Mode:  Literary Analysis (Chapter 25, page 373)

Your goal is to experience a work of literature, understand its elements, and then write an essay analyzing particular aspects of the work.  For example, in works of fiction, you might consider analyzing character, setting, theme, irony, symbolism, tone, or a combination of these elements.

Sources:                      Three (3) critical sources must be cited in the body of your paper and documented on a separate Works Cited page in accordance with the MLA style format.  Refer to your text for MLA information.

Purpose:                     To analyze

Person:                       Third person (they, he, she, it)

Length:                       5 paragraphs, 4-8 sentences per paragraph—vary sentence structure (see page 650 for sample sentence structures).

Organization:              Logical, clear sequence

Tense:                         In referring to events that occur within the context of the work of literature, your essay should consistently use present tense verbs.

 

Thesis Examples from Literary Analysis Papers:

Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” powerfully expresses the poet’s gloomy outlook as one century dies and another is born.

Julian in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and Hulga in “Good Country People” share a number of similarities that serve to bring out the theme of dualism in these two stories.

The purposeful ambiguity of Hawthorne’s color and name symbolism in “Young Goodman Brown” enriches the multi-layered texture of the story and makes us recognize the ambiguity of human nature.