Formulate an argument (including a good thesis) and be sure that your final draft is structured around it,
This point really helps because if you were to make an outline for your paper, laying out the summary and the breakdown of the analysis into its own separate points like the effect and importance would help structure and think about your analysis.
Analysis requires breaking something—like a story, poem, play, theory, or argument—into parts so you can understand how those parts work together to make the whole.
I think the part where I struggle is trying to find evidence throughout the whole work when the argument I’m making mainly has evidence on only a certain section of the work.
Once you figure out what you know about a subject, it’s easier to decide what you want to argue.
I think this is really important because especially when you’re writing a paper on a specific argument, knowing what you’re talking about gives yourself more credibility and allows the audience to consider your stance.
But it’s important that your keep your assignment and your audience in mind as you write.
Summaries are relevant to provide context to the topic you’re discussing. It allows the audience to know what you’re talking about and what specific point or moment you’re referring to.
The theme is the main idea, lesson, or message in the novel. It is usually an abstract, universal idea about the human condition, society or life, to name a few.
Themes can also be interpreted differently for the readers depending on their point of view of the story.
What role does setting play in the story? Is it an important part of the plot or theme? Or is it just a backdrop against which the action takes place?
Setting can also serve as a conflict which affects the actions of the characters. For example in high school I read A Raisin in the Sun and since it was set in the 60's, the characters who were Black had to face discrimination and was in the way of what the characters' goals.
Aside from noting what they are and how they drive a story, we sometimes don't pay much attention to these elements. However, characters and their interactions can reveal a great deal about the story's themes.
Paying close attention to these elements can reveal hidden meanings, for example color motifs that reoccur within a story help symbolize something important or reinforce a character.
Eventually, this discussion led students to research Elizabethan perspectives on ghosts and demons.
What is written can open up different experiences and cultures which provides rich discussions and perspectives and can help us learn that we are all different and can learn from one another.
When teachers use any of these terms, it usually means engaging with a text on a deeper level than when reading for entertainment or information: that is, looking not just at what is written (the message, also known as content), but how it is written (the methods used to shape the message, also known as form).
Literary analyses are meant to get the readers thinking and look into the author's purpose into why they made the text the way it is. Not getting readers to think it is simply just words written but meaning.
When a character goes on an extended soliloquy, or extended speech when they are by themselves on the stage, they will often address the audience directly; the audience gets the insider view of their thoughts.
To me, soliloquys are important because it creates a sense of dramatic irony where the audience knows what is going to happen before the characters do which adds more suspense into what is going to happen in the story.
A lot of literary production is driven by economics, after all: playwrights gotta eat, too!
I really like the social aspect tied into the theatrical part of plays which I can see why it is considered literature in the first place.
Scene of Suffering: a bunch of people suffer and/or die as a result of the protagonist's hamartia.
I wonder if Shakespeare follows Aristotle's rules exactly in every play that he has written. It sounds similar to Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.
There is no art delivered unto mankind that has not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth
What this primarily means is that nature is the center of what humanity creates and discovers. This relates to literature because we, as humans, are inspired by it and use it to help write as a form of expression.
Some of the most common elements in a piece of literature include:
In my experience in high school, my English teacher used to have us analyze the text according to SCASI: Setting, Character, Action, Style, and Ideas. It actually is a really good method that helped me a lot.
Each time you do one of these things, you are responding to something you've seen or heard. And when you read a book, you likely do the same thing.
I feel like another part when it comes to literature is the interactions with the text and the social aspect of discussing what happened. It establishes community and sense of belonging.
However, when you write something, you present a point of view through your unique voice. Even if something has been said about a book many times, you can add something new to that discussion. Perhaps you can state an idea in simpler terms, or you want to disagree with a popular viewpoint. Even if you're writing to an instructor's prompt, your voice will make the paper unique.
Having a voice is a key characteristic in what makes literature and the fact that there is a sense of humanity behind the words written rather than what is being by AI which has less weight and value behind it.
Medicine, a threat to the status quo, entertainment, activism, or boring stinky old piles of pages: what is literature to you?
I feel like a part of what is being discussed is that literature can vary among individuals just like how we can debate what is art and what isn’t. We determine what the definition is.
Most of our reading and writing is done on the internet: in the forms of Facebook posts, memes, tweets, snapchats, Tik Tok videos, and viral news.
I feel like a big part of why this is the case is the changed attention spans due to the media evolving over time. As technology advances further, we gradually shift from what is considered “older media” to newer ones due to the fact that is more advanced and that many people are interested in it.