literary analysis paragraph assignment

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

Knowledge Base
How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

Who is telling the story?
How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

Academic style
Vague sentences
Style consistency

See an example

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Ad hominem fallacy
Post hoc fallacy
Appeal to authority fallacy
False cause fallacy
Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

Choosing Essay Topic
Write a College Essay
Write a Diversity Essay
College Essay Format & Structure
Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

(AI) Tools

Grammar Checker
Paraphrasing Tool
Text Summarizer
AI Detector
Plagiarism Checker
Citation Generator

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved April 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write a thesis statement | 4 steps & examples, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, how to write a narrative essay | example & tips, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Introduction

You’ve been assigned a literary analysis paper—what does that even mean? Is it like a book report that you used to write in high school? Well, not really.

A literary analysis essay asks you to make an original argument about a poem, play, or work of fiction and support that argument with research and evidence from your careful reading of the text.

It can take many forms, such as a close reading of a text, critiquing the text through a particular literary theory, comparing one text to another, or criticizing another critic’s interpretation of the text. While there are many ways to structure a literary essay, writing this kind of essay follows generally follows a similar process for everyone

Crafting a good literary analysis essay begins with good close reading of the text, in which you have kept notes and observations as you read. This will help you with the first step, which is selecting a topic to write about—what jumped out as you read, what are you genuinely interested in? The next step is to focus your topic, developing it into an argument—why is this subject or observation important? Why should your reader care about it as much as you do? The third step is to gather evidence to support your argument, for literary analysis, support comes in the form of evidence from the text and from your research on what other literary critics have said about your topic. Only after you have performed these steps, are you ready to begin actually writing your essay.

Writing a Literary Analysis Essay

How to create a topic and conduct research:.

Writing an Analysis of a Poem, Story, or Play

If you are taking a literature course, it is important that you know how to write an analysis—sometimes called an interpretation or a literary analysis or a critical reading or a critical analysis—of a story, a poem, and a play. Your instructor will probably assign such an analysis as part of the course assessment. On your mid-term or final exam, you might have to write an analysis of one or more of the poems and/or stories on your reading list. Or the dreaded “sight poem or story” might appear on an exam, a work that is not on the reading list, that you have not read before, but one your instructor includes on the exam to examine your ability to apply the active reading skills you have learned in class to produce, independently, an effective literary analysis.You might be asked to write instead or, or in addition to an analysis of a literary work, a more sophisticated essay in which you compare and contrast the protagonists of two stories, or the use of form and metaphor in two poems, or the tragic heroes in two plays.

You might learn some literary theory in your course and be asked to apply theory—feminist, Marxist, reader-response, psychoanalytic, new historicist, for example—to one or more of the works on your reading list. But the seminal assignment in a literature course is the analysis of the single poem, story, novel, or play, and, even if you do not have to complete this assignment specifically, it will form the basis of most of the other writing assignments you will be required to undertake in your literature class. There are several ways of structuring a literary analysis, and your instructor might issue specific instructions on how he or she wants this assignment done. The method presented here might not be identical to the one your instructor wants you to follow, but it will be easy enough to modify, if your instructor expects something a bit different, and it is a good default method, if your instructor does not issue more specific guidelines.You want to begin your analysis with a paragraph that provides the context of the work you are analyzing and a brief account of what you believe to be the poem or story or play’s main theme. At a minimum, your account of the work’s context will include the name of the author, the title of the work, its genre, and the date and place of publication. If there is an important biographical or historical context to the work, you should include that, as well.Try to express the work’s theme in one or two sentences. Theme, you will recall, is that insight into human experience the author offers to readers, usually revealed as the content, the drama, the plot of the poem, story, or play unfolds and the characters interact. Assessing theme can be a complex task. Authors usually show the theme; they don’t tell it. They rarely say, at the end of the story, words to this effect: “and the moral of my story is…” They tell their story, develop their characters, provide some kind of conflict—and from all of this theme emerges. Because identifying theme can be challenging and subjective, it is often a good idea to work through the rest of the analysis, then return to the beginning and assess theme in light of your analysis of the work’s other literary elements.Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben’s analysis of William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children.”

“Among School Children” was published in Yeats’ 1928 collection of poems The Tower. It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State. In the course of the tour, Yeats reflects upon his own youth and the experiences that shaped the “sixty-year old, smiling public man” (line 8) he has become. Through his reflection, the theme of the poem emerges: a life has meaning when connections among apparently disparate experiences are forged into a unified whole.

In the body of your literature analysis, you want to guide your readers through a tour of the poem, story, or play, pausing along the way to comment on, analyze, interpret, and explain key incidents, descriptions, dialogue, symbols, the writer’s use of figurative language—any of the elements of literature that are relevant to a sound analysis of this particular work. Your main goal is to explain how the elements of literature work to elucidate, augment, and develop the theme. The elements of literature are common across genres: a story, a narrative poem, and a play all have a plot and characters. But certain genres privilege certain literary elements. In a poem, for example, form, imagery and metaphor might be especially important; in a story, setting and point-of-view might be more important than they are in a poem; in a play, dialogue, stage directions, lighting serve functions rarely relevant in the analysis of a story or poem.

The length of the body of an analysis of a literary work will usually depend upon the length of work being analyzed—the longer the work, the longer the analysis—though your instructor will likely establish a word limit for this assignment. Make certain that you do not simply paraphrase the plot of the story or play or the content of the poem. This is a common weakness in student literary analyses, especially when the analysis is of a poem or a play.

Here is a good example of two body paragraphs from Amelia’s analysis of “Araby” by James Joyce.

Within the story’s first few paragraphs occur several religious references which will accumulate as the story progresses. The narrator is a student at the Christian Brothers’ School; the former tenant of his house was a priest; he left behind books called The Abbot and The Devout Communicant. Near the end of the story’s second paragraph the narrator describes a “central apple tree” in the garden, under which is “the late tenant’s rusty bicycle pump.” We may begin to suspect the tree symbolizes the apple tree in the Garden of Eden and the bicycle pump, the snake which corrupted Eve, a stretch, perhaps, until Joyce’s fall-of-innocence theme becomes more apparent.

The narrator must continue to help his aunt with her errands, but, even when he is so occupied, his mind is on Mangan’s sister, as he tries to sort out his feelings for her. Here Joyce provides vivid insight into the mind of an adolescent boy at once elated and bewildered by his first crush. He wants to tell her of his “confused adoration,” but he does not know if he will ever have the chance. Joyce’s description of the pleasant tension consuming the narrator is conveyed in a striking simile, which continues to develop the narrator’s character, while echoing the religious imagery, so important to the story’s theme: “But my body was like a harp, and her words and gestures were like fingers, running along the wires.”

The concluding paragraph of your analysis should realize two goals. First, it should present your own opinion on the quality of the poem or story or play about which you have been writing. And, second, it should comment on the current relevance of the work. You should certainly comment on the enduring social relevance of the work you are explicating. You may comment, though you should never be obliged to do so, on the personal relevance of the work. Here is the concluding paragraph from Dao-Ming’s analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

First performed in 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest has been made into a film, as recently as 2002 and is regularly revived by professional and amateur theatre companies. It endures not only because of the comic brilliance of its characters and their dialogue, but also because its satire still resonates with contemporary audiences. I am still amazed that I see in my own Asian mother a shadow of Lady Bracknell, with her obsession with finding for her daughter a husband who will maintain, if not, ideally, increase the family’s social status. We might like to think we are more liberated and socially sophisticated than our Victorian ancestors, but the starlets and eligible bachelors who star in current reality television programs illustrate the extent to which superficial concerns still influence decisions about love and even marriage. Even now, we can turn to Oscar Wilde to help us understand and laugh at those who are earnest in name only.

Dao-Ming’s conclusion is brief, but she does manage to praise the play, reaffirm its main theme, and explain its enduring appeal. And note how her last sentence cleverly establishes that sense of closure that is also a feature of an effective analysis.

You may, of course, modify the template that is presented here. Your instructor might favour a somewhat different approach to literary analysis. Its essence, though, will be your understanding and interpretation of the theme of the poem, story, or play and the skill with which the author shapes the elements of literature—plot, character, form, diction, setting, point of view—to support the theme.

BC Open Textbooks: English Literature Victorians and Moderns: https://opentextbc.ca/englishliterature/back-matter/appendix-5-writing-an-analysis-of-a-poem-story-and-play/

Literary Analysis

The challenges of writing about english literature.

Writing begins with the act of reading . While this statement is true for most college papers, strong English papers tend to be the product of highly attentive reading (and rereading). When your instructors ask you to do a “close reading,” they are asking you to read not only for content, but also for structures and patterns. When you perform a close reading, then, you observe how form and content interact. In some cases, form reinforces content: for example, in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, where the speaker invites God’s “force” “to break, blow, burn and make [him] new.” Here, the stressed monosyllables of the verbs “break,” “blow” and “burn” evoke aurally the force that the speaker invites from God. In other cases, form raises questions about content: for example, a repeated denial of guilt will likely raise questions about the speaker’s professed innocence. When you close read, take an inductive approach. Start by observing particular details in the text, such as a repeated image or word, an unexpected development, or even a contradiction. Often, a detail–such as a repeated image–can help you to identify a question about the text that warrants further examination. So annotate details that strike you as you read. Some of those details will eventually help you to work towards a thesis. And don’t worry if a detail seems trivial. If you can make a case about how an apparently trivial detail reveals something significant about the text, then your paper will have a thought-provoking thesis to argue.

Common Types of English Papers Many assignments will ask you to analyze a single text. Others, however, will ask you to read two or more texts in relation to each other, or to consider a text in light of claims made by other scholars and critics. For most assignments, close reading will be central to your paper. While some assignment guidelines will suggest topics and spell out expectations in detail, others will offer little more than a page limit. Approaching the writing process in the absence of assigned topics can be daunting, but remember that you have resources: in section, you will probably have encountered some examples of close reading; in lecture, you will have encountered some of the course’s central questions and claims. The paper is a chance for you to extend a claim offered in lecture, or to analyze a passage neglected in lecture. In either case, your analysis should do more than recapitulate claims aired in lecture and section. Because different instructors have different goals for an assignment, you should always ask your professor or TF if you have questions. These general guidelines should apply in most cases:

A close reading of a single text: Depending on the length of the text, you will need to be more or less selective about what you choose to consider. In the case of a sonnet, you will probably have enough room to analyze the text more thoroughly than you would in the case of a novel, for example, though even here you will probably not analyze every single detail. By contrast, in the case of a novel, you might analyze a repeated scene, image, or object (for example, scenes of train travel, images of decay, or objects such as or typewriters). Alternately, you might analyze a perplexing scene (such as a novel’s ending, albeit probably in relation to an earlier moment in the novel). But even when analyzing shorter works, you will need to be selective. Although you might notice numerous interesting details as you read, not all of those details will help you to organize a focused argument about the text. For example, if you are focusing on depictions of sensory experience in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” you probably do not need to analyze the image of a homeless Ruth in stanza 7, unless this image helps you to develop your case about sensory experience in the poem.
A theoretically-informed close reading. In some courses, you will be asked to analyze a poem, a play, or a novel by using a critical theory (psychoanalytic, postcolonial, gender, etc). For example, you might use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze mother-daughter relations in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Critical theories provide focus for your analysis; if “abjection” is the guiding concept for your paper, you should focus on the scenes in the novel that are most relevant to the concept.
A historically-informed close reading. In courses with a historicist orientation, you might use less self-consciously literary documents, such as newspapers or devotional manuals, to develop your analysis of a literary work. For example, to analyze how Robinson Crusoe makes sense of his island experiences, you might use Puritan tracts that narrate events in terms of how God organizes them. The tracts could help you to show not only how Robinson Crusoe draws on Puritan narrative conventions, but also—more significantly—how the novel revises those conventions.
A comparison of two texts When analyzing two texts, you might look for unexpected contrasts between apparently similar texts, or unexpected similarities between apparently dissimilar texts, or for how one text revises or transforms the other. Keep in mind that not all of the similarities, differences, and transformations you identify will be relevant to an argument about the relationship between the two texts. As you work towards a thesis, you will need to decide which of those similarities, differences, or transformations to focus on. Moreover, unless instructed otherwise, you do not need to allot equal space to each text (unless this 50/50 allocation serves your thesis well, of course). Often you will find that one text helps to develop your analysis of another text. For example, you might analyze the transformation of Ariel’s song from The Tempest in T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land. Insofar as this analysis is interested in the afterlife of Ariel’s song in a later poem, you would likely allot more space to analyzing allusions to Ariel’s song in The Waste Land (after initially establishing the song’s significance in Shakespeare’s play, of course).
A response paper A response paper is a great opportunity to practice your close reading skills without having to develop an entire argument. In most cases, a solid approach is to select a rich passage that rewards analysis (for example, one that depicts an important scene or a recurring image) and close read it. While response papers are a flexible genre, they are not invitations for impressionistic accounts of whether you liked the work or a particular character. Instead, you might use your close reading to raise a question about the text—to open up further investigation, rather than to supply a solution.
A research paper. In most cases, you will receive guidance from the professor on the scope of the research paper. It is likely that you will be expected to consult sources other than the assigned readings. Hollis is your best bet for book titles, and the MLA bibliography (available through e-resources) for articles. When reading articles, make sure that they have been peer reviewed; you might also ask your TF to recommend reputable journals in the field.

Harvard College Writing Program: https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/bg_writing_english.pdf

In the same way that we talk with our friends about the latest episode of Game of Thrones or newest Marvel movie, scholars communicate their ideas and interpretations of literature through written literary analysis essays. Literary analysis essays make us better readers of literature.

