels. In the last paragraph when she talks about going to the movies by herself, we find out what she really wants. While describing the type of movies she likes, which are movies that end happily, she writes "At the end of Daddy Long Legs I wait happily for the scene when Fred Clark, no longer angry, at last pours Thelma a convivial drink. The smile at each other, I smile at them, I feel they are smiling at me. In the movies I go to by myself, the men and women always like each other" (Peterson, Brereton, and Hartman 608). With this last sentence, the reader finds out the purpose of her categories. We figure out what she really wants, and that is nothing to what she is getting. To some extent she likes going to movies by herself, but she also wants the perfect partner to go with her.
In my essay, I really was inspired with what she wrote. I like coming to the conclusion with what you really want all by yourself (having that epiphany feeling). I wrote about some of the different types of suitors I have encountered. I think what I am really trying to get at is describing the perfect man, who I have not encountered.
Peterson, Linda H., John C. Brereton, and Joan E. Hartman. The Norton Reader. Shorter 10th ed. United States of America: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. Print.
"Daddy Long Legs Trailer (1955) 2." www.viivi.net. Web. 9 Nov 2010.
