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 He draws evidence from multiple sources, including the fiction and nonfiction of the author as well as historical references.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

Answering Multiple-Choice Questions

High-stakes assessments often include multiple-choice questions, which can be graded by machine. Questions may ask about character and conflict, symbol and theme, literary and poetic devices, or anything in between. Follow these guidelines to score your best on multiple-choice questions:

• Read questions first. Then you know what to watch for.
• Note question order. Often the first question asks about the first part of the reading. Usually questions follow the order of the passage.
• Treat each passage separately. You usually answer a bank of multiple-choice questions for each passage before being prompted to write about a set of passages together.
• Analyze characters and conflict. For literature, questions often focus on what characters desire and fear, which creates conflict that drives plot.
• Analyze narration, descriptions, action, and dialogue. Questions may also ask about how the writer creates a piece of literature, focusing on one or more of these components.
• Be patient with poems. They may take as long or longer to analyze than pieces of literature.
• Analyze words, sounds, images, thoughts, and emotions. For poetry, questions may ask you to focus on devices the poet has used to achieve a given effect.
• Answer easy questions first. Eliminate obviously wrong answers.

Answering Multiple-Choice Questions About a Text

Often, high-stakes assessments will present you with a text, asking you to read it and analyze it by responding to multiple-choice questions.

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.

Analyzing Literary and Poetic Devices

Authors and poets use a number of devices to create their works. You can analyze these devices to more fully understand a story or poem.

Analyzing Devices in Literature

Writers use narration, description, action, dialogue, and a host of other devices as they create their stories.

Analyzing Characters

Almost all literature contains characters, the answer to who? in the 5 W's and H. Characters in literature are just like people in real life. You can describe them physically—their facial expressions, body posture, hair color, eye color, build, race, age, and sex. You can describe them psychologically—personality, intellect, education, role in society, desires, and fears. In fact, what characters desire and what they fear tend to be the sources of conflict for them, striving to get what they want and overcome what they dread.

Analyzing Characters in Literature

Sometimes authors describe characters outright, but often they show who characters are through their words and deeds. Your job as the reader is to analyze characters by finding outright evidence in the text and inferring other traits through dialogue and action.

Closely Reading Literature and Poetry

Start your close read by carefully working through the text. Then, you can analyze the work by thinking about the parts of it. You've seen how the 5 W's and H relate to the key parts of any story. Now you'll use these parts to analyze a piece of literature.

Reading Literature

You can analyze literature by focusing on these common elements of stories:

• Characters Who are the main people involved? Are they protagonists (struggling for something) or antagonists (struggling against something) or supporting characters?
• Setting Where and when does the literature take place? How do the place and time affect what is happening in the story?
• Conflict What is the problem that the character faces? How does the conflict arise from the person's desires and fears?
• Plot What series of events brings the character into confrontation with the conflict? Does the character succeed? How do the events change the person?
• Theme What does the literature have to say about life in general? What is the deeper meaning of the work?

You'll find these elements not just in works of fiction but also in biography and historical nonfiction. For example, the following reflection by Mark Twain contains all of these elements to one degree or another. Think about them as you read the literature and prepare to answer questions about each part afterward.

Warm-Up for Reading and Writing About Literature

© Thoughtful Learning 2018

Numerous tests in high school assess your ability to read and understand literature and poetry. The Common Core assessments for high school English, the ACT and SAT, and the exam for AP English Literature and Composition ask you to read works of literature, answer questions about them, and write thoughtful responses. The activities in this unit will help you develop the skills you need to succeed on these assessments. If you’d like to use these skills on a simulated assessment, see the unit “Practice Test for Reading and Writing About Literature.”

What Is Literature?

We all tell stories—what happened during fifth hour, how the team came back 14 points to win, what the doctor said about your broken arm. . . . These everyday stories help us understand our lives and what is happening around us.

Over thousands of years, some of the best stories have risen to the top as "literature." Despite the lofty title, literature performs the same basic function as everyday storytelling. It helps readers understand what it's like to be alive—where we have been and where we are going. Reading literature also allows you to spend time with some of the most amazing storytellers who have ever lived.

Thinking About Stories

When reporters go out searching for news stories, they try to answer the 5 W's and H. You can use these same questions to think about the basic parts of any story, fiction or nonfiction:

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.