Reading a Literary Research Paper

Before you start work on your own literary research paper, you should read a paper created by another student. As you read, note how the writer analyzes his topic with a breadth of ideas and a depth of details. He draws evidence from multiple sources, including the fiction and nonfiction of the author as well as historical references. He also connects the literature to larger thematic questions about life itself. Click on the side notes to study these features.

Reading a Student Model

This research paper explores the meaning of the term fantasy, specifically in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. The overall structure includes a beginning paragraph, multiple body paragraphs, an ending paragraph, and a works-cited page. The writer uses source citations as well as historical context and discussions of theme in the analysis.

Writing for Literature Assessment

When you respond to a writing prompt, you should start by carefully reading and analyzing the prompt using the PAST questions. Then you should jot down a quick outline of your response. Do these activities in the first five minutes or so of the time you have. (If the prompt includes a reading, take more time with this step.) You'll spend the bulk of your time creating a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Afterward, you'll want to review your answers to the PAST questions and read your response, making sure it is on target. In the last five minutes or so, revise and edit your work. This abbreviated version of the writing process needs to fit into the total time you are given (often between 30 and 90 minutes).

Viewing a Sample Prompt and Response

Read the following prompt, and view one student's PAST analysis, outline, and beginning, middle, and ending. Then you'll get a chance to read and respond to a prompt of your own.

Sample Writing Prompt

Inferring and Analyzing Theme

Have you heard the expression, "You can't see the forest for the trees"? Sometimes it's easy to see the details but hard to make out the big picture. So far, you've taken a close look at details such as character and conflict as well as literary and poetic devices. Now you need to take a step back to see the larger pattern, or theme, contained within those details. Theme refers to the meaning of a work—what it says about life. Finding theme can be as challenging as seeing the forest, but you have multiple paths you can follow.

Inferring Themes

Just as every tree and creature is part of a given forest, so every character, description, action, conversation, and literary or poetic device in a work contributes to the theme of the work. The writer has chosen all parts purposely to create a larger meaning. So, you can follow any of these pathways to discover themes.

For example, note how analyzing the parts of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" can lead to discovering themes (in italics):

This rural Florida farm in the early 1900s is a halfway point between the world ruled by white men (where Joe Stark made his money) and the community that African Americans were setting up (where Joe Stark intends to become a "big voice"). Janie Mae can stay put on the farm, move to the white man's world to seek her fortune, or move to the black man's world to do so. The decision that faces her is not unlike that facing most modern people, whether to stay home in a familiar middle place or venture into a very different world.

• Character: How does this person represent people in general? How does this character change during the story and why?

  Janie Mae is young and hardworking, with little experience beyond her farm outside of the family members who have variously passed her around as she came of age, and the man to whom she is married. Like all young people, she has dreams of exploring a larger world, dreams that will never be realized if she stays where she is. Perhaps she represents the theme that to find your true self, you must leave home and risk everything.

• Conflict: What sort of conflict is this (person vs. self, vs. other, vs. society, vs. nature, vs. supernatural, vs. machine)? What does this conflict tell us about life?

  Janie Mae is torn between the security of her farm life and the possibilities presented by Joe Stark—money, fine clothes, leisure, and most importantly, having a "big voice." She can't make up her own mind (person vs. self) and also would face serious social consequences if she runs off with this stranger (person vs. society). Janie Mae would like to be someone rather than no one, and Joe promises to let her reap the benefits of his success. But Joe can't make her into someone. Like all of us, Janie Mae has to make herself whatever she will become.

• Setting: How does the place and time shape the characters? How does it shape the story? What does it say about our place and time?

The setting of Janie Mae's farm is absolutely critical. It is halfway between the white'man's world where Joe has made his fortune and the new African-American community where he and she hope to become important. The farm is the world that Janie Mae knows, closely in contact with nature and hard labor and removed from the "far horizon" she dreams of. In this way, the setting represents the central conflict that she faces—whether to remain in the familiar confines of farm and family or to venture into the unknown with this slick-talking stranger.

• Plot: What does this sequence of events teach the main character?

  Janie Mae's conversations with Joe Starks paint a picture of a larger world that she wishes to be part of. She imagines herself sitting on a porch, enjoying potatoes that someone else had planted for her. She imagines a life of prestige and ease that starkly contrasts the farm life she has. These conversations awaken in Janie Mae desires she didn't know she had. Perhaps the only way to eventually find herself is first to lose herself.

• Literary Devices: What symbols and metaphors does the writer use and why?

