How to Write a Narrative Essay on Arranged Marriages in India

Writing guide
Posted on December 11, 2015

Writing a narrative essay fulfills one of the three main forms of writing tasks you will encounter during your academic career. The narrative is an opportunity for you to write a story about your personal life inside of which you draw a connection to the themes you are reviewing in the classroom. When reviewing the item of arranged marriages in India, it is incumbent upon you to search carefully for a topic from your personal life, a story or experience, that you can relate to the themes which are embodied in this cultural tradition. Being a young student likely means you have never been forced into marriage yourself, but perhaps you have been involved in a marriage, or seen a marriage personally fall apart when the two people involved are not in love. While arranged marriages may not be as prevalent across western countries today, there are still social stigmas for those who have children out of wedlock to marry, something which you might relate strongly to the themes presented in your classroom study.

Review Themes

For narrative pieces, you are challenged to look deeply into the text or texts you are studying, to review the multiple themes you might find within a book or story and to relate those to your personal experiences. Take some time to reflect upon the emotional struggles, social statuses, or economic problems that a family might face in such a situation as an arranged marriage, or review the personal struggle one might have to please one’s family and uphold traditions versus seeking personal happiness. You can find a story in your personal life where you were also conflicted with regard to doing what makes you happy and meeting with the expectations of your family. This is the type of story which will show to your teacher a greater understanding of the themes presented in your classroom readings. If you can’t formulate a clear topic, look through the suggested ones. They will certainly give you some idea.

Use Personal Stories

This type of writing is one which requires no research or references. You do not have to sit in the library for hours poring over books. You are, instead, asked to explore your creative writing talents, to bring to life a story or event from your personal life as the evidence you are using to explore a specific theme or topic. For the exploration of arranged marriages in India, you might pick the aforementioned theme of pleasing your family and present to the reader the argument that meeting family expectations means forgoing personal happiness, or that it brings a new form of personal happiness. From there you would, instead of showing a quote from an expert or a statistic as your evidence, show your personal story as the supporting detail.

Working with Prompts

In some cases your teacher will provide you with a prompt. They might ask you to describe a time when you overcame a personal challenge, or when you learned a hard life lesson, or when you experienced some form of discrimination. You might be asked to write a story about how your personality was changed from a single experience. If you are given a prompt like this, your goal is still the same; you want to show your point with a story from your personal life, but one which also conforms to the prompt pertaining to your reading. If you are not given such prompts, use our facts on arranged marriages in India. They will give you the information you lack.

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