Only through careful reading and well-argued analysis can we reach new understandings and interpretations of texts that are sometimes hundreds of years old. Literary analysis brings new meaning and can shed new light on texts. Building from careful reading and selecting a topic that you are genuinely interested in, your argument supports how you read and understand a text. Using examples from the text you are discussing in the form of textual evidence further supports your reading. Well-researched literary analysis also includes information about what other scholars have written about a specific text or topic.

Literary analysis helps us to refine our ideas, question what we think we know, and often generates new knowledge about literature. Literary analysis essays allow you to discuss your own interpretation of a given text through careful examination of the choices the original author made in the text.

Share This Book

Literary Analysis Essay

Literary Analysis Essay Writing

Last updated on: May 21, 2023

Literary Analysis Essay - Ultimate Guide By Professionals

By: Cordon J.

Reviewed By: Rylee W.

Published on: Dec 3, 2019

A literary analysis essay specifically examines and evaluates a piece of literature or a literary work. It also understands and explains the links between the small parts to their whole information.

It is important for students to understand the meaning and the true essence of literature to write a literary essay.

One of the most difficult assignments for students is writing a literary analysis essay. It can be hard to come up with an original idea or find enough material to write about. You might think you need years of experience in order to create a good paper, but that's not true.

This blog post will show you how easy it can be when you follow the steps given here.Writing such an essay involves the breakdown of a book into small parts and understanding each part separately. It seems easy, right?

Trust us, it is not as hard as good book reports but it may also not be extremely easy. You will have to take into account different approaches and explain them in relation with the chosen literary work.

It is a common high school and college assignment and you can learn everything in this blog.

Continue reading for some useful tips with an example to write a literary analysis essay that will be on point. You can also explore our detailed article on writing an analytical essay .

On this Page

What is a Literary Analysis Essay?

A literary analysis essay is an important kind of essay that focuses on the detailed analysis of the work of literature.

The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to explain why the author has used a specific theme for his work. Or examine the characters, themes, literary devices , figurative language, and settings in the story.

This type of essay encourages students to think about how the book or the short story has been written. And why the author has created this work.

The method used in the literary analysis essay differs from other types of essays. It primarily focuses on the type of work and literature that is being analyzed.

Mostly, you will be going to break down the work into various parts. In order to develop a better understanding of the idea being discussed, each part will be discussed separately.

The essay should explain the choices of the author and point of view along with your answers and personal analysis.

How To Write A Literary Analysis Essay

So how to start a literary analysis essay? The answer to this question is quite simple.

The following sections are required to write an effective literary analysis essay. By following the guidelines given in the following sections, you will be able to craft a winning literary analysis essay.

Introduction

The aim of the introduction is to establish a context for readers. You have to give a brief on the background of the selected topic.

It should contain the name of the author of the literary work along with its title. The introduction should be effective enough to grab the reader’s attention.

In the body section, you have to retell the story that the writer has narrated. It is a good idea to create a summary as it is one of the important tips of literary analysis.

Other than that, you are required to develop ideas and disclose the observed information related to the issue. The ideal length of the body section is around 1000 words.

To write the body section, your observation should be based on evidence and your own style of writing.

It would be great if the body of your essay is divided into three paragraphs. Make a strong argument with facts related to the thesis statement in all of the paragraphs in the body section.

Start writing each paragraph with a topic sentence and use transition words when moving to the next paragraph.

Summarize the important points of your literary analysis essay in this section. It is important to compose a short and strong conclusion to help you make a final impression of your essay.

Pay attention that this section does not contain any new information. It should provide a sense of completion by restating the main idea with a short description of your arguments. End the conclusion with your supporting details.

You have to explain why the book is important. Also, elaborate on the means that the authors used to convey her/his opinion regarding the issue.

For further understanding, here is a downloadable literary analysis essay outline. This outline will help you structure and format your essay properly and earn an A easily.

DOWNLOADABLE LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY OUTLINE (PDF)

Types of Literary Analysis Essay

Close reading - This method involves attentive reading and detailed analysis. No need for a lot of knowledge and inspiration to write an essay that shows your creative skills.
Theoretical - In this type, you will rely on theories related to the selected topic.
Historical - This type of essay concerns the discipline of history. Sometimes historical analysis is required to explain events in detail.
Applied - This type involves analysis of a specific issue from a practical perspective.
Comparative - This type of writing is based on when two or more alternatives are compared

Examples of Literary Analysis Essay

Examples are great to understand any concept, especially if it is related to writing. Below are some great literary analysis essay examples that showcase how this type of essay is written.

A ROSE FOR EMILY LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

THE GREAT GATSBY LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

If you do not have experience in writing essays, this will be a very chaotic process for you. In that case, it is very important for you to conduct good research on the topic before writing.

There are two important points that you should keep in mind when writing a literary analysis essay.

First, remember that it is very important to select a topic in which you are interested. Choose something that really inspires you. This will help you to catch the attention of a reader.

The selected topic should reflect the main idea of writing. In addition to that, it should also express your point of view as well.

Another important thing is to draft a good outline for your literary analysis essay. It will help you to define a central point and division of this into parts for further discussion.

Literary Analysis Essay Topics

Literary analysis essays are mostly based on artistic works like books, movies, paintings, and other forms of art. However, generally, students choose novels and books to write their literary essays.

Some cool, fresh, and good topics and ideas are listed below:

Role of the Three Witches in flaming Macbeth’s ambition.
Analyze the themes of the Play Antigone,
Discuss Ajax as a tragic hero.
The Judgement of Paris: Analyze the Reasons and their Consequences.
Oedipus Rex: A Doomed Son or a Conqueror?
Describe the Oedipus complex and Electra complex in relation to their respective myths.
Betrayal is a common theme of Shakespearean tragedies. Discuss
Identify and analyze the traits of history in T.S Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’.
Analyze the theme of identity crisis in The Great Gatsby.
Analyze the writing style of Emily Dickinson.

If you are still in doubt then there is nothing bad in getting professional writers’ help.

We at 5StarEssays.com can help you get a custom paper as per your specified requirements with our do essay for me service.

Our essay writers will help you write outstanding literary essays or any other type of essay. Such as compare and contrast essays, descriptive essays, rhetorical essays. We cover all of these.

So don’t waste your time browsing the internet and place your order now to get your well-written custom paper.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a literary analysis essay include.

A good literary analysis essay must include a proper and in-depth explanation of your ideas. They must be backed with examples and evidence from the text. Textual evidence includes summaries, paraphrased text, original work details, and direct quotes.

What are the 4 components of literary analysis?

Here are the 4 essential parts of a literary analysis essay;

No literary work is explained properly without discussing and explaining these 4 things.

How do you start a literary analysis essay?

Start your literary analysis essay with the name of the work and the title. Hook your readers by introducing the main ideas that you will discuss in your essay and engage them from the start.

How do you do a literary analysis?

In a literary analysis essay, you study the text closely, understand and interpret its meanings. And try to find out the reasons behind why the author has used certain symbols, themes, and objects in the work.

Why is literary analysis important?

It encourages the students to think beyond their existing knowledge, experiences, and belief and build empathy. This helps in improving the writing skills also.

What is the fundamental characteristic of a literary analysis essay?

Interpretation is the fundamental and important feature of a literary analysis essay. The essay is based on how well the writer explains and interprets the work.

Law, Finance Essay

Cordon. is a published author and writing specialist. He has worked in the publishing industry for many years, providing writing services and digital content. His own writing career began with a focus on literature and linguistics, which he continues to pursue. Cordon is an engaging and professional individual, always looking to help others achieve their goals.

Was This Blog Helpful?

Keep reading.

Interesting Literary Analysis Essay Topics for Students

Write a Perfect Literary Analysis Essay Outline

1.6 The basics of literary analysis

7 min read • january 25, 2023

ChristineLing

Introduction

Today, we’ll be looking at literary analysis . Now that you’ve learned “how to read” (see guide 1.5 if you haven’t already), you can learn how to write analytically about what you’ve read. You’ve most likely done this already in English classes of the past, so feel free to view this guide as a refresher on literary analysis writing. If the idea of literary analysis is new to you though, then this is a great time to learn!

What is Literary Analysis?

Literary analysis is a method of close reading that involves identifying and interpreting various elements of a text in order to better understand and evaluate the work as a whole. This includes analyzing the text's themes , characters , symbols , and structure , as well as the author's use of language and literary devices .

In literary analysis , the goal is to identify details that, when put together, support a claim about an aspect of the text, and then to use this evidence to defend that claim in an argument. This process allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the text and to make connections between the work and the broader literary tradition or cultural context in which it was written.

In addition to having to do it in English classes for assignments and essays, literary analysis helps in developing critical thinking skills. By analyzing and interpreting a text, readers learn to evaluate arguments, identify biases, and understand different perspectives. You don’t have to limit it to classroom use; you can analyze books you read for leisure too! It can help you develop a personal interpretation of the text and appreciate the beauty of literature.

How to Write Literary Analysis Arguments

Now, let’s look at what makes up a literary analysis . We’ll break it down into two main parts: claim and evidence .

Part 1: Claim

A claim is a defensible/arguable* statement . It asserts something to be true or false about a text. A claim should be specific, clear, and supported by evidence from the text.

In literary analysis , a claim can be made about any aspect of the text. Here’s a list of potential aspects:

Historical context

Author's purpose

After identifying the aspect of the text that you want to focus on, you should state your position on that aspect in a clear and specific statement. For example, "The main character in the novel is struggling with feelings of isolation and loneliness," or "The author uses the structure of the novel to convey the theme of the fragility of memory."

It's important to note that a claim should not be a summary of the text or a general observation, but rather a specific, arguable statement that can be supported by evidence . Additionally, a claim should be written in a way that is open to discussion and debate, not as a statement of fact or truth.

Here are some more examples of claims:

The main character's internal conflict in the novel is a representation of the societal pressure to conform.

The use of imagery in the poem is used to convey the theme of death and loss.

The symbolism of the river in the novel represents the passage of time and the inevitability of change.

The novel's structure is used to convey the theme of the complexity of human relationships.

The Additional Notes section of the AP Lit Exam scoring guidelines provides a solid checklist for you to think about as you craft a claim . See below.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/fiveable-92889.appspot.com/o/images%2FScreen%20Shot%202023-01-25%20at%209.15-2kkawQySD4pk.png?alt=media&token=51af0a62-1877-4e8c-b218-0397713c2ff5

*Note: defensible means it does not describe the obvious (“The sky is blue”) nor does it describe the impossible (“Everyone’s favorite color is red”). Stating something that is obvious/too general or impossible to defend will not earn you the thesis point on the AP exam. In addition, it will be difficult to earn Evidence and Commentary points. How would you provide sound evidence and rationale for an obvious/impossible statement?

Part 2: Evidence

Textual evidence refers to specific details from the text that are used to support a claim made in literary analysis . It is the evidence or proof that supports the claim and helps to make it convincing. To present textual evidence , it is important to quote or paraphrase the relevant passage from the text and to provide context for the quote, explaining how it supports the claim .

For example, if a claim is made that the main character in a novel is struggling with feelings of isolation and loneliness, textual evidence to support this claim might include a passage in which the character says, "I've never felt so alone in my life." This quote provides concrete evidence that the character is experiencing feelings of isolation and loneliness. Additionally, one could also provide the context of the quote, explaining how it relates to the claim , such as "The character's statement highlights their feelings of isolation and loneliness, which is a central theme throughout the novel."

Another example, if the claim is that the novel's structure is used to convey the theme of the fragility of memory, the evidence could be a passage that describes the use of non-linear narrative , such as "The novel jumps between different time periods, highlighting how memories can be fragmented and unreliable." The evidence supports the claim , because the non-linear narrative structure emphasizes the theme of memory's fragility.

Lastly, if the claim is that the symbolism in the novel represents the struggle between tradition and modernity, evidence could be a passage that describes the use of a traditional house as a symbol, such as "The old house in the novel symbolizes the protagonist's struggle to hold on to tradition while facing the pressures of modernity." This passage provides evidence that the house is being used as a symbol to represent the struggle between tradition and modernity.

It's important to note that textual evidence should be carefully selected and used to support the claim , rather than being used to impose an interpretation on the text. Also, it is important to provide more than one piece of textual evidencen (if possible) to strengthen the claim and to avoid overgeneralization.

Tips on Writing Them

To see examples of good claims, I encourage you to look at the scoring guidelines of past AP Lit exams. See all past exam questions here . In the published scoring guidelines, there are a few example theses provided that can give an idea of what is expected. For example, here’s a thesis that earned the thesis point on the 2021 AP Lit Exam

"Winston uses first-person narration , vivid descriptions , and humor to convey the narrator’s greater sense of connection to his friend Loon and his embarrassment on behalf of the woman who feels powerless in the situation.”

Notice the level of detail in the claim . It’s not just “Winston conveys the narrator’s greater sense of connection.” The student provided three reasons right off the bat (“ first-person narration , vivid descriptions , and humor ”), giving the grader a good idea of where the essay is going.

Here’s a list of some other tips to keep in mind:

Read the text closely and critically: Before writing a literary analysis , it is important to read the text multiple times, paying close attention to the author's use of literary devices and techniques, as well as the text's themes , characters , symbols , and structure . Of course, on an exam with limited time, you have to be aware of how much time you spend reading. Make sure you read just enough to get an idea of what your claim will be. You can return to specific parts of the text later to look for textual evidence

Consider the literary and cultural context: The text should be analyzed in the context of the literary tradition and cultural context in which it was written. This will help to deepen the understanding and appreciation of the text, and it will help the writer to make connections between the text and the broader literary and cultural context.

