I. Read the work carefully a second time.

A. Underline and look up any words and allusions you are not familiar with.

B. Note the setting (times and places), characters, conflicts, and point of view of the work.

C. Decide what the purpose and theme of the work is.

D. Look for examples of irony and symbolism.

E. Look for patterns of images, motifs, or ideas (significant threads).

F. See what light the title sheds on the work.

G. Note if the diction or style of the narrator or the characters is unusual, colorful, or in any way calls attention to itself.

II. Concentrate on one motif, element, character, or idea of the work (or several related elements) and read the story a final time, noting down (by underlining or on paper) all relevant references to that idea or element.

III. Develop a short outline and formulate your thesis.

IV. Develop your outline more fully and formally. Revise your thesis if it is needed, and make a short list (page numbers and significant words) of the quotations you want to use for support.

V. Write and proofread your paper.

VI. Library Resources

1. Sylvan Barnet. A Short Guide To Writing About Literature.

2. Edgar V. Roberts. Writing About Literature.

VII. Other Helpful Hints:

A. Title: Your Title should accurately reflect the main point of your paper; titles normally include the title of the work you are writing about. For example: Symbolism in "The Masque of the Red Death"; Argument and Design in Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. Underline, or place in quotation marks, only the title of the work you are analyzing.

B. Introduction: The Introduction should do three things:

1. Provide some lead-in to your work and your specific topic.
2. Mention the author, title, and genre of the work you are analyzing.
3. State your thesis.

C. Thesis: The thesis of your analysis is the most critical part of your essay. If it is vague and general, or worse, confused, your paper will not be good and you will not receive a good grade. Your thesis should focus on some element or several related elements of the work you are analyzing: conflict, symbolism, style and theme, imagery, character, irony, a specific historical or critical idea. In addition to stating the element(s) of the work you are going to discuss, a good thesis tells the reader what you are going to say about that element.

This part is essential! Your thesis must commit you to doing something specific with your topic (element). A good analytical thesis is an argumentative thesis; that is, the thesis must commit you to proving something about the element(s) of the work you are discussing. Your thesis will also tell your reader how you are going to proceed in your analysis. Your reader should know what to look for, and will expect you to complete what you have stated you are going to do.

D. Body: The body of your paper contains the actual analysis of the work. It is here that you prove your thesis. The body of your paper may contain any number of paragraphs, but it should contain these items:

1. Specific support for the point or points stated in your thesis.

2. Direct quotations of words, phrases, and sentences from the work that nail down or make concrete this support. (You will use internal documentation in your paper).

3. Explanations and analyses of these quotations pointing out their relevance to your support or showing the connection between them and the analysis/support you have given.

E. Conclusion: Provide your reader with a sense of completion, but do not reiterate your thesis word for word.

F. Format: Take notes from class lecture and follow them.

G. Quotations:

1. Quotations must be exact and accurate. If they are not, your grade will suffer!
2. See the MLA Handbook or Holt Handbook for accurately handling quotations, using ellipses, quotation marks, and brackets within quotation marks.

H. Final Word: In preparing to write your analysis you should start with the "facts" from the work (the more the better); next you provide an interpretation and analysis of these "facts"; finally you construct your thesis, a generalization which covers your facts and analysis. In other words, you proceed inductively. In actually writing your paper, however, you proceed in the other direction, starting with your thesis, next giving your interpretation and analysis as support, and finally quoting "facts" from the story that back up your interpretation and analysis. In other words, you proceed deductively.

Do not "quote out of context" or "bend the facts" to fit a preconceived thesis. On the other hand, do not simply ignore major facts or conveniently overlook them. If you have to do either of these things, stop! You obviously do not have a viable thesis. Go back and revise your thesis, or scrap it and start over.

Sample Critical Analyses