Writing Papers of Literary Analysis

Some advice for student writers

by Seamus Cooney

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[Organization ] = [Content: what to say ] = [Style ] = [Mechanics ] = [Documentation and quoting ] = [Pet Peeves ] = [Correction symbols and abbreviations]

Related pages:

Common usage errors |%| Properly intergrating quotations into your text |%| Some notes on syntax

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Key Points:

If you are writing about poems, remember that in poetry, while the line is the most essential unit of sound, the unit of meaning is the sentence, just as in prose.

If you are writing about fiction, remember that summary alone is worthless.

Content: what to say

• Never avoid saying the obvious: it's usually true. But don't spend a lot of time on it -- acknowledge its obviousness, perhaps by a word like "Clearly, ...." Then move on to something less obvious.

• Don't worry that something that you 've just figured out will be obvious or familiar to someone else. Even if this should be the case, it's still a pleasure for the reader to share in another person's discovery of it.

• A good general principle to maintain your confidence is that if you find something interesting enough to say carefully, it'll be interesting enough for your reader.

• An ideal paper is one in which the writer discovers something and shares his or her pleasure in the discovery with a reader. The discovery may be an interpretation of a challenging story or poem (or portion thereof), or it may just be the discovery of what you really think about something or other. ("How do I know what I think until I see what I've said," Churchill is supposed to have said.) To discover your own considered opinion or valuation of the work you're writing about is a satisfying outcome to a paper.

• Avoid apologizing for what you say. It goes without saying that the views and interpretations you offer are yours, doesn't it? So there's no need for such boring and weasily phrases as "It seems to me" or "In my opinion."

• This does not mean you must avoid the first person singular. Use it where appropriate -- remembering, however, that a paper of literary commentary is not a piece of autobiography, so that your private self should not be in the foreground. But if you were told in school not to use "I," forget that advice! The pompousness of locutions like "The present writer" is ludicrous in a student paper.

• The only kind of originality that matters at all is finding the source of your ideas and feelings within yourself: being true to that origin. In a class paper, it doesn't in the least matter if what you say has been said before. In any case, it's not been said in the same way, and the study of literature should surely have brought home to you that the way of saying something is part of its meaning.

• Use concepts and terms you've worked with (for poetry: tone, diction, imagery, paraphrase, metrics, etc.; for fiction: characterization, plot, climax, symbolism, theme, etc.). But remember it's best to use them only when they pay off, not automatically. Paraphrase, for example, should be used selectively, when a line or sentence has a tricky meaning, or a meaning you're uncertain of but want to spell out as best you can. It would be tedious to automatically paraphrase every bit of poetry you wrote about.

• In writing about fiction, you will find more interesting things to say if you focus on characterization rather than characters. Writing about characters too often means writing as though they were real people, speculating about what happened before or after the action of the book or story, and other imponderables like that. Characters in a work of fiction are not real people, but rather careful constructs that resemble real people. Focussing on characterization means studying how the writer presents the character -- what selection of detail is used, what mixture of direct "showing" to indirect "telling," what implied valuations are being made, and the like.

• While some special literary terminology is useful and economical, avoid jargon. Don't think to impress anyone by using big words where simpler words would do. Be wary, especially, of loose vague terms like "theme" or "postmodern."

• Rule of thumb: when you quote supporting passages from the text being discussed, never let the quotation just lie there on the page inertly; make use of it, put it to work  point to specific features or details or words in it, say what you see, what it is that makes you want to let the reader have it before him. It's no good (in a class paper) saying to yourself that the reader can surely work out the point for himself: in this context, it's up to you to do the work. After all, one of your purposes is to persuade your instructor/reader that you yourself can see.

• Avoid plot summary for its own sake. Whatever may have been the case in high school, in college literature courses you get no particular credit for simply having read and followed the contents of a poem or story or novel. Thus, sentences or paragraphs in which you simply recount what happens or what is said are of no value in a paper about literature.

  Exception: If a piece of writing is really tricky to decipher and you feel you've succeeded in doing so after some effort, it may be appropriate to lay your cards on the table. For example, "Stanza 2 is syntactically difficult. I understand it to be saying: ..." -- and give your paraphrase. Or, "What happens next in the story is obscure. From the hints given in the next section, I take it that ..." -- and say what you make out, citing the evidence.

  Summarizing content in order to make a point in your argument, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter and is very much an appropriate part of papers. Provided that you subordinate the summary to a critical point that you are making, you'll be okay.