Analyze the text, not the author: A literary analysis should focus on the text itself, rather than on the author's personal life or beliefs. Avoid making assumptions about the author's intentions or beliefs, and instead focus on the text's themes , characters , symbols , and structure .

Literary analysis is a way of closely reading a text to understand and evaluate it. It involves identifying and interpreting elements of the text like themes , characters , symbols , and structure , as well as the author's use of language and literary devices . Your eventual goal is to make a claim about an aspect of the text and use evidence from the text to support that claim . To write a good literary analysis , you should read the text closely, consider the literary and cultural context, and focus on the text, not the author.

That’s everything I’ve got for you for Unit 1! Hope you’ve learned a lot, and I wish you luck on your next Fiveable study guide adventure.

Key Terms to Review ( 15 )

Author's Use of Language

Close Reading

First-Person Narration

Literary Analysis

Literary Devices

Non-linear Narrative

Textual Evidence

Vivid Descriptions

Stay Connected

AP® and SAT® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse this website.

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay

Table of contents

1 Understanding the Assignment
2 Preparatory Work
3.1 First Reading
3.2 Second Reading
3.3 Take Notes
4.1 Defining Your Audience
4.2 The Title of Your Essay
4.3 Literary Analysis Essay Outline
4.4 Introduction
4.5 Body Paragraphs
4.6 Conclusion
5 Revising the Essay
6 In Conclusion

Writing a literary analysis essay is one of the most difficult tasks for a student. When you have to analyze a certain literary work, there is a whole set of rules that you have to follow. The literary analysis structure is rigid, and students often are demoralized by things like that.

Our article hopes to be a comprehensive guide that can explain how to write literary analysis essay. Here is what you will learn:

The importance of understanding your assignment and choosing the right topic;
Organizing your critical reading into two sessions to get the most out of the text;
Crafting the essay with your audience in mind and giving it a logical and easy-to-follow structure;
Importance of revising your piece, looking for logical inconsistencies, and proofreading the text.

This way, you will be able to write an essay that has its own identity, its coherence, and great analytical power.

Understanding the Assignment

Let’s start with the first obvious step: understanding the assignment. This actually applies to all types of essays and more. Yet, it is an aspect still underestimated by many students. There are so many who rush headlong into a literary text analysis before even figuring out what they need to do. So, let’s see what are the real steps to follow before writing a literary analysis essay.

First, we need to understand why we are doing this and what is a literary analysis essay. The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to evaluate and examine a particular literary work or some aspect of it. It describes the main idea of the book you have read. You need a strong thesis statement, and you always have to make a proper outline for literary analysis essay.

Secondly, you always need to read the prompt carefully. This should serve as your roadmap, and it will guide you towards specific aspects of the literary work. Those are the aspects you will focus on. You should be able to get the main ideas of what to write already from the prompt. Failure to comprehend the prompt could invalidate the entire work and cause you to lose many valuable hours.

Preparatory Work

Great, so we understood what the purpose of a literary analysis is and that it is crucial to understand the prompt. Now, it’s time to do some preparatory work before you start your draft of the literary analysis paper.

When you write a literary analysis essay, the first thing you should do is select a topic. It is usually impossible to talk about a book or poem in its entirety. Choosing a more specific theme is essential. Firstly, because it will make your literary analysis paper more interesting. Secondly, it will also be easier for you to focus on a single aspect. This could be a single character or what style and literary techniques were used by the author.

At this point, it’s time to consider the broader context. For example, if you have picked a character, think about their character’s development and their significance. If you are analyzing literature looking for a specific theme, try to reflect on how it permeates the narrative and what messages it conveys.

Now, it’s time to frame your literary analysis thesis statement. This should be concise and clear. Think of it as the compass that will guide your analysis. Plus, if it’s clear to you, it’ll be clear to your reader as well. Do not underestimate this point because it can make everything way easier when you start. Finally, feel free to read another book review to get inspired.

Critical Reading

It’s time to read the work you will analyze. We talk about what we call critical reading. This is the heart of all literary criticism, and it consists of immersing yourself in the story. Because of this, it is advised not to read the story just once but twice.

First Reading

The first reading will serve to get a general understanding of the literary texts. This means comprehending the storyline, characters, and major plot developments. You should be able to enjoy it without thinking too much about the assignment. So don’t delve too deeply into analysis just yet.

Second Reading

Your second reading should be much more methodical. Here, you start analyzing things concretely without forgetting what your literary analysis thesis is. Resist the temptation to get lost in the narrative’s flow. Instead, go through a thorough examination and identify key literary elements and literary devices, like the plot, the character development, and the mood of the story. But also other literary elements: the symbolism, the protagonists, whether there is a first-person narrator or a third-person perspective, and whether the author uses figurative language when describing the main conflict.

Pay special attention to how these literary elements are interwoven into the narrative. For example, consider how character development influences the plot. Alternatively, how symbolism enhances the mood. Recognizing these connections will be crucial for your analysis. Finally, and this might be the hardest part, try to see how all of these literary analysis elements collectively contribute to the overall impact of the work. Ask yourself whether it all works together to convey the message the author wants to convey or not.

While reading, it’s important to take notes and annotate the text. Even a brief indication could be enough. You can do this to highlight passages or quotes that strike you as significant. But also to make connections between different parts of the story. These annotations and notes will become invaluable when you start a literary analysis essay.

Crafting the Essay

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to craft your lit analysis piece. This section will help you do just that. The main points focus on:

Understand who you’re writing for and tailor your text accordingly
Craft a compelling introduction using a powerful hook and highlighting your thesis statement
Structure the body paragraphs in a logical and coherent way
Summarize your analysis, summing up the main points and key takeaway

Follow our suggestions, and you shouldn’t have any issues with your work. But, if you are facing a time crunch and need assistance with writing your literary essay, there is an online essay service that can help you. PapersOwl has been providing expert help to countless students with their literary essays for many years. Their team of professional writers is highly qualified and experienced, ensuring that you receive top-quality literary works. With PapersOwl’s assistance, you can rest assured that your literary essay will be well-written and thoroughly analyzed.

Defining Your Audience

Before putting pen to paper, and even when you are familiar with the literary analysis format, take some time to consider your audience. Who are you writing for? Is it your professor or another reader? This will help you understand what type of analysis you are going to write.

The Title of Your Essay

If you are wondering how to choose a title , you should know that some prefer to choose it when they start, while others do it as the last thing before submitting it. Usually, the literary analysis title includes the author’s name and the name of the text you are evaluating. However, that is not always necessary. What matters is to make it brief and interactive and to catch the reader’s attention immediately.

Take this example of literary analysis: “Unmasking the Symbolism: The Enigmatic Power of the Green Light in The Great Gatsby”.

It works because, while introducing the story, it hints at the theme, the specific focus, and the intrigue of unraveling a mystery.

Literary Analysis Essay Outline

Writing a literary analysis essay starts with understanding the information that fills an outline. This means that writing details that belong in how to write an analytical essay should come fairly easily. If it is a struggle to come up with the meat of the essay, a reread of the novel may be necessary. Like any analysis essay, developing an essay requires structure and outline.

Let’s start with the first. Normally in high schools, the basic structure of any form of academic writing of a literature essay, comprises five paragraphs. One of the paragraphs is used in writing the introduction, three for the body, and the remaining literary analysis paragraph for the conclusion.

Every body paragraph must concentrate on a topic. While writing a five-paragraph structured essay, you need to split your thesis into three major analysis topics connected to your essay. You don’t need to write all the points derivable from the literature but the analysis that backs your thesis.

When you start a paragraph, connect it to the previous paragraph and always use a topic sentence to maintain the focus of the reader. This allows every person to understand the content at a glance.

After that, you should find fitting textual evidence to support the topic sentence and the thesis statement it serves. Using textual evidence involves bringing in a relevant quote from the story and describing its relevance. Such quotes should be well introduced and examined if you want to use them. While it is not mandatory to use them, it is effective because it allows to better analyze the author’s figurative language.

Let’s see a concrete literary analysis example to understand this.

✏️ Topic Sentence : In “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald employs vivid descriptions to characterize Jay Gatsby’s extravagant parties.

✏️ Textual Evidence : Gatsby’s parties are described as “gaudy with primary colors” and filled with “music and the laughter of his guests”.

✏️ Literary Analysis : These vibrant descriptions symbolize Gatsby’s attempt to capture the essence of the American Dream. The use of “gaudy” highlights the emptiness of his pursuits.

Now that you know how to write a literature analysis, it’s crucial to distinguish between analysis and summary. A summary only restates the plot or events of the story. Analysis, on the other hand, tries to unveil the meaning of these events. Let’s use an example from another famous book to illustrate the difference.

✏️ Summary : In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, an innocent Black man accused of raping a white woman.

✏️ Literary Analysis : Atticus Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a rather bitter commentary on the racial prejudices of the time. In the book, Harper Lee highlights the rampant racism that plagued Maycomb society.

Introduction

The literature analysis essay, like other various academic works, has a typical 5-paragraph-structure . The normal procedure for writing an introduction for your literary analysis essay outline is to start with a hook and then go on to mention brief facts about the author and the literature. After that, make sure to present your thesis statement. Before going ahead, let’s use an example of a good literary analysis introduction. This will make it easier to discuss these points singularly.

“On the shores of East Egg, a green light shines through the darkness. The book is “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1925, and this is not just a light. It’s much more. It symbolizes the American Dream chased and rejected by Gatsby and the other characters.”

As an introductory paragraph, this has all the characteristics we are looking for. First, opening statements like this introduce a mysterious element that makes the reader curious. This is the hook. After that, the name of the book, the author, and the release year are presented. Finally, a first glimpse of what your original thesis will be – the connection between the book and the topic of the American Dream.

Afterwards, you can finish writing the introduction paragraph for the literary analysis essay with a clue about the content of the essay’s body. This style of writing a literature essay is known as signposting. Signposting should be done more elaborately while writing longer literary essays.

Body Paragraphs

In a literary analysis essay, the body paragraphs are where you go further into your analysis, looking at specific features of the literature. Each paragraph should focus on a particular aspect, such as character development, theme, or symbolism, and provide textual evidence to back up your interpretation. This structured approach allows for a thorough exploration of the literary work.

“In ‘The Great Gatsby,’ Fitzgerald uses the symbol of the green light to represent Gatsby’s perpetual quest for the unattainable – specifically, his idealized love for Daisy Buchanan. Situated at the end of Daisy’s dock, the green light shines across the bay to Gatsby’s mansion, symbolizing the distance between reality and his dreams. This light is not just a physical beacon; it’s a metaphor for Gatsby’s aspiration and the American Dream itself. Fitzgerald artfully illustrates this through Gatsby’s yearning gaze towards the light, reflecting his deep desire for a future that reconnects him with his past love, yet tragically remains just out of reach. This persistent yearning is a poignant commentary on the nature of aspiration and the illusion of the American Dream.”

The final paragraph, as usual, is the literary analysis conclusion. Writing a conclusion of your essay should be about putting the finishing touches on it. In this section, all you need to do is rephrase your aforementioned main point and supporting points and try to make them clearer to the person who reads them. But also, restate your thesis and add some interesting thoughts.

However, if you don’t understand how to write a conclusion and are just thinking, “ Write my essay for me , please”, there are solutions. At PapersOwl, you get expert writers to help you with your analysis, ensuring you meet your deadline.

Let’s go back to Gatsby’s green light and look at how to write a literary analysis example of a good conclusion:

“Our journey through the green light of “The Great Gatsby” ends here. In this literary essay, we analyzed Fitzgerald’s style and the way this allowed him to grasp the secret of the American Dream. In doing so, we realized that the American Dream is not just about one person’s dream. Rather, it is about everyone who struggles for something that will never be realized.”

Here we have it all: restating the thesis, summing up the main points, understanding the literary devices, and adding some thoughts.

Revising the Essay

At this point, you’re almost done. After you write a literary analysis, it is usually time for a revision. This is where you have a chance to refine and polish your work.

Read your analysis of literature again to check coherence and consistency. This means that your ideas should flow smoothly into each other, thus creating a coherent narrative voice. The tone should always be consistent: it would be a terrible mistake to have a body written in a style and a conclusion in a different style.

Use this final revision to refine the thesis and overall the literary argument essay. If you see there are some flaws in your discourse or some weak and unsupported claims, this is your last chance to fix them. Remember, your thesis should always be clear and effective.

Finally, do not underrate the possibility of spelling and punctuation errors. We all make mistakes of that kind. Read your piece a few times to ensure that every word is written correctly. Nothing bad with a couple of typos, but it’s even better if there is none! Finally, check if you used transition words appropriately.

The revision process involves multiple rounds of review and refinement. You could also consider seeking feedback from peers or professors. This way, you could gain a new perspective on your literary analysis.

In Conclusion

Educational institutions use works like the textual analysis essay to improve the learning abilities of students. Although it might seem complex, with the basic knowledge of how to go about it and the help of experts, you won’t find it difficult. Besides, if everything else fails, you can still try buying essays online at PapersOwl.

In this guide, we went through all the steps necessary to write a successful literary analysis. We began by understanding the assignment’s purpose and then explored preparatory work, the structure of a literature essay critical reading, and the actual crafting. In particular, we showed how to divide it into an introduction, body, and conclusion. Now it’s your turn to write a literary criticism essay!

Readers also enjoyed

WHY WAIT? PLACE AN ORDER RIGHT NOW!

Just fill out the form, press the button, and have no worries!

