Cynthia Ozick distinguishes the genuine essay from its meeker cousins – article, fiction, novel and poem- in this expository essay titled as "portrait of the essay as a warm body". Through out this essay the author is trying to persuade the readers, by comparing different types of literature in different aspects such as content, way of delivering the content and the purpose. This essay in general does a great job defining what an essay is. The greatness of the essay has brought some honor to its author by getting selected as an introduction to the best American essay of 1998.
             At the beginning of the essay Ozick gives her definition of essay and compares it with article, as a difference she points out that "an article has the temporary advantage of social heat...an essay's heat is interior" (Ozick 197). In the following paragraph, as her proof, she uses a few introductory passages from classical essayists, and draws four important conclusions based on these at the end.
             On the next few paragraphs she introduces a new topic which is the essays "power". According to Cynthia Ozick an ideal essay was not written to confuse its audience, but, to reflect the writers' thoughts which at the end make us agree with the writer on that particular topic; she uses the next paragraph to illustrate how different authors have different levels of power to convince their readers through comparison of Emersonianism and Emerson, while, on paragraph seven and eight she is still talking about power but through comparison of essays with novels and magazine journals.
             On the next few paragraphs a new topic is being presented which is education and how it can affect both understanding of an essay and writing one. Since during the time we are reading the essay, we are giving full control to the words and let them take us with them, we must trust our guide who is the writer. Writer of an essay has the ability to freely jump from one topic to the other a...