Analyzing Literature

1. Analyzing Literature Guide for Students

2. Literary Analysis = Argument • Make a claim about the work, then support it • Purpose: persuade readers your analysis + interpretation is reasonable/logical • NOT your opinion about the work, but your interpretation + analysis

3. Why Literature? • Way to experience a way of life, time period, culture, emotion, deed, event, etc… • Skills you bring to the table: close reading, breakdown of structure, word choice of author, character motivations, patterns of language, literary devices

4. Process of Analysis • Multiple readings • Specific word choices • Setting + culture • How the writer: uses words to create meaning, how characters speak (dialect/jargon), who is telling story, etc… • ANNOTATE

5. Literary Terms • Character: flat/round • Drama: plays • Fiction: imaginative prose • Foreshadowing: prepare the reader by introducing clues • Narrator: who tells story (POV) • Personification: giving animals/inanimate objects human characteristics

6. Literary Terms • Plot: Action/storyline • Setting: where and when • Symbolism: use of a thing or person or event to create familiar emotion and/or intellectual response in reader

7. So – To Summarize • Read through for enjoyment first, then reread • Note diction (how writer uses words to convey meaning), setting, culture, POV, imagery, anything writer does that stands out to you. • ANNOTATE your findings as you read. Mark text/take notes

8. YoursMary Robison • Diction: - “Allison struggled away…limping” (7) - 43 yrs. Difference in age - Gift check from nasty relatives signed “Jesus H. Christ” – “vigil candles” - Seem happy together – language is common, everyday language - “Allison began to die” (9)

9. Setting/Culture: - 1983 – set in modern time in suburban setting, fall - American culture – daycare, doctor, Halloween - judgmental culture about age differences in marriage • POV: - third person limited (see many things only from outside, but then get Clark’s POV there at the end. – sudden and powerful – the pain of loss

10. Imagery: - White Renault (?) - fall imagery “twig and leaf-littered porch” “thick blond hood” “bright-dyed denims” - pain + death imagery “Struggled…limping” “gutted and carved” “ferocious and jagged” “began to die” “pulse cords fluttering” “awful, plaguing thing”

11. Choices in Analysis • Question: For me to write an analysis about this story, I have to identify what elements create important meaning and then how the writer creates it. • Because I find the age difference fascinating since the woman dies first, I will want to focus on that…

12. Other Analysis Choices • How the various literary elements work together in a specific work to produce meaning • How two different literary works treat the same subject or literary element(s) • How ideas and/or elements in literary works relate to larger ideas relating to political, religious, societal, economic, or aesthetic conditions

13. Support • Text evidence: - secondary sources - direct text - paraphrase or summary • Other critics’opinions • Social +/or historical context • Do not overuse a single source

14. What to Do in an Analysis • Focus on a single attribute or aspect of a literary work(s) • Make sure your thesis is arguable • Make sure you defend your thesis with specific text evidence

15. Examples • Bad –Really Bad: Atlas Shrugged is a great novel about good vs. evil. • Better – but not by much: Atlas Shrugged, a novel, personifies good vs. evil. • Best: Atlas Shrugged, a novel personifying the author’s view of good and evil develops into a philosophical argument for capitalism through direct characterization.