We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Writing a Literary Analysis

It is important that you know how to write an analysis—sometimes called an interpretation or a literary analysis, or a critical reading or a critical analysis—of a story, a poem, and a play. Your instructor may assign such an analysis as part of the course assessment. You might have to write an analysis of one or more of the items on your reading list. Or the dreaded “sight reading” might appear on an exam, a work that is not on the reading list, that you have not read before, but one your instructor includes on the exam to examine your ability to apply the active reading skills you have learned in class to produce, independently, an effective literary analysis. You might be asked to write instead of, or in addition to an analysis of a literary work, a more sophisticated essay in which you compare and contrast the protagonists of two stories, or the use of form and metaphor in two poems, or the tragic heroes in two plays.

You want to begin your analysis with a paragraph that provides the context of the work you are analyzing and a brief account of what you believe to be the poem or story or play’s main theme. At a minimum, your account of the work’s context will include the name of the author, the title of the work, its genre, and the date and place of publication. If there is an important biographical or historical context to the work, you should include that, as well. Try to express the work’s theme in one or two sentences. Theme, you will recall, is the insight into human experience the author offers to readers, usually revealed as the content, the drama, the plot of the poem, story, or play as it unfolds and the characters interact. Assessing theme can be a complex task. Authors usually show the theme; they don’t tell it. They rarely say, at the end of the story, words to this effect: “and the moral of my story is…” They tell their story, develop their characters, provide some kind of conflict—and from all of this, a theme emerges.

Because identifying theme can be challenging and subjective, it is often a good idea to work through the rest of the analysis, then return to the beginning and assess theme in light of your analysis of the work’s other literary elements.

Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben’s analysis of William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children”:

“Among School Children” was published in Yeats’ 1928 collection of poems, The Tower . It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to a school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State. In the course of the tour, Yeats reflects upon his own youth and the experiences that shaped the “sixty-year old, smiling public man” (line 8) he has become. Through his reflection, the theme of the poem emerges: a life has meaning when connections among apparently disparate experiences are forged into a unified whole.

The elements of literature are common across genres: a story, a narrative poem, and a play all have a plot and characters. But certain genres prefer certain literary elements. In a poem, for example, form, imagery and metaphor might be especially important; in a story, setting and point-of-view might be more important than they are in a poem; in a play, dialogue, stage directions, lighting serve functions rarely relevant in the analysis of a story or poem.

The length of the body of an analysis of a literary work will usually depend upon the length of the work being analyzed—the longer the work, the longer the analysis—though your instructor will likely establish a word limit for this assignment. Make certain that you do not simply paraphrase the plot of the story or play, or the content of the poem. This is a common weakness in student literary analyses, especially when the analysis is of a poem or a play.

Here is a good example of two body paragraphs from Amelia’s analysis of “Araby” by James Joyce:

Within the story’s first few paragraphs occur several religious references which will accumulate as the story progresses. The narrator is a student at the Christian Brothers’ School; the former tenant of his house was a priest; he left behind books called The Abbot and The Devout Communicant . Near the end of the story’s second paragraph the narrator describes a “central apple tree” in the garden, under which is “the late tenant’s rusty bicycle pump.” We may begin to suspect the tree symbolizes the apple tree in the Garden of Eden and the bicycle pump, the snake which corrupted Eve, a stretch, perhaps, until Joyce’s fall-of-innocence theme becomes more apparent.

Here is the concluding paragraph from Dao-Ming’s analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest:

You may, of course, modify the template that is presented here. Your instructor might favor a somewhat different approach to literary analysis. Its essence, though, will be your understanding and interpretation of the theme of the poem, story, or play and the skill with which the author shapes the elements of literature—plot, character, form, diction, setting, point of view—to support the theme.

A Model Analysis

Now read the short poem by Siegfried Sassoon, “Base Details,” reprinted in Project Bartleby, and then read the sample essay with comments:

Let’s have a look at Sassoon’s poem of World War I: “Base Details” .

First, let’s try to determine who the speaker is, the “I” of the poem. Notice that the speaker speculates: “If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath…” Might we assume he is none of the three adjectives? So how old would he be? Start with a hypothesis and stick with it unless further details make your guess seem untenable. Then try a different hypothesis. For now, let’s assume that the speaker is young. What is his rank? Is he an officer? That is unlikely. He is probably an unlisted man since his tone toward the majors is angry and sarcastic.

He calls them “scarlet.” What is the denotation of “scarlet”? What are some connotations of “scarlet”? What does “petulant” mean? Why are the faces of the majors described as “puffy”? What is the main meaning here of “scrap”? Are other meanings intended?

What is the purpose of the poem? Look up the brief biographical details for Sassoon on the online “ Oxford World War I Poets ” website.

After reading the poem three times (you should print a copy of the poem from Project Bartleby), have a look at the following student essay on diction in “Base Details.”

The Diction of “Base Details”(Student Essay adapted from Edward J. Gordon, Writing About Imaginative Literature , Harbrace: 1973).

Old men make and run wars; young men fight and die in them. In “Base Details,” Siegfried Sassoon reveals through his diction a bitterness toward the fact that young men die in wars while the officers live safely behind the lines. The speaker in the poem is an ordinary soldier talking about the majors at the army base. By pretending what he would be like if he were an officer, he condemns war.

Through his choice of words, the soldier expresses an attitude of contempt for the officers behind the lines who “speed glum heroes up the line to death.” He speaks with sarcasm of their fierceness and goes on to describe them as “bald, and short of breath.” If he were a major, he, too, would have a “puffy petulant face,/Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel.” The connotations of these words suggest men who are overweight and out of shape from drinking and eating too much. The reference to “scarlet Majors” recalls the red dress uniforms of British officers and the color of blood.

[Coherence would be even better here if the student could perhaps go on to point out explicitly how the majors figuratively have blood on their hands—the blood of the young soldiers under their command. One brief sentence would do.]

The speaker then goes on to describe the attitude toward soldiers that is held by the officers. One speaks of losing many men in “this last scrap.” The understatement of that last word contrasts sharply with the mention in the same line of a heavy loss in battle. [Here the student should state the other meanings of “scrap” and point out their thematic significance.] In the last two lines of the poem, a further contrast is set up between “youth stone dead” and the officer who will “toddle safely home and die—in bed.” [Here the student could improve the essay by discussing the connotations of the verb “toddle” and then relating the diction to theme.]

When the entire poem is read, the title becomes ambiguous. The apparent meaning refers to the details of a military base. But “base” can also mean low and contemptible. “Detail” also has two meanings. It can mean a detachment of men sent out on a particular mission—”speed glum heroes up the line”—but it can also mean a minor matter, as if sending people off to die is not important to the officers. So the apparent meaning that we see as we begin reading, turns into a second meaning when we finish reading the poem.

The diction, then, makes a comment on the theme of the poem: old men who direct wars at a safe distance behind the lines seem to have little understanding of what it means to die in battle and appear on “the Roll of Honor.”

LICENSE AND ATTRIBUTION

Adapted from “ 3.1: Literary Analysis ” from Advanced Community College ESL Composition , 2019, by Edgar Perez, Jenell Rae, Jacob Skelton, Lisa Horvath, & Sara Behseta and is used according to CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .

Share This Book

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay: Purposes, Outline, Samples

Firstly to understand what a literary analysis essay means, it’s a way to determine and understand the work of an author, even if it is a single work or an entire body of work. Literary criticism is a description, analysis, evaluation, or interpretation of a particular literary work or an author’s writings as a whole.

Many students, writers, and english scholars are told to write essays on different literary analysis essay topics because this type of assignment helps and makes writers to think about the reason why a poem, short story, novel, or play was written. To analyze literature, writers will need to remember that authors have specific decisions for particular reasons. Your essay should point out the author’s decision and try to explain their intentions.

Learn how to write a book review and check out related guides: poem analysis essay , poetry analysis essay or critical lens essay at EssayHub blog.

What Is A Literary Analysis Essay?

The most comprehensive literary analysis definition goes as follows. It is a text that objectively analyzes the weak and strong points of another text. One author shares their opinion on what another author wrote. The most common literary analysis format is an essay.

The writer examines a novel, short story, or another type of fiction created by someone else. They praise or criticize the plot, style, characters, and other aspects of the text. After reading a piece of literary analysis, people should understand whether the book is worthy or not.

What Is The Purpose Of A Literary Analysis Essay?

When a newbie checks literary analysis examples, they will see that they are very personal. Different people might perceive the same text very differently. It depends on their character, life experience, and cultural background. The aim of writing a literary analysis is to express one’s individual understanding of the text and back it up with facts.

It is not sufficient to say, "I enjoyed every minute of reading this book!" or "It is too dull." All types of literary analysis involve the assessment of both technical and emotional aspects of the text. It implies an impartial balancing of pros and cons.

Imagine that someone is looking for a good book. Their time and finances are limited, so they can afford just one text. They want to avoid hit-or-miss decisions. They prefer an expert to recommend to them what to read.

They do not want this expert to be a high-brow professional critic. They are interested in the opinions of people whose lifestyle and worldview are close to theirs. They read book blogs and unbiased reviews on profile sites. When they finally buy a piece of fiction, they know what to expect of it.

After a reader gains experience, they become ready to share viewpoints with others. They read articles on how to analyze literature and start writing their own reviews. They can post their works in their private blogs or share them on social networks. Plus, literary analysis is an essential part of the educational process in schools and colleges.

Content Of A Literary Analysis Essay

There are many topics for literary analysis, but it all depends on the kind of work that a writer analyzes. For instance, the approach is not the same in poems as it is in the case with a play. Before writing it is important to know what you want to analyze in the literature that you have read. That brings us to types of literature analysis. How can a writer analyze the literature? This is done by:

Character Analysis
Symbolism Analysis
Theme Analysis
Setting Analysis
Structure and Style Analysis
Diction, Imagery, and Denotation Analysis. etc.

How To Write A Literary Analysis Essay?

Read the text critically.

When carrying out literature analysis, a person should read slowly. They should start a notebook where they would put down their thoughts. They should take notes when they find themselves in one of the following situations:

disagree with the author;
want to praise the author’s skills;
come across a plot twist that resembles their own lives;
have anything to say on the matter.

When people read an interesting text, they have controversial desires. On the one hand, they want to finish it to get to know what happens in the end. On the other hand, they want to enjoy it for as long as possible. When compiling a literary analysis sample, people should focus on their thoughts and not emotions.

Literary Devices

When newbies ask about how to write a good literary analysis, literary devices become the most challenging aspect for them. These devices involve the following terms and notions:

literary elements, such as plot, mood, and protagonists;
figurative language, including symbolism and metaphors;
literary techniques, such as foreshadowing and repetition.

To be able to analyze these aspects, newbies should read theory in textbooks. Also, they should examine enough sample literary analysis essays. They need to see how other writers handle the overview of literary devices without making their texts too formal.

In a literary analysis paper, it is not enough to say that the author has a masterful command of the word. The writer should concentrate on the following important aspects.

Is the language modern, archaic, or full of slang?
Does the author use poetic phrases?
Are the sentences predominantly long or short? How does the rhythm of the text impact its mood?

It would be wise to answer the following question in a literary analysis essay example. Do all characters speak the same language, or does each one have their particular style? Individual speech manners are significant merits of fiction.

Narrative Voice

A text can be written either from a first-person or third-person perspective. In a literary analysis example, the author should explain the position of the narrator. Are they omnipresent, or does the reader hardly notice them? Are they reliable, or do they share a distorted version of events?

Writers with little experience might ask how to do literary analysis when the narrator is absent. In this case, speak about the tone. Is it neutral, comic, or tragic? What emotions does it evoke in the readers from the first passage? How often does the reader come across exaggerations, irony, or incongruities?

In a novel, the key elements of literary analysis are chapters. In a play, these constituents are acts and scenes. In a poem, these are lines and stanzas. The author of the essay should think of how skilfully the writer divided their text into parts.

Chapters, scenes, and stanzas should be interconnected logically and emotionally. The last line of the previous part should motivate the reader to glance through the next one. The structure of the text helps emphasize its conflicts and build up the tension. The pauses between every two parts might speak louder than a thousand words.

Most examples of literary analysis essay include comments on the timeline of the story. Do the events unfold in chronological order? Does the author make the readers travel back and forth in a time machine? How easy is it to switch between different time layers, and which effect does it produce?

The following types of conflicts are most likely to be present in a literary analysis:

one person versus another;
person versus society;
person versus technology;
person versus supernatural forces;
an inner conflict within a person (good versus bad intentions).

Instead of one person, there might be a group of people.

Newbies should not get confused about how to write a thesis for a literary analysis. The term "thesis" denotes the main point that they are planning to focus on. Modern books are multifaceted: they feature numerous problems and give readers a lot of food for thought. Yet, the writer should concentrate only on a handful of aspects in their work.

There are three approaches to thesis writing:

analytical;
argumentative;
explanatory.

The literary analysis thesis of the first type strives to answer the questions "why?" and "how?" The writer tries to explain why the author created that book. Why is their perception of the world so unique and innovative? Why do they draw certain parallels and use specific devices?

This sentence might serve as a good example of an analytical thesis: "Outraged by gender inequality in this Eastern country, the author ridicules the problem instead of trying to undermine the traditions."

An argumentative thesis for literary analysis implies that the writer explains their own perception of the text. They take a certain position that might differ from the opinion of the majority. They further prove their point by quoting the book. For instance: "While most critics perceive this novel as an educational one, I believe that the main conflict lies in the lack of tolerance in society."

Literary analysis thesis examples of the explanatory type do not include the author’s opinion at all. They just help other readers understand the message of the book: "The author depicts their ideal political system."

