Analysis on Identical Twins Reared Apart
A thesis-driven analysis
on “Identical Twins Reared Apart”
In the essay, “Identical Twins Reared Apart”, Constance Holden states of how the identical twins reared apart showed more similarities than the differences. She exemplifies many cases and people’s work to show the similarities and some differences of the twins reared apart. She also argues that many experiments show the genetic affects more on the similarity of the twins than the heredity does. However, towards to the end of the text, she discusses about the lack of the evidence which cannot prove the hypothesis that many scientists made; genetic over heredity on the similarity of identical twins reared apart. Holden ends the essay by giving out a part of her point with the quote of James Shields. Her main point is that according to many evidences and cases which the psychologist Bouchard mainly worked on at the University of Minnesota, it is credible that gene has more affect on the similarity of the identical twins reared apart than the environment, but there aren’t enough evidences to prove it. Her essay doesn’t effectively persuade the readers to her point because there are too many distractions which makes her essay confusing and loses her point.
Holden uses many scientific words which make the essay very formal and makes the readers to lose interest on her point. Uses of the many scientific words make the essay sounds more like lab report than an article on the popular science magazine. For example, defining the meaning of the easy words to hard scientific terms is distracting. She defines “identical” to “monozygotic” and “fraternal” to “dizygotic.” (377) Also, Holden uses many medical terms which reader might not familiar with such as “hemorrhoids” and “idiosyncrasies galore.” (379)
Holden has very serious tone of the essay than humorous because it is based on actual facts and scientific experiments. However, she uses very informal sentence all the sudden at the middle of factual explanations. The purpose of her changing tone was to draw out readers interested attention which it actually worked in reverse. For example, after she was explaining of all different kinds of the tests that the experimenters gave out to twins she asks question, “And the upshot of all this probing?” (378) This question loses the reader and make the context awkward because it is...