ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

I think your paper can benefit from incorporating the ideas in your conclusion up into your introduction. These can give more exact ideas to relate back to through your paper. Your introduction would be stronger if you introduce the authors and their general statements. It may be good to define what is valuable to each author. Your main idea is money isn’t definite or defined, right? Before you go on with your paper it may be interesting to look at: has the society tried to define money or make it definite (i.e. through gold)?

If I heard you right, you are claiming that money is difficult to use because it has many different forms, none of which retain their value over time or from one region to another. Is this right? In your introduction paragraph you say that money needs to be defined in order to be understood. Are you therefore defining money in your paper? If so, be careful not to drift off into defining money as this is not the topic. I think it might be more narrow of a topic if you claim that money is difficult to use because it has no single form. This is what you seem to be getting at in your paper.

You also quote Smith a couple of times. When you interpret his quotes, I think it would be stronger for your argument if you speak into his words directly by addressing the specifics of what he is saying. For the second time you quote Smith about the salt and ox, I am unsure how he is “giv[ing] us a sort of prediction about how the future of money will be”. I assume you mean that Smith says bartering is impractical so there is an obvious need to advance into the future of money to “fit the needs of the people”.

Some questions I don’t see answered in your paper:
-Why is this an important topic to cover? You say we are lead to confusion. What kind of confusion exactly? It leads to disagreement?
-How could the subject be extended? If you choose to focus on how money has no single form, you could mention in your conclusion how money can change value over time and also in different regions of the world.

Lastly, don’t forget that this should be in Times New Roman font.

Your introductory paragraph can be stronger but if to clarify, you are stating that money is difficult to use because there is no way to define it. If so, then you tend to drift from your main idea. Also, when you use quotes, it would be better to explain the quote piece by piece rather than have one huge quote. And then tie the quote into your paragraph.

Also, you should write what text you are using rather than say “Smith mentions that…” because the readers don’t know what you are referring to.

I like how you structured your paper. It’s clean and well organized but you can go even further as to why money is difficult to use