Write A Literary Analysis Essay

Write a title.

After reading the title, the person should understand what the literary analysis paper example is about. The title should contain the digest of the paper. It should reveal the writer’s attitude to the piece of fiction that they criticize.

Those who do not know how to start a literary analysis can use a popular trick that works for any book genre. They can include a short quote from the book in the name of their essay. Then, they should put a colon and accompany the quote with their own comment.

Write An Introduction

The instruction on how to write literary analysis starts with a clear statement of one’s goals. The author should tell their readers what the book they are going to criticize is about and why they chose it. They should share the title of the text and the name of its writer. They might briefly outline the plot and problems of the manuscript. They might focus the readers’ attention on the main points of their essay — language, characters, or conflicts.

Write A Body

All the best examples of literary analysis essay have an identical structure. Each paragraph is focused on one aspect or topic. In the first sentence, the author briefly outlines this topic. That initial phrase should be concise and unambiguous.

The last sentence of each paragraph should summarize its essence. It should not contradict the first phrase and overall logic of the passage.

The writer should avoid lengthy and complicated structures. Even if the author of the book prefers compound sentences, a literary analysis sample should be easier to read. One phrase should contain only one thought. To link sentences, the writer should use transition words.

"The book dissects the impact of virtual reality technologies on the life of single people in cosmopolitan cities" — this is an example of a topic sentence that opens a paragraph. "Nevertheless, its target audience is not geeks or die-hard gamers" — here, the word "nevertheless" serves as a transition.

In any literary analysis template, the writer should back up their opinion with textual evidence. They should quote parts of the original texts only if they contain no more than 30 words. Otherwise, they should reword the quotes to deliver the essence of large passages.\

Write A Conclusion

The answer to the question "How to conclude a literary analysis?" is very simple. The writer needs to reword and sum up everything that they have said above. They should share no original quotes and introduce no new thoughts. It is enough to summarize their main ideas logically and concisely.

Literary Analysis Essay Outline

Introduction.

Introduction should be sophisticated and creative, and it should catch the reader’s attention, so they can read the rest of the essay. A literary analysis should not sound boring. It should create some enthralling and fascinating quotes, reflection or motives. The main sentences of the introduction should give backdrop facts so that the analysis will make sense; facts such as Title of the Book, Name of Author and little information about the book. Don’t write bulky details of the book the reader would have read this book and they just want to read the analysis. Make sure that your backdrop information and your thesis statement are short and transitional. To make the reader understand and connect to the literature and what exactly is been analyzed. The analysis or thesis statement is what you will prove in your essay, and it should come at the end of your introductory paragraph. The Intro could be more than one paragraph but about 5 important sentences.

The body must be very convincing. Here start rendering evidences of the argument. A convincing body will have at least three to four paragraphs or more. Also, do not go out of context the question has to be related. How does it relate to the overall theme of what the analysis? Make emphasis on the ways in which these elements bestow to the entire quality of the book. Emphasize one major point per paragraph in this section. No need to rush all of your evidence into one idea. Do more reading and analyze different factors in your literary analysis. Argue on a character's development, for example how the individual changes from the beginning to the end of the book. Center core on a character's fatal flaw and query or question the person's mistakes.

The conclusion should end dynamically and energetically. Start rounding up the literary essay paper in the last paragraph. It should include all the major points that have been made in the aforementioned statements of your literary analysis. Also, make emphasis on the on the implications of your argument.

Literary Analysis Essay Example

Symbolism Manifestation in Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The storyline arose from the author's personal experience. He survived an airplane accident in a desert. It happened when the writer served as a pilot during World War II.

A seemingly simple-hearted fairy tale has two main plotlines that uncover deeper problems. The leading one is the pilot-narrator line, lined up with the metaphor of adult reality. The second line dwells on the adventures of the Little Prince. Two protagonists travel to different planets, get acquainted with various characters, both positive and negative.

Each planet introduces the readers to a different philosophical conundrum. Each item and being in the book bear unique symbolic meaning.

The Pilot impersonates the author in his adult years. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was, in fact, a pilot and survived a plane crash in the desert.

The sudden encounter of an adult and a child (both are metaphors for inner psychological states) occurs in the desert, symbolizing the disastrous inner state of the narrator. The story unravels during the repair of the plane. The maintenance itself is a metaphor for mending the inner traumas through direct dialogue with the inner child.

The Little Prince

The description of the Little Prince gives the readers a hint of its relation to the author in his childhood years. Antoine de Saint-Exupery came from an impoverished aristocratic family. Through the Little Prince, the author shows himself. He reveals his struggle to survive within the boring world of adults.

His visit to our planet is a symbol of birth. The return to the home planet occurs through physical death from the poison of a snake. Here, we can observe the impact of Christian religious thinking on the plotline. The physical death of the protagonist is a reference to the religious idea of an immortal soul. Thus, after receiving knowledge about life from the Fox and Pilot, Little Prince has to die to be reborn into a new state.

The line telling about the love of the Little Prince and Rose shows an allegorical depiction of love. It reveals the ironic unsimilarity of how men and women see and express this feeling.

Rose gets introduced to the readers as a proud and beautiful character who has power over the Little Prince and his feelings. Gentle, timid, dewy-eyed Little Prince suffers from the frivolity of Rose. Because of his naïve perception, the protagonist struggled to see that it was necessary to love her for her essence – for the aroma and the joy she brought him.

When the protagonist sees that roses are abundant in the gardens on Earth, he feels disappointed. Later, he meets the Fox who serves as the guide to the little lost being. Fox explains to the protagonist some basic philosophical truths. He teaches the Little Prince to look with his heart, not his eyes, and be responsible for those we have tamed.

When Little Prince absorbs the knowledge imparted by his new friend, he becomes mortal. This transition symbolizes him growing up and shaking off idealistic world perception.

Planets And Their Inhabitants

The author shows his readers two sorts of evil. The first kind of evil reveals itself in the negative sides of separate people.

The inhabitants of different planets, visited by the protagonist, reveal the most dangerous human vices. It seems relevant to note that all of them are adults. Drunkards, politicians, and selfish people seem quite morally bankrupt.

The author exposes life devoid of meaning as a common vice. The only relatable person to the protagonist is a lamplighter. He differs because his craft is good for others.

Baobab Trees

Another element of evil in the book is macro-evil. Baobabs represent evil in general. This image is a metaphor for fascism. Saint-Exupery gently leads the readers to the idea that such evil endangers the world. It should be extinguished like undesirable plants.

The main idea of the used allegories is the presentation of true values. The author contrasts naive and rational ways of world perception, the individual, and the crowd. In the tale, the unraveling of the main themes is connected with compositional structure, metaphors, and similes used by the author.

The author dwells on deep philosophical issues through similes and symbols. He emphasizes such topics as true love, friendship, and loneliness.

Romantic traditions play a keynote role in the plot formation. Unraveling the deep problems of humanity in a form of the fairytale is the main sign of that. It comprises all typical elements of this genre: child protagonist, fairy-tale characters, and a fantastic journey. These symbolic characters and items introduce the depth to the plot. They make readers see deeper into the book and reconsider their perception of reality.

Do you need assistance with request " write my essay for me " in writing a literary analysis essay or any other kind of essay, academic papers? EssayHub is a genuine essay writing services , providing students with online assistance. We have essay writers who can provide you with an argumentative essay writing service on any topic you want, in any format and at a superior quality. Check the customer reviews who pay for essay on our platform. Seeing is believing. Try it out!

Plagiarism Report
Unlimited Revisions
24/7 Support

school Campus Bookshelves
menu_book Bookshelves
perm_media Learning Objects
login Login
how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
hub Instructor Commons
Download Page (PDF)
Download Full Book (PDF)
Periodic Table
Physics Constants
Scientific Calculator
Reference & Cite
Tools expand_more
Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

8.15: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

Last updated
Save as PDF
Page ID 101141

Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

Essay Guides
Main Academic Essays

Literary Analysis Essay: Learn More About This Writing Assignment

Speech Topics
Basics of Essay Writing
Essay Topics
Other Essays
Research Paper Topics
Basics of Research Paper Writing
Miscellaneous
Chicago/ Turabian
Data & Statistics
Methodology
Admission Writing Tips
Admission Advice
Other Guides
Student Life
Studying Tips
Understanding Plagiarism
Academic Writing Tips
Basics of Dissertation & Thesis Writing

Research Paper Guides
Formatting Guides
Basics of Research Process
Admission Guides
Dissertation & Thesis Guides

Table of contents

Use our free Readability checker

Literary analysis is a type of essay that explores and interprets various elements of a literary work. Your literary analysis may focus on major themes, characters, plot, setting, symbolism, and writing style. Your main task is to uncover the literary devices and explain how they convety the main idea of literary work.

Wondering how to write a literary analysis essay? Indeed, it's one tricky assignment that can leave lots of students stunned. When you read something non-academical, you do it for pleasure. But sometimes, especially in English class, teachers can give a task to read some story and conduct its analysis. And getting any amusement while writing such an assignment can be pretty questionable. But don't worry. We are here to give a helping hand. Keep reading this guide, and you will understand the literary paper basics. You will learn how to write such an essay and make it striking. Pull up your socks as we are ready to roll!

What Is a Literary Essay?

First of all, let's think of what a literary essay definition is and its specific purpose. It is an assignment that requires argumentative analysis of a particular work of literature . One cannot write such an essay on something not actually written by an author, like a film or series. Literary analysis implies doing close study of a piece of literature to decipher its intention and figure out the author's choices. As for rhetorical analysis essay – first of all, it's disclose the publication author's main ideas. We cannot consider this paper as a simple summary. Instead, it requires more precision in analyzing the language used and how the text is arranged. It also appeals to reviewing literary devices that the author used to express their thoughts. Your goal is to discover which effects the author's writing has created . Also, analyze the way how ideas of that written piece are uncovered.

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay?

As you start writing your first literary analysis essay, keep in mind its common structure which consists of:

Introduction It should inform your reader about your essay's point of focus.
Body paragraphs They let your reader know more details with corresponding evidence from your source of analysis.
Conclusion It outlines the main idea you've brought throughout your paper.

In case you lack time or motivation, our college essay writers are eager to help right now.

Analyze the Source

The first step of literary analysis is a thorough text breakdown. While going through a written piece, take notes of curious, puzzling, and other exciting words and word combinations. Also, pay attention to different conflicts or twists . You will later use them when you start delving into your analysis. Bear in mind that you shouldn't simply retell the content. Truth is way deeper under the surface. Try recognizing literary elements the author uses throughout their text. Those are special techniques they operate with to create specific consequences and show particular implications. Additionally, keep an eye on plot analysis and characters . Try noticing and describing any symbolism hidden between the lines. To ease the process, think of what questions appear while you read. Those can be something like:

What confused me?
How does the word choice that illustrates the subject differ from what I've heard before?
Are there any specific sequences worth attention?
How is the author telling their story?
What is the author's approach in expressing tragic or comic events?
What main characters' actions are weird or worth attention?

Find Evidence

Once you review the text and find out points to work around, it's necessary to find supporting evidence for your literary analysis paper. It's not just some random fact or data from another source. In our case, use format quotations from the work of literature you are analyzing. They will help back up arguments you are introducing later. You might not use every quote or phrase you collected, but overall process will assist you in taking out the most convincing ones. It's also helpful to learn more about the author. Being acquainted with their biography may shed more light on their intentions about the literary piece. This way, you won't make assumptions or blind guesses regarding their thoughts.

Form a Literary Analysis Essay Thesis

Now it's time to develop a literary analysis essay thesis. It is the main argument that you are making in your paper. You can consider it as a point that grants your essay one specific direction. Working around the thesis statement will ensure that you do not simply throw some random remarks in your work. You will be trying to prove your claim throughout your entire literary analysis essay. Therefore, make sure that your thesis statement is:

Topic-specific
Confirmed by textual evidence.

Don't try to make your thesis simple. After all, you need to make an impression on your readers and not bore them right from the beginning. That's why you've conducted careful source analysis before and found exciting refinements for your main argument. Here is an excellent thesis statement example in an essay analyzing Ray Bradbury's "The Happiness Machine":

Example of thesis statement in an essay analyzing Ray Bradbury's "The Happiness Machine"

Develop a Literary Analysis Essay Outline

The literary essay outline will help you structure your thoughts to make writing process much more manageable. Think of what you will include in each paragraph. Arrange quotations that you will use as evidence in order of importance. Make notes accordingly. Write the literary analysis paper outline carefully, bearing in mind all milestones of the analyzed work of literature. At this stage, you can also think of good essay titles . An excellent example contains a quote from the text, a direct reference to your chosen topic, and the author's name and work being analyzed. In case you have troubles with titling your literary essay, have no worries. You will be able to do that as soon as you finish writing the entire piece. It will be much easier to do as you will have more awareness of the arguments used.

Write the Literary Essay Introduction

The literary analysis essay introduction should present an overview of your intentions about the paper. Show where your main point is going. The first paragraph should also specify a brief recap of the essay's structure. These are the standard features of a good opening:

Provides background context.
Introduces the thesis statement.
Clarifies the "So what?" question.
Grants knowledge and expectations about your essay.

