English 104: Suggested Topics and Advice for Writing the Literary Analysis Paper

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English 104: Suggested Topics and Advice for Writing the Literary Analysis Paper
An important component of this course is learning how to write evaluations and interpretations
of literary works. Whether you are writing about short stories, poems, or plays, you must offer
an opinion (an argument) about the literary work and you must back up that opinion with
evidence (facts from the literary text).
Each essay should be approximately 1,000 words in length, double-spaced, and typed with
standard font size and margins. The essay will be evaluated based in part upon your use of a
good thesis sentence, the support of the thesis through textual evidence, and your ability to
offer thoughtful analysis rather than plot summary. As always, your paper should be written in
standard academic English, be substantially free of grammatical and mechanical errors, and
should conform to the standards set out below.
1. The paper should not have a separate cover pager. Write your name and date of the
assignment in the upper left corner. Center the title of the essay, without underlining or
using quotation marks.
2. Your first paragraph will engage the reader’s interest as it narrows to a thesis. If, for
example, you write on the topic of initiation, you might begin the essay by stating
something about the popularity of initiation stories, what initiation means, and then narrow
to the point (thesis) of your essay. (Ex.: “In this short story, initiation serves to ____”).
3. The thesis should clearly state the topic of the essay and the point you will develop. Do
not make announcements, such as “This paper will be about . . .” Instead, boldly state your
point, such as, “Through the use of the speaker’s home as a symbolic prison, Frost indicates
that the lost child is not the only one who has been buried.” Or “Browning uses dramatic
monologue to reveal the Duke as a murderer” or even “Jig has beaten the American in the
end of Hemingway’s story and will keep her child.” These are statements which offer an
interpretation of one part of the poem or story, an interpretation which will need evidence
from the poem or story to support it.
4. Each paragraph will develop a single point that develops your thesis. Make references to
the text, but do not simply re-tell the story/poem/play. Remember, your reader has also read

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