  Joe Starks' clothing symbolizes his status, relative wealth, and ambition. The water pump that Janie Mae vigorously works to catch Joe's attention, symbolizes their conversation together. Janie and Joe mix the cool water with syrup from the barn and sit and sip and talk about the future. The sweetened water shows how simple social interchanges can lead to relationships, which can in turn lead to a whole world of other possibilities.

Revising to Connect Characters to Themes

An effective character analysis should show how the words and actions of the characters demonstrate larger themes. Often themes express life lessons, social or cultural realities, or moral dilemmas. Answering questions about the literature can help you identify themes:

1. Why is this character so interesting?

   George Wilson is interesting because he seems so powerless all the way through but does the one action that changes everything.

2. What is the most critical moment for this character?

   After his wife is killed by Gatsby's car, Wilson shoots Gatsby in his pool.

3. If this character could do one thing over, what would it be?

   Wilson would not let his wife go with Tom Buchanan, which would save her life and Gatsby's as well.

4. What emotion best defines this character?

   Wilson goes through a number of emotions, from blissful ignorance to growing suspicion, then grief and desperation, and finally fury. He feels that he has been wronged and will work to right it.

5. What does this character's life say about life in general?

   Rich, powerful people often take away the little that poor, powerless people have. However, if the rich ignore this injustice, the poor often rise up to take revenge.

Writing the Beginning Paragraph

Start your essay with a lead that gets readers' attention and orients them to the piece of literature you will analyze. After your lead sentence, you will develop a paragraph that ends with your thesis statement.

1. Name the work and author and summarize its importance.

   Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton unflinchingly portrays the deep societal divisions in 1948 South Africa, divisions that would lead to apartheid.

2. Ask a compelling question about the work.

   Why do most people consider The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to be the quintessential "Great American Novel?"

3. Provide a powerful quotation from the author.

   “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”
   —F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. Share a historical reference that provides a context for the work.

   Nelson Mandela spent his youth as a political dissident, his middle age as a political prisoner, and his old age as president of a post-apartheid South Africa.

Reading a Character Analysis

Before you begin your own character analysis, you should read a paper created by another student. As you read, note how the writer describes characters, explores themes, cites evidence from the literature, connects to the larger context, and combines the whole with transitions. Click on the side notes to study these features.

Reading a Student Model

This reading analyzes multiple characters from Cry, the Beloved Country, showing how they help express the main themes of the work. The overall structure includes a beginning paragraph, multiple body paragraphs, and an ending paragraph. The writer uses source citations as well as historical context and discussions of theme to show the significance of the characters in the novel.

Sample Character Analysis

Warm-Up for Analyzing a Character

Try to describe an object. That's fairly easy: a stout coffee cup with a robin-egg blue interior and a matte-black exterior that advertises the "Crossroads of Civilization" exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Objects are often straightforward. What you see is what you get.

Try to describe a person. That can be incredibly difficult. In fact, some authors have written whole novels describing a person such as Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist and still felt like they only scratched the surface. And yet, sometimes, you must read a great work of literature and write an effective character analysis in just a few pages.

What Is a Character Analysis?

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A character analysis is a response to literature that looks closely at one or more characters and connects them to the major themes of the story or novel. A successful analysis considers different aspects of a character, provides textual evidence about the person, and explains what these details mean in the larger picture of the work.

In this unit, you will write a character analysis that focuses on one or more key characters in a work of fiction. You need to select a work that you know well. Then you must think deeply about it and unearth evidence to support your position.

Thinking About People

Characters are, of course, just fictional people. You can warm up your character-analysis muscles by analyzing people you know and like. (Be kind!) You can describe the person physically and psychologically, and you can think about what motivates the person. For example, this table records details about a student's best friend since third grade:

Revising to Use Literary Present Tense

Sometimes you might struggle with the tense of verbs in a literary analysis. Do you say, "Richard Adams lived in Whitchurch, England" or "Richard Adams lives in Whitchurch, England," (when he is deceased)? Do you say "Richard Adams combined anthropomorphic fiction with naturalism" or "Richard Adams combines anthropomorphic fiction with naturalism"? And if you are in present tense for your main text, how do you handle quotations in past tense?

When you write a literature review, you should use literary present tense. This style of writing treats the piece of literature as something new and fresh whenever it is read rather than being something stuck in the past. Follow these rules to write effectively in the literary present tense:

When speaking about the work and the events in it, use the present tense.

When referring to historical events in the author's life or in the world at the time, use the past tense.

Keep the tense of quotations even if they do not match the surrounding text.