Typically an introduction begins with a general comment about work of literature. It can be used to bring your audience closer to the thesis and get its immediate attention. You can start with a provocative question or a shocking statement. Also, make sure you include author's name and work title here. Lastly, specify the thesis and end the whole opening with a transition that shows what readers should expect later in the paper's main body. There is no specific requirement for introduction length. But if you work with a standard 5-paragraph essay structure, it should be no longer than a single paragraph. Check how to start an essay example below – it includes the thesis statement we've mentioned before:

Work on Body Paragraphs

The next to come in a literary essay structure are body paragraphs. This part usually includes all your arguments and supporting evidence. Let's say you have 3 good ideas to demonstrate. In this case, you should write 3 paragraphs – 1 for each issue. Each section should start with a clear and coherent topic sentence. Make sure to establish connection with your thesis statement every time. Then, explain your findings. Outstanding literary analysis essays should always include textual evidence. Such evidence consists of a thought summary, relevant details, and a direct quote. However, if you discuss the story plot, it's not obligatory to use quotations unless you can find a narrow one that fits the context. You can also paraphrase a quote to make it shorter. Once you've written the body paragraphs, reread them once again and make sure they:

Directly relate to your thesis.
Have smooth transitions between each other.

Make a Literary Analysis Essay Conclusion

Now this question appears: "How to write a conclusion for a literary essay?" Your closing paragraph should give your readers some sense of fulfillment. They should realize that your paper has ended and gave them something new and exciting they can think about. The best option to achieve this is to make a summary of all arguments you presented. After that, show to which thoughts your ideas have brought you. And illustrate why your points matter in understanding the significance of a literary piece. Here is how we are going to conclude an essay on Ray Bradbury's "The Happiness Machine":

Example of literary analysis essay conclusion

Things just got more manageable now, right? Learning how to write a literary analysis essay might be a thorny way, but we managed to deal with it together. Hopefully, from now on, you will be able to see this task without even blinking. Follow our recommendations, and you'll write an essay that will deserve the highest grade. BTW, besides providing helpful tips for free, we're the best place to buy college essays if you want to save time this evening.

Although sometimes students feel comfortable writing one or another task, the only problem they have is time. Professional writing agencies, like StudyCrumb , will back them up in such cases. So if your assignment due date is approaching and you cannot complete it on time, count on us. Our experts will handle your tasks with pleasure.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

How to Write a Literary Analysis.

How to Annotate and Analyze a Poem
Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation
Literary Terms Lesson Plan
Literature Exemplars – Grades-9-10
Teaching Short Story Elements
Using Short Stories to Teach Elements of Literature
Bill of Rights Lesson Plan
Fun Ideas for Teaching Language
Comma Rules: How to Use Commas
Difference between Denotation and Connotation
Effective Word Choice Lesson Plan
Fun Grammar Review Game or Vocabulary & Language Arts
Lesson Plans for Substitute Teachers and Busy English Teachers
Lesson Plan: Creating the Perfect Title
4.08 – Lesson Plan: Using Semicolons Correctly
Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Lesson Plan
Sentence Combining Made Easy Lesson Plan
Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary
Using Tone Effectively Lesson Plan
4.12 – Word Choice Lesson Plan: Eliminate and Replace “To Be” Verbs
Using Voice in Writing Effectively Lesson Plan
Speaking & Listening
Teacher Guide Central

Lesson Plan: How to Write a Literary Analysis

Remember when you assigned a literary analysis or an interpretive essay and all you got was 237 summaries of a short story you'd already read 15 times, so you slammed your hand in the filing cabinet drawer until you drew blood and broke every finger?

The better option, of course, would have been to teach students how to write an interpretive essay or to teach students how to write a literary analysis.

Would you like a rubric? Of course, you would: Literary Analysis Generic Rubric .

The Basics of Writing a Literary Analysis

Use the following guidelines for teaching how to write an interpretive essay or how to write a literary analysis:

The introduction must introduce the literary work, capture the reader's attention , and include a clearly written thesis statement that contains the literary interpretation.
The body of the essay must support the thesis statement through evidence--facts, examples, summaries--and commentary--opinions, analysis, interpretation, insight.
The conclusion summarizes the interpretation and allows the writer to draw attention to the most important aspects of the analysis.

An 'A' essay does the following:

Identifies the author, title, and gives a brief summary of the literary work.
Provides a clear interpretation of the author's message and purpose.
Provides details, quotations

Writing and Drafting

Reread the literary work several times. This seems logical to teachers. It's not logical for students. Read through the first time to get a feel for the work. Reread and look for passages and ideas that stand out or have special meaning.
Before drafting, brainstorm possible interpretations. A good strategy is to write annotations as you read.
Discuss the interpretation with others who have read the work. As a teacher, it's important to have class discussions on works being analyzed.
Make sure you have a clear answer to the following questions as you write or revise:
What is the main point of the essay? This main point should be clearly identified in the thesis statement.
What evidence best supports the interpretation ?
Are there any points that should be added to clarify the interpretation?
Is there any superfluous evidence that could be deleted?

Common Pitfalls

Writing a Summary : No matter how many times you emphasize that you do not want a summary, you'll still get them. The only way to eliminate this error is to model analysis and give really low grades to students who summarize rather than analyze.

Listing Facts : A close relative of the summary is listing facts. It's also called the, "I'll list as many facts as I can about this literary work and hope the teacher doesn't grade it very closely" syndrome. Explain that listing facts without explaining how the fact supports the thesis statement or why that fact is important is useless.

Having No Evidence : At the other end of the bad analysis spectrum is the no evidence analysis. It consists of nothing but conjecture.

Mini Lesson

Teach how to write a literary analysis or how to write an interpretive essay and avoid the common pitfalls before you assign the essay. Try this exercise.

Write down a specific quotation or example from a literary work.
Underneath the quote write the phrase this shows________ .
Complete the sentence two times for each quotation.
Discuss answers and point out the difference between analysis and summary.
Once students have the basic idea down, assign the essay.
Another option is to have them answer discussion questions in the following format: 1 detail from the story, with 2 pieces of analysis.

Common Core Standards

Teaching how to write a literary analysis satisfies the following ELA Common Core Standards.

RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
L.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
RL.9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
W.9-10.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
W.9-10.1a Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
W.9-10.1b Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge level and concerns.
W.9-10.2b Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience's knowledge of the topic. W.9-10.2a Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings); graphics (e.g., figures, tables); and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
W.9-10.1c Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.
W.9-10.2f Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).
W.9-10.3c Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.
W.9-10.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
L.9-10.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

Types of Essays

Step-by-step instructions for writing different types of essays can be accessed by the following links.

Problem-Solution Essay
Persuasive Essay
Narrative Essay
Instructional Article
Literary Analysis
How to Write a Tall-Tale
How to Write an Article Critique
Cause and Effect Essay

Last Updated on December 6, 2016 by Trenton Lorcher

Get 5 Short Story Lesson Plans Now!

We specialize in teacher-ready lesson plans.

I will never give away, trade or sell your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Return to top of page

Assignments

Assignment: literary analysis paper 3.

Prompt for Paper : In an MLA formatted paper of at least 1000 words of content, analyze a character, theme, symbolism, imagery, or other literary device used in one or more literary works assigned for weeks 11-15 .

Choose ONE of the topic areas to explore, and unless you are focusing only on short works, limit yourself to discussing no more than two works in order to achieve depth of discussion and to avoid a superficial or overly general paper.

Your paper must focus primarily on a work from weeks 11-15, but it may also include a work from weeks 1-10. (but not a work you wrote about in Paper 1 or Paper 2).

DETAILED PAPER REQUIREMENTS:

Choose your source text(s) only from the assigned literary works from weeks 11-15 . (Use only literary works, not headnotes or editors’ notes.)
Do not use any sources other than the literary works you’re writing about. This is not a research paper! Your insight, interpretation and argument are what matter. This paper must consist only of your writing supported with evidence from the selected literary work(s).
Ensure that your paper’s thesis is an arguable (debatable) thesis. (The resources for writing a literary analysis explain this and provide examples.)
Structure the paper with an introductory paragraph that ends with the thesis statement. Use the topic of each body paragraph to present a point that directly supports the thesis.
Within each body paragraph, use logical reasoning and evidence from the literary text to prove your point of argument.
Include (and cite within the paper) at least three quotations from each literary work you’re discussing, but don’t overdo it—most of the paper needs to be your own writing.
Use signal phrases to integrate all quotations.
Include a works cited page that cites each literary work you use as a work in an anthology or as a work from an online source, as applicable.
Use MLA document format for the paper and MLA style for the citations and works cited page.
Edit and proofread: In addition to content, clarity, organization, grammar and spelling do count.

Thought starters towards developing a topic and thesis idea:

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the use of the supernatural, mystical, or magical in one or more works.

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the heroic and/or villainous qualities of a character in one or more works.

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the use of light and/or darkness in one or more works.

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the use of particular imagery (imagery can be anything that appeals to the five senses–sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste).

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the use of a particular symbol (or type of symbols) in one or more works.

Analyze (or compare/contrast) a theme, such as the power of filial (or other) love, the success (or failure) of justice, the importance (or not) of ethical behavior (many other themes could be used beyond these few examples).

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the nature of a character in one or more works (remember that character analysis is not limited to a protagonist).

Analyze (or compare/contrast) the role of women (or children or other not-traditionally-empowered character) in one or more works.

Analyze in depth (explicate) one or more short poems.

Download the Literary Analysis Paper Rubric PDF here .

Survey of English Literature I. Authored by : Wendy Howard Gray. Provided by : Reynolds Community College. Located at : http://www.reynolds.edu/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Step by Step

Some students find writing literary analysis papers rather daunting. Yet, an English class cannot go without this kind of work. By the way, writing literary analysis essays is not that complicated as it seems at a glance. On the contrary, this work may be fascinating, and you have a chance to study your favorite works of literature more in-depth.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

Making a Literary Anaysis Includes Three Main Steps: Critical Reading, Making a Thesis, and Writing the Essay.

Literary analysis implies that you read a certain piece of literature in a particular way. You need to break it into parts and see how each of these parts work . How to do this exactly? How to start a literary analysis essay? Continue reading this article by Custom-writing experts, and soon you’ll become an expert too!

❔ What Is a Literary Analysis Essay?

📑 literary analysis outline.

👣 Step-by-Step Writing Guide

🔗 References

It is one of the types of an argumentative essay in which you carry out an in-depth investigation of a novel, story, poem, play, or any other literary creation. The purpose is to explore the reasons for certain technical and artistic choices of the author and interpret their meaning.

What Is the Purpose of a Literary Analysis Essay?

This academic assignment aims to examine and evaluate a literary work or its aspect. The definition of a literary analysis essay presupposes the study of literary devices, choice of language, perspective, imagery, and structure of the text. These techniques are examined to understand the ideas the author intended to convey.

Feel free to use the following literary analysis outline . It will make your work much easier!

Writing an Introduction to a Literary Analysis Essay

Writing body paragraphs for a literary analysis essay, writing a conclusion for a literary analysis essay.

Find more details and a step-by-step guide on writing your literary analysis in the next section.

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

👣 How to Write a Literary Analysis Step by Step

Step 1. read critically.

If you wonder how to start the literary analysis, the answer is careful reading. At this stage, you need to find out the main themes of the novel. Make a list of them and note the pages where you can find evidence of the main ideas later. This method can be applied for all the references, as an academic paper requires you to indicate pages in the text for any quotations and paraphrases.

At this stage, the text’s events are important since they convey the main theme or the principal idea. You should rather focus on literary devices, choice of language, structure, and narrative voice. These are the elements of the text that create visual and emotional effects and convey the meaning.

Literary techniques (allusion, allegory, exposition, anthropomorphism, foil, foreshadowing, repetition, and parallelism)
Figurative language (metaphor, onomatopoeia, understatement, symbolism, personification, simile, pun, cliche, analogy, proverb, hyperbole, alliteration, idiom, assonance, irony, and oxymoron)
Literary elements (plot, theme, setting, imagery, mood, tone, point of view, protagonists, antagonists, conflict, climax, characterization, diction, motifs, and narrator)
Language . Here you should analyze the length of sentences, the complexity of grammatical structures, use of poetic or high-flown language, recurring to vulgar words, etc.
Structure . Does the structure impact the flow of the story, novel, or poem? What are the structural elements used by the author (chapters, stanzas, lines, acts)? This aspect is essential in the analysis of poetry. Rhyme pattern, punctuation, pauses, and meter shape the reader’s perception of verses and convey the author’s thoughts and feelings, just as the words do. Some of the items mentioned in the literary devices can be discussed as well in terms of structure. Foreshadowing and repetition can create suspense or generate dramatic irony. Climax can be located in the middle or at the end of the narration. The plot timeline influences action development, accelerating, and slowing down the in-text time. You don’t need to discuss all these factors, but if something strikes your eye while reading, note it.
Person vs. person
Person vs. nature
Person vs. self
Person vs. supernatural forces, fate, or God
Person vs. society
Person vs. technology
Narrative voice . In the course of reading, the narrator becomes the reader’s friend. What kind of person are they? Are they omnipresent and omniscient as a supernatural force, or are they in the same situation as the other protagonists? The narration can be first-person (fully involved in the plot and subjective) or third-person (distanced and objective). The tone of the narrator’s voice defines your perception of the text. Is it comic, realistic, or tragic? Is the narrator’s figure reliable, and do their words sound plausible?

Step 2. Formulate the Thesis

World classics and modern professional literature are valuable because of their multifaceted conflicts, well-thought structure, and abundant literary devices. Even the long research thesis cannot comprise all of them. Choose an aspect that stroke you the most in the course of critical reading. Formulate the intention of your analysis in one sentence. Make it succinct and to the point. The thesis tells your readers what you will tell them, but it also implies what you are not going to discuss.

A thesis statement should clearly describe the topic scope and the writer’s approach to it. It is a claim about the text that will be proved in the essay. A thesis can be argumentative, analytical, or explanatory. The samples given below will make the difference clear.

