Your final review must be typed in 12 point Times New Roman font. Your margins must be 1” maximum and the review/theme analysis must be double-spaced. You need to have an MLA heading on the paper. In the opening paragraph, you must include the title and the author of the novel.
Theme
What exactly is this elusive thing called theme?
The theme of a fable is its moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave.
In fiction, the theme is not intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly at all. You extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story. In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself.
The writer's task is to communicate on a common ground with the reader. Although the particulars of your experience may be different from the details of the story, the general underlying truths behind the story may be just the connection that both you and the writer are seeking.
What theme is:
• Theme is the meaning released by the work when we take all aspects of the work in its entirety into account.
• It is an aspect of human experience that the author wishes to express.
An important part of studying literature is analysis of text. Examining an author’s techniques—diction, syntax, tone, symbolism, imagery, and other useful devices—in communicating the all-important theme can give a reader deep appreciation for both the writer’s skill and the impact of the work of literature.
HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ANALYSIS
An analysis is a specific form of essay writing in which a piece of literature is explained.
The best way to begin an analysis is to focus on the theme expressed in the passage: What does the author want the reader to understand? Once you identify the message of the text, then you may begin to explicate how the author communicates that theme.
PREWRITING STEP I.
Discovering theme: What is the theme this author is analyzing? Which of the following words best describes the novel: courage, cowardice, prejudice, tolerance, guilt, innocence?
Now ask yourself the essential question several times as you consider each of these parts of the novel.
Characters: What kind of people does the story deal with?
Plot: What do the characters do? Are they in control of their lives, or are they controlled by fate?
Motivation: Why do the characters behave as they do, and what motives dominate them?
Style: How does the author perceive reality?
Tone: What is the author’s attitude towards his subject?
Values: What are the values of the characters in the story? What values does the author seem to promote?
Theme can be discovered only by becoming aware of the relations among the parts of a story and of the relations of the parts to a whole:
PREWRITING STEP 2
After thinking about your answers, is your theme statement still accurate? Have you learned anything that might cause you to change your definition of the theme of your piece of literature? Rewrite your statement of theme if necessary.
PREWRITING STEP 3
Identify several crucial passages in your novel that develop the theme you've identified. Choosing a different types of examples including the bolded terms above, will provide you with some variety in your analysis.
This is how you know if you've found the right passages: Without these passages, the novel would have a completely different meaning. The passages you identify should be so important that the story would be nothing without them. This is hard, so think for a while.
THE FIRST DRAFT
Paragraph 1: Introduction - Introduction Methods: An anecdote, startling fact or opinion, quotation, background information, simple statement of thesis
Get the reader's attention. Set the tone of the essay. State the controlling idea (thesis) of the essay.
Paragraph 2: Give specific examples from the text which show how the device is used...Clearly identify the topic of the paragraph—not just the device but how it relates to the theme. Give specific examples from the text which show how the device is used, explain how those examples fit the definition of that device, and show how those examples help to communicate the theme of the passage. A good concluding (clincher) sentence may help to pull together your ideas and make a transition to the next paragraph.
The pattern used to explicate the first literary element/device should also be used for explaining the remaining devices.
Paragraph 3: The pattern used to explicate the first literary element/device should also be used for explaining the remaining devices. Analysis of 2nd literary device - Clearly identify the topic of the paragraph—not just the device but how it relates to the theme. Give specific examples from the text which show how the device is used, explain how those examples fit the definition of that device, and show how those examples help to communicate the theme of the passage. A good concluding (clincher) sentence may help to pull together your ideas and make a transition to the next paragraph.
Paragraph 4: The pattern used to explicate the first literary element/device should also be used for explaining the remaining devices. Analysis of 3rd literary device - Clearly identify the topic of the paragraph—not just the device but how it relates to the theme. Give specific examples from the text which show how the device is used, explain how those examples fit the definition of that device, and show how those examples help to communicate the theme of the passage. A good concluding (clincher) sentence may help to pull together your ideas and make a transition to the next paragraph.
Paragraph 5: Conclusion - Why is this literary work important to us? This should tie together the main ideas of the essay. It should not simply summarize or repeat the ideas, but should extend them by establishing a relationship between the passage and why we should understand it. It's often helpful to think of this as the answer to the "so what" question—why is this passage important to us?
Simple or sophisticated?
Do you absolutely have to discuss precisely three literary devices?
Of course not. There may be only two devices used extensively enough in the passage for you to evaluate. Or perhaps there are four important devices which you need to analyze. The difference between following a strict five-paragraph formula and adapting that structure to fit the passage you are analyzing again becomes a question of sophistication: how do you need to structure your argument to fit what you need to say about the text? There is no magic number of paragraphs or examples, just as there is no magic number of words you must write in order to have an excellent essay. The length of your paper—the number of paragraphs, the number of examples, and the number of words—is determined by what you have to say and how you say it. You should always organize your ideas so that they are clear to the reader and they all add up in the end to prove your argument. (It's something like doing a Geometry proof. How many steps do you need to prove the theorem and in what order do they need to be addressed to solve the problem?)
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