  Compare:

  Hamlet then goes to talk with his mother in her bedroom or "closet" 
  and grows more and more angry as he talks to her. Finally, he has a vision
  of his father's Ghost, and this  restores him to some calmness.
  
  When Hamlet talks to his mother in her bedroom or "closet," his reproaches
  to her grow more and more angry and uncontrolled. Ironically, it's only
  his vision of the Ghost -- which she interprets as his madness -- that 
  restores him to some degree of reasonableness.    

  In the first version, the writer seems to think that his summary is sufficiently interesting to hold our attention, but it just isn't -- not for anyone who has read the play. In the second version, the bits of summary are made to serve some point of interpretation or comment.

  To repeat: summary should always be ofered as a way of supporting a point you are making about the story or poem. Ideally, there should be no  neutral narrative sentences about the characters or the action, such as "Ferris goes to visit his wife" or "The Duke then conducts his visitor downstairs." Instead, all such bits of summary should be in support of an interpretative point or comment: "When Ferris goes to visit his wife, he discovers that ..." or "The Duke's unpertured courtesy of manner can be heard as he invites his visitor to 'go / Together down' with him," etc.

  To put it another way: do not  write a paper about the characters in a story; instead write about the story itself -- its words, its shaping or organization, its high points, symbolism, etc.

• For more advanced students:

  An aspect of writing -- both poetry and prose -- that well repays attention and which will often yield valuable observations about authors' style is their syntax. For some beginning observations, click here.

Style

• Even if you're laboring worriedly to find plausible things to say in your papers, it still might be profitable to you to examine your style and perhaps loosen it a little. Relax and speak like (in Wordsworth's pre-feminist phrase) "a man speaking to men." Of course, to speak personally should not entail garrulity.

  • Use the first person singular as you would in natural speaking. Avoid horrors such as "the present writer"!

  • Offer your opinions freely, where relevant, but don't apologize for them with phrases like "in my personal opinion" or "it seems to me." It goes without saying that your writing expresses you personal opinions, doesn't it?

  • Write informally but without slang. You don't want to sound like a self-important pompous ass, but neither are you shooting the bull over a six-pack.

• Student writers should make some effort -- or at least be aware of the desirability of an effort -- towards achieving a more than pedestrian style. Grammatical competence is something to be assumed as present, at this level of study. But what about a spark of liveliness in the writing? Maybe the following questions will help you move in the right direction.

  • Have you read your paper out loud, listening for awkward repetitions and try to hear if the sound flows and if the sentences sound like a college educated person? If you can, get a friend willing to listen and follow your meaning, and then keep watching his or her face for signs of bewilderment or of pleased comprehension.

  • Have you a sentence or two in your paper that pleases you with its rhythm or construction?

  • Take a look at your sentence structure: are they all subject + predicate constructions?

  • Do you ever build a cumulative sentence, using participial phrases?

  • Do you ever use a rhetorical question?

  • Does sentence length vary?

  • Do you have an occasional Jamesian-complex sentence?

  • An occasional punchy fragment?

  • What about your punctuation?

    • How often have you had occasion to use the semicolon?

    • Or even better, my personal favorite: the colon?

    • Paired dashes?

  • And what about italics for conversational emphasis? (I probably overuse italics in these notes, but do you ever use them at all?  (On the word processor, all it takes is pushing a button.)

• A suggestion: it might be helpful to read a page of some author whose style you admire and find congenial just before you write or revise your own work. Asked to name critics who write stylishly, I'd offer this random list: T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Mrs. Q. D. Leavis, Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport, Jonathan Williams, Henry James, Tom Wolfe, Roland Barthes (via Richard Howard), James Baldwin, William Empson.

• Be duly embarrassed if you make more than an occasional blunder such as lack of subject-verb agreement. Aim for standard educated English -- but let's all remember that educated speakers and writers make such "errors" often enough, and correctness of this kind is a secondary consideration.

• I won't do more than simply mention here the more common mistakes that irritate instructors, things like
  • to/too/two;
  • they're/their/there;
  • alot/allot/a lot;
  • lose/loose;
  • lay/lie;
  • then/than;
  • alright/all right;
  and the like. Like spelling errors, these are slips almost anyone can make on occasion in a first draft. They should not survive the careful proofreading that writers who care about their writing subject each piece to. If you are in doubt about any of them, look them up in the dictionary and read the entry carefully. If necessary, write yourself a reminder note and stick it above your desk. (If you find it easier to look for help here, go a brief discussion of these common errors.)