Your thesis statement requires sufficient textual evidence. In the previous step, you gathered much information, so now, it will be easier to find passages and quotations that refer to the subject. You may not use everything you have discovered in your writing, but having enough material at hand will help to structure the arguments.

Receive a plagiarism-free paper tailored to your instructions. Cut 20% off your first order!

Step 3. Write Your Essay

Write the title. It should be an abridged version of the thesis. This is the best place to be creative, witty, and brief. If you don’t know how to start the title, begin with a short quote followed by a colon, and then explain how it relates to your thesis. For example, “He’s more myself than I am”: the Destructive Nature of an Ego Blurred by Love in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. This is the easiest and the most compelling way to entitle an essay.
Write the literary analysis introduction . In brief, it consists of background information about the author and the book, leading to the thesis. You can refer to popular opinion on the subject and state your thesis as a contradiction to it. Alternatively, you can limit out the literary devices or a theme you are going to analyze. The introduction paragraph can be concluded with an indication of what is going to be discussed in the essay. However, in a five-paragraph essay, this summary should be condensed into a single sentence.
Start with a topic sentence stating what the paragraph is about. Avoid long phrases with complex grammar in the first sentence. It gives the reader a glance at the section and helps to orient in your text. Transition words can smooth the transition from one idea to another.
Continue with evidence and substantiation . Using quotes is reasonable when the quote is one sentence long, not more than 30 words. Otherwise, paraphrase or summarize the quote, leaving only the essential information. Never use quotes or paraphrases without providing a proper explanation.
Finish each paragraph with a one-sentence conclusion of the discussed idea.

Step 5. Prepare the Conclusion

Wrap up the essay without introducing any new ideas and avoiding direct quotations. Summarize everything you have mentioned above in different words. Then stress the thesis once again, highlighting the new perspective the essay has opened.

Literary Analysis Essay Topics

Thematic analysis of The Black Cat by Edgar Alan Poe.
Analyze the literature techniques used by W. Shakespeare in his tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark .
Discuss the central theme of the play Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey .
Describe the conflict of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire .
The topic of illegal immigration in Just Like Us by Helen Thorpe .
Explore how Steven E Ambrose describes the building of transcontinental railroad in Nothing Like It in the World .
Analyze the literary devices in The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich .
Analyze the plot of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman .
Examine the symbols used by William Wymark Jacobs in his horror story The Monkey’s Paw .
The importance of integral human sentiments in The Road by Cormac McCarthy .
Discuss how McDonald described the conditions that lead to degradation and loss of humanity in his autobiography All Souls .
Analyze Kafka’s short story A Hunger Artist .
Interpret the use of stylistic devices in The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne .
Explore Hemingway’s ideas about life in his story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place .
The symbolism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness .
Study the core motif of the Sophocles’ Oedipus the King .
Analyse the topics of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.
Examine the literary elements used by Lisa Ko in The Leavers .
Allegory in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates.
Interpret the idea behind Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener .
Discuss how Alice Munro describes issues in marriage and relationships in How I Met My Husband .
Analyze the main themes of Jack London’s To Build a Fire .
The central topic of Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
The connection between past and future in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway .
Describe the rhetoric means used by August Wilson in the play Fences .
Discuss the idea behind Jon Krakauer’s novel Into the Wild .
Interpretation of Why I Live at the P.O. Eudora Welty .
Compare the topic of women’s rebellion in Ibsen’s A Dollhouse and Glaspell’s Trifles .
Analyze the rhetoric used by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart .
Gender biases and marginalization in Girl by Jamaica Kincaid.
Analyze the main character in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner .
Examine the theme of tragic fate in Homer’s Iliad .
Discuss the message to society in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale .
Analyze the stylistic devices used by Tennessee Williams in The Glass Menagerie .
Interpret the theme of George Orwell’s The Hanging .
Jealousy and lasting love in Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe .
Analyzing the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly .
Describe the rhetoric techniques used by Jesmyn Ward in Sing, Unburied, Sing .
Examine the symbolism of John Updike’s A&P .
Literary elements used by James Joyce in Ulysses .
Discuss the themes of appearance and reality in Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare .
Examine the characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice .
Literary analysis of the poem The Man He Killed by T. Hardy .
Analyze the central theme of Matsuo Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Interior .
The role of an individual in the protection of the environment in The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.
Describe Hemingway’s rhetoric in Hills Like White Elephants .
Discuss the role of allegory in Beloved by Toni Morrison .
Analyze the elements of Charles Brockden Brown’s gothic novel Wieland .
The significant features of Summer by David Updike .
Examine the depiction of the contemporary society’s issues in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis .

Good luck with your assignment! Note that the information that you will find in articles about a literary criticism essay and Lady Macbeth essay can also also be useful.

✏️ Literary Analysis FAQ

Here is a possible definition: a description of some peculiarities of a literary text in a structured and cohesive way. It should include some elements of a research report. There are countless examples of such essays available online and in books.

It is always a good idea to create an essay outline first. Write a minimum of 3-4 key ideas for the body part. Then, exemplify those points (you may cite the text). Then, add an appropriate introduction and a corresponding conclusion.

If you need to write a literary analysis, begin with an outline. It will help you proceed step by step without losing the structure. Think about the peculiar features of the literary text you analyze. Brush up the principles of analytical writing, too.

A book analysis essay summarizes literary research and includes examples, review elements, etc. The purpose of such a paper is to help readers understand the book better. Just like any other essay, it should be appropriately structured: an appropriate introduction, several body paragraphs, a logical conclusion.

A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis – UW Madison Writing Center
Writing a Literary Analysis Presentation // Purdue Writing Lab
Types of Literary Analysis – UVM Writing Center
Literary Analysis | Writing Center – Leeward Community College
Suggested Structure of Your Literary Analysis Essay (Hawaii.edu)
Writing Critical Analysis Papers – Washington University
Literature – The Writing Center • University of North Carolina
Stanford Literary Lab
Share to Facebook
Share to Twitter
Share to LinkedIn
Share to email

These days, leadership and ability to work in a team are the skills that everybody should possess. It is impossible to cope with a large educational or work project alone. However, it can also be challenging to collaborate in a team. You might want to elaborate on importance and difficulties...

Racial Profiling Essay: Outline, Examples, & Writing Tips

Racial profiling is not uncommon. It’s incredibly offensive and unfair behavior that causes most of the protests in support of people of color. It occurs when people are suspected of committing a crime based on their skin color or ethnicity. Unfortunately, most people are unaware that racial profiling is an everyday...

Essay on Disaster Management: 200+ Topics on Natural Disasters

Without a doubt, a natural disaster essay is a tough paper to write. To begin with, when people encounter a disaster risk, it’s a tragedy. Emergency situations can affect hundreds, thousands, and millions of people. These are the crises and events that change people’s lives drastically. So, disaster and emergency...

Responsibility Essay: Topic Ideas & Responsibility Writing Prompts

“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say”Martin Luther There are a lot of other good quotations that can serve as a good beginning for your essay on responsibility and provide good ideas for writing.

Free Examples of Excellent Exemplification Essays

Exemplification essays, which are also called illustration essays, are considered one of the easiest papers to write. However, even the easiest tasks require some experience and practice. So, if you are not experienced enough in writing exemplification essays, you will face certain challenges.

Essay on Being Late to School: Hurry Up with New Ideas 2024

You push the snooze button once again and finally open your eyes. It is already 8:50, and your classes start at 9. “I’m going to be late again!”— you think, already in full panic mode. In a minute, you rush out the door half-dressed, swallowing your sandwich on the go.  ...

Harriet Tubman Essay: Topics, Outline, & Ideas

An essay about Harriet Tubman is to focus on the biography and accomplishments of a famous American abolitionist and political activist of the 19th century. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, escaped it herself, and helped others escape it. She changed many jobs throughout her lifetime, being a housekeeper, a...

Documented Essay Example, Topics, & How-To Guide

What is a documented essay and what is the purpose of it? It is a type of academic writing where the author develops an opinion relying on secondary resources. A documented essay can be assigned in school or college. You should incorporate arguments and facts from outside sources into the...

What Is a Reflexive Essay: Examples & Writing Tips

What is a reflexive essay? If you have just received the assignment and think there is a typo, you’re in the right place. Long story short, no, there is no mistake. You actually need to write a reflexive essay, not a reflective one. The thing is that reflective and reflexive...

Modern Fairy Tale Essay: How to Write, Topics and Ideas

Fairies and evil spirits, noble kings and queens, beautiful princesses and brave princes, mysterious castles and abandoned huts somewhere in a thick a wood… This is all about fairy tales. Fairy tales are always associated with childhood. Fairy tales always remind us that love rules the world and the Good...

Subjective vs. Objective Essay: Examples, Writing Guides, & Topics

Subjective or objective essay writing is a common task students have to deal with. On the initial stage of completing the assignment, you should learn how to differentiate these two types of papers. Their goals, methods, as well as language, tone, and voice, are different. A subjective essay focuses on...

All about Me Essay: How to Write, Ideas and Examples

Writing All About Me paragraph is probably one of the most usual assignments. For example, students might write it when entering an academic institution. Such work gives an opportunity to introduce yourself, your skills, and goals. However, it is not the only possible situation.

I have to type out an essay over this story “everyday use” but how would I start off the paragraph so that it can flow good??? Please help

Hello! Our experts will definitely help you with your essay here .

This was really useful. Thank you so much!

Thank you for the feedback. Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂

Love your blog and all posts. They helped me write many of my academic assignments. This post on writing literary analysis essays is what I need right now! Thanks!

Thanks for the steps to write an excellent literary analysis essay! I’m thrilled to find your blog! There is always something really useful for students writing various papers.

10+ literary analysis practice worksheets + activities for your ELA class

by mindroar | Oct 10, 2022 | blog | 0 comments

Now, our previous post was about how to teach your students to do a literary analysis or critical analysis. By now, you might be wondering if you can easily find a literary analysis practice worksheet to help your ELA students learn critical analysis skills.

I figured that a follow-up post of worksheets and activities that you can quickly and easily use would be in order.

So if you are teaching your students literary analysis skills and you need a little help, check out these great literary analysis activities and worksheets to use in your ELA classroom.

1. Nouvelle ELA – quote analysis

The first resource we have for you today is this PowerPoint and analyzing quotes activity by Nouvelle ELA.

The aim of the resources is to help your students learn to analyze and embed quotes in their writing.

In this fun literary analysis lesson, students analyze movie quotes and then have scaffolded help to practice embedding those quotes into their writing. Students practice the skills of:

Identifying who said the quote
Summarizing the context of the quote, and
Analyzing why the quote matters

Included in the activity are

an editable PowerPoint that introduces how to analyze quotes
an Interactive notebook lesson
literary quote analysis homework worksheet that is print and go
and an editable literary quote analysis homework sheet

2. A moonlighting English teacher – prose analysis and close reading

The second literary analysis practice worksheet we have today is this prose analysis and close reading bundle by A moonlighting English teacher.

The bundle includes activities to help students understand over 55 high-level literary terms, as well as practice and improve their skills in close reading and critical analysis.

While most of the resources were designed with specific texts in mind, most are able to stand alone as individual lessons or resources and are easily adaptable to whatever texts you are using in your class.

Included in the bundle are:

a list of every literary term and definition covered in each activity in the bundle
AP Literature prose analysis essay materials, including prose analysis passages and activities from The Poisonwood Bible , The Things They Carried , The Good Earth , Nectar in a Sieve , and Remembering
an AP Literature prose analysis essay activity that helps students break down two official sample essays
AP Literature prose essay materials, including advice and model outlines, a self-assessment, an a general rubric
seven creative activities to analyze literary devices in any novel or story, which is also distance-learning compatible
an activity to scaffold improving prose analysis commentary using Nectar in a Sieve
an activity on diction and motifs using The Good Earth
two quote analysis activities using The Good Earth
a nonfiction analysis and a rhetorical analysis handout
an activity on humor using The Poisonwood Bible
an activity on specific syntax devices using The Poisonwood Bible and an activity on the usage of low diction using The Things They Carried
a general AP Literature prose analysis essay practice/outline worksheet
creative activities on tone using The Poisonwood Bible and irony using Cry, the Beloved Country
and a self-created prose essay assignment

3. Reading the rapids – identifying literary elements

Other great literary analysis lessons include these ones by Reading the rapids. This fun bundle will help your students identify literary elements.

Students learn and reinforce their learning by watching animated shorts, using graphic organizers, applying their learning in activities, and assessing their peers. Literary elements students learn about include:

direct and indirect characterization
types of conflict (man vs self/man/society/technology/nature/supernatural)
what is and is not an inference
types of irony
juxtaposition
mood and tone
personification

The bundle covers many different CCSS and each lesson plan states which skills are covered in that lesson.

The author also has this great free literary device inventory and reflection to help you work out your students’ level of knowledge about literary devices. It also uses animated shorts so that the activity is fun and engaging for students to complete.

3. Tracee Orman – showing evidence from the text

The next literary analysis practice worksheet is included in this activity by Tracee Orman. In the activities, students will learn how to adequately show evidence from the text.

In the activity, students use three non-fiction texts and questions to practice citing evidence from the text. Suggested answers for each question are included, as well as the evidence students should use.

The passages include interesting scenarios including

a woman and her son are sprayed with poop from a plane flying overhead
a woman takes in two kittens only to find out they’re bobcats
a federal court rules on whether a monkey (or other animal/non-human) can sue for copyright infringement.

The files are provided as non-editable PDFs or a Google slides version of the worksheet for students to respond to digitally.

