Writing
a literary analysis should be no more difficult than writing any
other thesis-and-support essays.
A literary analysis (or "literary critical analysis" or
sometimes "literary essay" ) uses the same organizational
pattern best seen in the persuasive essay and used for 90%
of college
writing and workplace
writing: the thesis-and-support pattern.
Comparing two sample essay outlines for five-paragraph essays written
using my trademark writing skeleton™
format will make the similarities obvious.
Sample nonliterary writing skeleton™
Here's a writing skeleton™ for a hypothetical nonliterary
essay:
Thesis:
Computers can hurt you.(The body paragraphs prove the point by
showing how computers can hurt you.)
Body paragraph 1 topic sentence:
Computers can hurt you because computers can cause eyestrain.
Body paragraph 2 topic sentence:
Computers can hurt you because computers can cause repetitive
stress injury to hands.
Body paragraph 3 topic sentence:
Computers can hurt you because computers can cause neck and back
strain.
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Sample literary writing skeleton™
Here's a writing skeleton™ for a hypothetical literary analysis:
Thesis:
Brilliant Author uses nature to underscore his theme that life
is a cycle. (The body paragraphs show reasons why the writer believes
that thesis to be true.)
Body paragraph 1 topic sentence:
Brilliant Author uses natural settings to underscore his theme
that life is a cycle.
Body paragraph 2 topic sentence:
Brilliant Author uses nature metaphors to underscore his theme
that life is a cycle.
Body paragraph 3 topic sentence:
Brilliant Author uses nature symbolically to underscore his theme
that life is a cycle.
With a little prompting, most students who understand the process
of writing a thesis-and-support essay can figure out how to apply
that process to literary analysis.
Try having students write
informally on prompts you pose about fun reading material
(fairy tales, comic books, or Dr. Suess picture books, for example)
as a way to get them to figure out how to make that application.
If you are not familiar with informal writing, check out my e-book
Shape Learning, Reshape
Teaching.
Paragraph development
Students would develop each body paragraph following the standard
expository
paragraph format when writing a literary analysis from the skeleton.
The beauty of that expository paragraph format for literary
analysis work is that it limits the amount of source material
a student can include.
Keeping borrowed material to a minimum is extremely important
for college-bound students. Most of the colleges at which I have
taught limit the amount of borrowed material
in a paper to 20-25% of the total word count.
Quotation is typically limited to about 10% of the total paper.
Limiting the amount of borrowing encourages students to think
and reduces the likelihood of plagiarism
or copyright
violations.
If you teach students to write using the thesis-and-support pattern,
you won't have to teach them a separate method for developing
a literary analysis.
I'm not opposed to doing less work; are you?
Learn how to answer the three questions students always have
about preparing
a critical analysis of a literary work.
