Anatomy of a Successful Literary Analysis

THESIS

• Is thesis clearly stated at the beginning of the paper (generally, at the end of the first paragraph)? Don't worry about giving your thesis away; letting your reader know what to expect from your argument--and then holding true to that expectation--is a service to readers of most academic papers. See suggestions from the VU Writing Center on Writing an Effective Thesis.

• Does thesis statement include a brief "road map" of a few major points that your paper will argue? Including such a "road map" is not imperative, but doing so helps, especially if your thesis is complex.

• Is thesis arguable: does it go beyond what is apparent, say, by the first reading of a given work, and argue something that the reader of that work may not have noticed or would not already know?

TITLE

• Does the paper feature a title that is creative, that names the literary work or works that you are discussing, and that, in some way, reflects your thesis? The Writing Center's WWW site has some excellent suggestions on titles in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) portion of its site.

ARGUMENT AND EVIDENCE

• Does the paper back up its claims with sufficient evidence from the literary text and from outside readings (if you use them) that inform your analysis? Literary analyses should make specific reference to the texts that you discuss, which means citing specific lines, or focusing closely on specific scenes within the literature. Doing so is essential for this type of paper. If you can write your paper without opening the text you're discussing, rifling through it for specific passages, and recounting them in detail, you are not focusing closely enough.

• Does the paper address counterarguments to your thesis? That is, does the paper acknowledge and either refute, or partially concede to counterarguments to your thesis? Does your paper represent those counterarguments accurately and fairly? An example of a counterargument mentioned in a thesis statement: "Although Rushdie has been widely accused of discrediting Islam and non-Western cultures in The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories features a multi-cultural, post-modern pastiche of Eastern and Western cultures. Although discrediting censorship much like that imposed by Iran, Haroun nonetheless celebrates stories in both cultures as not only positive, but also sacred."

• Does paper integrate quotations and examples sufficiently into its prose? That is, does the paper accomplish the following:

1) avoid "dropped" quotations: quotations without attribution phrases such as "Jacobs says"? Attribution verbs such as comments, claims, argues, posits, suggests, recounts, acknowledges, observes, or writes can help you accomplish this goal gracefully.

2) sufficiently precede quotations with enough context so the situation in which they occur in the text is clear?

Note that integrating quotations applies to articles and sources about your topic, as weall as the literary works you're discussing. See also the Writing Center's document on quoting effectively.
 

• Does paper avoid unnecessary plot summary? That is, does the recounting of what happened in a given work remain sufficiently brief and, even more importantly, connected to a point for which your example is evidence? (This strategy can mean a balancing act between keeping summary to a minimum, but nonetheless providing enough evidence from the text.)

ARGUMENT/ FLOW

• Does paper follow a logical outline, and clarify that outline for the reader through topic sentences in each paragraph? Does paper fully develop ideas, generally in paragraphs of around 1/2 to 2/3 page in length? Does paper refer to events in the literary work(s) you're discussing in the present tense? Are there sufficient transitions to link paragraphs together or introductions to thesis statements? Does paper avoid subheads, choosing better articulated transitions instead? (Generally, literary analyses of short lengths should avoid subheads.) If you are unfamiliar with writing literary analyses, have you referred to a recent literary anthology or stylebook for a sample of what a literary analysis should look like? See also the following information on paper flow from the Writing Center site.

• Is any historical information that you present--names, dates, places--accurate? Look it up, if you're not sure.

• Have you followed references to the text you're discussing with parenthetical references to act, line, and scene numbers (if you are discussing drama and those numbers are available), line numbers (if you are discussing poetry and those line numbers are available), or page numbers (if you are discussing prose, or if no other line numbers are available)? Again, refer to a literary anthology or a stylebook for how to do this, if you are unsure.

• If you are replicating ideas from outside sources--articles or books about the works you're discussing, Cliff Notes, Web sites, introductions to the literary work from another edition--have you indicated which sources you are using both through a Works Cited page in MLA format, and through internal documentation (attribution phrases and parenthetical references to page number) throughout your prose? Do your attribution phrases clearly indicate where another person's ideas begin? Accomplishing the above strategies is essential for clarifying whose ideas ou are discussing, and for avoiding plagiarism.

• Have you run your paper through spell-check and proofread for appropriate tone, word choice, and syntax? Common matters to avoid:

• sentence fragments or run-on sentences (particularly pairs of sentences linked by the word "however" that are only separated by a comma, rather than a period or a semicolon). See What Is A Comma Splice? from the Writing Center page.
• pronouns and antecedents that do not agree in number (such is in "every person has their particular concerns");
• the plural first person ("in the following passage, we see");
• the second-person you ("you see in the following passage that");
• phrases such as "I think" (those phrases are not necessarily in literary analyses; keep your analysis in the third person, such as in "the following passage suggests"). For this and the above three suggestions, see the following suggestions on the use of "I" and "you" from the Writing Center site.
• an overly colloquial tone (such as in transitions such as "now, this passage...";
• imprecise pronouns ("that suggests" rather than "the animalistic imagery in Othello suggests"
• passive verb constructions("it is said" rather than "Arthur Miller suggests; "there is", "it is clear that"); unnecessary words ("the fact that" constructions constitute one example).

• Does your analysis dig deep enough?  Can you take your argument still further?

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