4. Reading and writing haven – analyzing different text types

The next literary analysis practice worksheet we have for you is this bundle by Reading and writing haven. The bundle enables students to practice analyzing a variety of texts, including non-fiction, fiction, paired texts, short films, movies, advertisements, and poetry.

The materials and the scaffolding guiding questions and prompts enable students to better understand how to analyze texts. Included in the bundle are

a direct instruction presentation and guided notes that breaks down the concept of analyzing
a whole-class analyzing activity that uses a poem, a short film, and two political cartoons (suggested use is included)
an assignment that contains scaffolded questions to use with any text
a short film analysis assignment (of Night and Day ) with scaffolded questions and an extended response (film available on YouTube)
seven graphic organizers to use with a variety of texts (commercials, songs, fiction, nonfiction, poems, movies, and paired texts – text suggestions/recommendations with links are included)
a pre- and post-assessment
a literary analysis essay example to help move students from analyzing verbally to analyzing in a literary analysis format
an editable single-point rubric and outline with guiding questions to accompany the literary analysis essay
a unit overview (recommendations for order and text ideas)
suggested texts and links to sources to use for whole-class modeling purposes

5. Secondary Sara – finding evidence from the text

Another way to get your students to practice literary analysis when studying any novel is by using this fun activity by Secondary Sara.

The Common Core-aligned activity is set up as a “conspiracy theory” that students have to “prove”. To do so, students practice finding and using evidence to back up a claim.

In the activity, student groups choose a question about the novel and come up with a “conspiracy theory” (thesis) to answer that question.

While reading, small groups gather text evidence from the novel and analyze it using a four-step method: What does it SAY?, What does it MEAN?, Why does it MATTER?, How does it prove your THESIS?

Once they have completed the novel and graphic organizer, students give presentations on their thesis and the evidence they collected to support it.

The rest of the class actively listens by following along with their own listening guide to track who said what.

You can also use an optional follow-up essay assignment to individually assess literary analysis skills.

Included in the download are:

a rubric that clearly assesses speaking standards
teacher guide that provides essential questions, I Can statements, CCSS standards for grades 6-8, a sample calendar of lessons, and tips for successful implementation of the group project.
directions sheet and rubric
thesis statement development/approval sheet
case file planning sheet (chart to collect and analyze text evidence while reading)
listening guide for presentations
sample PowerPoint template to give students so they know how to format and organize all of their evidence (and it helps them transition into an essay later)
literary analysis essay assignment (directions and rubric)
Google, Word, and PDF versions
bonus pages: a nonfiction activity to research what conspiracy theories are, evaluating evidence in a theory mini-lesson, and analyzing the quality of an essay’s claims mini-lesson

7. Write on with Miss G – low-risk literary analysis practice

Another fun literary analysis practice worksheet is included in this speed-dating lesson by Write on with Miss G. The discussion and literary analysis activities work with any novel.

In the activity, students are paired up to discuss questions aligned with the Common Core standards. After each round, students rotate to a new partner and discuss a new question.

By the end of class, students will have interacted with 15+ peers and discussed 15+ questions! This means students get lots of low-risk, repeated practice in the peer-to-peer setting.

This literary analysis practice activity enables your entire class to participate in literary analysis in a low-risk setting and set students up for success in whole-class discussions (that you can do following the speed-dating lesson).

This activity works best at the end of a novel, as it contains questions that ask about “the big picture” (theme, symbolism, etc.)

detailed teacher instructions
editable student worksheet with an exit ticket
27 editable Common Core-aligned question cards
blank question cards (so you can add your own questions)

Literary elements covered in the questions include

author’s choices
author’s purpose
character development
word choice
point of view
objective summary
and structure

8. Tracee Orman – interactive flipbook

Another literary analysis practice worksheet is included in this interactive notebook flipbook for any novel by Tracee Orman.

You can choose to use the literary analysis activity as an interactive flipbook, or you can choose to use them as literary analysis practice worksheets.

The activities cover six main areas. These areas are

character development: students must analyze how the setting, events, and other characters have influenced each other
setting: students analyze how the setting affects the tone of the story and how different themes utilize the setting to convey their messages
point-of-view: students evaluate either first-person, third-person limited, or third-person omniscient narration–depending on the novel or story–and how different events, the setting, and other characters impact the way it is narrated; students also analyze why the author chose that perspective and how it influences different themes
plot analysis: students choose different events from the novel and analyze how each contributes to the tension and conflict in the story; students also evaluate the author’s structure of the story and why/how the author uses various literary techniques for storytelling
literary and figurative devices: students examine the words used in various quotes and how they change or impact the tone and mood of the story; students also identify and explain various figurative language devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, idiom, and imagery
overall effects: students dissect a theme to see which characters, events, and elements of the setting helped deepen its meaning of it.

Using these literary analysis practice worksheets or interactive notebooks, students practice higher-level critical-thinking skills which include analysis, synthesis, inference, summarizing, and more.

The activities can be used at any point in the text and can be reused at any point, making them even more versatile. They are perfect for stations, group work, or individual independent reading.

9. Teen tech university – analyzing author’s tone

The next literary analysis practice worksheet is included in this activity by Teen tech university, which focuses on teaching students how to analyze the author’s tone in writing.

Included in the product are

an analyzing tone Google Slides presentation (30+ slides)
DIDLS charts for strategic tone analysis – they show students how to analyze diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax
four poems to analyze – they are all on the same subject but have a different tone
teacher’s key for ALL poems and activities
tone tweets activity – students analyze 15 real-life tweets with a student handout and a teacher answer key
engaging reading passages for practice and application
an assessable application activity – a high school graduation where two teens with very different viewpoints
a writing application activity – My greatest fear
tone words reference sheet (positive, neutral, and negative connotation)
annotation activities for active reading and examples
teacher notes and pacing guide
Google Drive sharing links for all resources AND pdf handouts provided for printing options.

10. Celebrating Secondary – literary analysis of short films

Another fun way to get your students to practice literary analysis is to use short films to introduce, practice, or review the process. This bundle by Celebrating secondary enables students to practice literary analysis in a low-risk setting by analyzing short films.

Included in the bundle are two products: Literary analysis using Pixar short films and Literary analysis using short films. Literary topics and skills covered by the activities include:

characterization
connotation
social commentary
author’s purpose
and many more

The product includes links to Pixar shorts, including Bao, Lou, Lifted, Partly Cloudy, and La Luna . It also includes links to short films, including Lambs, Nuggets, Snack Attack, Soar, and The Little Shoemaker .

A suggested answer key is included, but because the activities are analysis-based answers will vary.

11. Miss Fits – “recipe” of a text analysis

The last literary analysis practice worksheet is included in this recipe book project by Miss Fits.

In the CCSS-aligned project, students show their understanding and interpretation of the main ideas and themes of a literary work in a fun and creative way. They will practice citing textual evidence to support their examination of a literary work, including themes and characterization.

This activity works fantastically with books that have a large emphasis on food, such as

Lara Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate , Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler, or The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

However, it can also be used with other texts, with the creator saying she’s used it with a class reading George Orwell’s 1984 and another student using it as an alternative project for The Handmaid’s Tale.

Included in the product are:

an assignment sheet explaining the objective and instructions for the project
rubric (editable version also included)
an imagery tracker
a creative symbolism exercise
step-by-step recipe worksheet to help students create their projects, and
sample entries

Want more literary analysis content?

Check out these blog posts

Literary analysis: how to teach your ELA students to analyze
5 research-backed reasons you should be teaching mind mapping

Want a literary analysis example to show your ELA students? Sign up to have an example literary analysis of Jane Austen’s Emma delivered to your inbox.

IMAGES

Literary Analysis
Literary Analysis Paragraph #2 assignment and rubric -1 1 copy.docx
Digital Literary Analysis Paragraph Writing Prompts by Let's Get Literature
How to Write an Introduction for a Literary Analysis
How to Write an Introductory Paragraph for a Literature Analysis

VIDEO

How To Write The Analytical Paragraph For Literature Questions (CEI Style)
Examining A Literary Analysis Paragraph
Outlining for Literary Analysis Essay
Introductory Paragraph for Literary Analysis
Sentence and paragraph assignment
Intro Paragraph

COMMENTS

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs: the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion. Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis.
Writing a Literary Analysis Essay
A literary analysis essay asks you to make an original argument about a poem, play, or work of fiction and support that argument with research and evidence from your careful reading of the text. It can take many forms, such as a close reading of a text, critiquing the text through a particular literary theory, comparing one text to another, or ...
PDF HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY
The term regularly used for the development of the central idea of a literary analysis essay is the body. In this section you present the paragraphs (at least 3 paragraphs for a 500-750 word essay) that support your thesis statement. Good literary analysis essays contain an explanation of your ideas and evidence from the text (short story,
PDF Discovering Evidence for a Literary Analysis Essay
Discovering Evidence for a Literary Analysis Essay. This handout is designed to help you discover evidence to support an argument in a literary analysis assignment by using the skill of close reading to produce an explicationof a literary text. This lesson discusses how the elements of literature work together to create meaning; you will find a ...
Literary Analysis Essay
A literary analysis essay is an important kind of essay that focuses on the detailed analysis of the work of literature. The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to explain why the author has used a specific theme for his work. Or examine the characters, themes, literary devices, figurative language, and settings in the story.
The Basics Of Literary Analysis
Literary Analysis. : Literary analysis is the process of examining a literary work, such as a novel or poem, to understand its meaning and explore its themes, characters, symbols, and other literary devices. It involves closely reading the text and interpreting it through critical thinking. Literary Devices.
How to Write Literary Analysis
Literary analysis involves examining all the parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elements such as character, setting, tone, and imagery—and thinking about how the author uses those elements to create certain effects. A literary essay isn't a book review: you're not being asked whether or not you liked a book or whether you'd ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis: 6 Tips for the Perfect Essay
These 4 steps will help prepare you to write an in-depth literary analysis that offers new insight to both old and modern classics. 1. Read the text and identify literary devices. As you conduct your literary analysis, you should first read through the text, keeping an eye on key elements that could serve as clues to larger, underlying themes.
Literary Analysis Essay: 5 Steps to a Perfect Assignment
1. Read and analyze the text. In order to understand how to start a literary analysis essay, you need to realize the importance of strong research. Before you begin writing your essay, make sure to thoroughly go through your text and take detailed notes. Observe and note the words used by the author, the structure and tone of the piece, the ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
The literature analysis essay, like other various academic works, has a typical 5-paragraph-structure. The normal procedure for writing an introduction for your literary analysis essay outline is to start with a hook and then go on to mention brief facts about the author and the literature. After that, make sure to present your thesis statement.
Writing a Literary Analysis
Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben's analysis of William Butler Yeats' poem, "Among School Children": "Among School Children" was published in Yeats' 1928 collection of poems, The Tower.It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to a school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay: Definition, Formats, Examples
Literary criticism is a description, analysis, evaluation, or interpretation of a particular literary work or an author's writings as a whole. Many students, writers, and english scholars are told to write essays on different literary analysis essay topics because this type of assignment helps and makes writers to think about the reason why a ...
Literary Analysis-How To
A literary analysis is a common assignment in first-year writing and English courses. Despite how ubiquitous they are, literary analyses can sometimes feel confusing or maybe even a little intimidating. This type of analytical essay requires you to zoom into a text to unpack and wrestle with deeper meaning (through exploring diction, syntax ...
8.15: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays
Page ID. Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap. City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative. Table of contents. Example 1: Poetry. Example 2: Fiction. Example 3: Poetry. Attribution. The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.
Literary Analysis Essay
Check for free. Literary analysis is a type of essay that explores and interprets various elements of a literary work. Your literary analysis may focus on major themes, characters, plot, setting, symbolism, and writing style. Your main task is to uncover the literary devices and explain how they convety the main idea of literary work.
A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis
When your teachers or professors ask you to analyze a literary text, they often look for something frequently called close reading. Close reading is deep analysis of how a literary text works; it is both a reading process and something you include in a literary analysis paper, though in a refined form. Fiction writers and poets build texts out ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis.
Teaching how to write a literary analysis satisfies the following ELA Common Core Standards. RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. L.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the ...
Assignment: Literary Analysis Paper 3
This paper must consist only of your writing supported with evidence from the selected literary work (s). Ensure that your paper's thesis is an arguable (debatable) thesis. (The resources for writing a literary analysis explain this and provide examples.) Structure the paper with an introductory paragraph that ends with the thesis statement.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Step by Step
Writing an Introduction to a Literary Analysis Essay. ️. Start with the title of your work and its author's name. One or two sentences will suffice. Stress on the main idea of the analyzed work to make these sentences more hooking. ️. Briefly tell what the work is about or how it influenced the world literature.
Literary Analysis
Topic Sentence ii. Example iii. Quote iv. Analysis v. Conclusion for single body paragraph OR Transition for multi-paragraph II. Topic Sentence a. Does three things: i. Mention your topic ii. Relate to your thesis statement (in a multi-paragraph assignment) iii. Includes a T.A. (only in a single paragraph assignment) Title, Author, Genre b.
10+ literary analysis practice worksheets + activities for your ELA class
Included in the activity are. an editable PowerPoint that introduces how to analyze quotes. an Interactive notebook lesson. literary quote analysis homework worksheet that is print and go. and an editable literary quote analysis homework sheet. 2. A moonlighting English teacher - prose analysis and close reading.
Assignment Literary analysis Paragraph
Assignment : Literary paragraph. In a formally structured paragraph, select a literary criticism style of your choice (refer to literary criticism resources), and analyze the short stories/articles below:. Mirrored Archetypes (article) *Follow MLA format.Ensure you make specific references to the text to support your points.