• Use the past tense to talk about biographical facts or publication data but the present tense to talk about what goes on in a work of fiction or poetry. Example: "Plath's Ariel was published after her death, but the poems show many premonitions of disaster to come."

• For on-line help with style and mechanics, consult Elements of Style by William Strunk, perhaps the most famous style manual in English.

• Commonsense, adequacy to purpose, and consistency are the criteria. Use MLA or APA style as you choose. Bear in mind the purpose: to make it as easy as possible for your reader to check your accuracy and fairness in the use of your sources.

• This shouldn't need sayingl, but it does. If you are quoting poetry, be sure to retain the line breaks. If you're running a very short quote into your own prose, use the slash to mark the line break. If you are quoting more than a couple of lines, set them off by indenting and single spacing, and type them line for line as they appear in the source.

• Brief parenthetical notes are much preferred to footnotes, whenever they can satisfy the purpose. Avoid footnotes or endnotes giving nothing but a page number (Heaney 47). Place such references in parentheses following the quotation. And keep them to a sensible minimum: if you're quoting four short bits from the same source in a single paragraph of your paper, you need only give the page reference following the last one. Above all, never use a note that merely says "ibid." The reader who goes to the trouble to turn to the back of an essay only to find such an unhelpful note will feel infuriated.

• In longer papers about poetry, especially, I find it helpful to have the entire text of the poem you're working on included, either in its place as needed or as an appendix. It's just one more way you show consideration for your reader.

• Accuracy in quoting is crucially important! Change nothing from your source without showing that you're doing so -- not spelling, not capitalization, not line breaks, not paragraphing. And your quotations must fit into your own sentence in a way that makes sense. This point is important and often causes trouble. For a fuller discussion with examples, click here.

• If you're writing a paper which draws on research you've done ("research" nowdays simply means reading books and articles in the library!), cite your sources scrupulously but as unobtrusively as possible. Do not write like this:

  	In the first article I read about Hemingway, the author surprised
  	me by pointing out that Hemingway's first job was as a newspaper
  	reporter (Jones 23). 

  Rather, subordinate the research to the results it brought you:

  
  	Hemingway's first job was as a newspaper reporter (Jones 23).

  Give the information directly; your note shows that you're indebted for it to the source named.

Pet peeves

Some errors and flaws annoy me perhaps inordinately. Anyone can make slips in subject-verb agreement or in spelling, but errors which derive from pretentiousness or from nervously "correcting" what isn't wrong (e.g. "to my brother and me") are especially apt to destroy the reader's trust in the voice coming through the writing.

• Common sense should tell you that ellipses have no function at the beginning of a quotation which begins in the middle of a sentence or is a mere phrase. Such a quotation is is obviously fragmentary. It is pedantic to precede and follow it with ellipses. The function of ellipses is to show you've omitted something when it wouldn't otherwise be clear you had.

• Distinguish between the hyphen (used to join elements of compound words; often over-used in British writing but under-used in American) and the dash (used to indicated added-on bits of sentences -- like this) and use them correctly. Paired dashes set off parenthetical elements -- bits that are less separable than parentheses might indicate -- from the main flow of your sentence.

  Note that the hyphen is available on the keyboard as a single keystroke, but the dash is not. It must be either typed as two hyphens (sometimes -- though this is less accepted, since it's potentially confusing -- as a single hyphen with a space before and after it) or invoked by a word-processor-specific command to produce the proper typographical effect.

• Speaking of effects, if you confuse the words affect and effect, you should drum into your head, "'Affect' is a verb, 'effect' is a noun!" For example:

  • His constant talking affected the other students' ability to concentrate.
  • The effect of his talking was to disrupt the class atmosphere.

  Once you've got a firm hold of that maxim, you can then go on to realize that it isn't always true, in that less frequently "affect" can be a noun and "effect" a verb. Confused? Then stick with the simple maxim. Otherwise, consult a dictionary, or consider the following sentences:

  • He spoke like a computer, without affect of any kind.
  • His new clothes effected a transformation in the way people thought of him.

• Shall and will: people who enjoy grammatical precision find the common American confusion in the use of "shall" very annoying. The solution is simple: never use shall! It's almost always a pretentious affectation, especially in student writing.

• I hate the following ugly usage:

  "If he would have told me that earlier, I would have known what to do"

  instead of "If he had told me ...."

  My distaste here may be a sign of adherence to a lost cause, since one hears the "wrong" usage everywhere nowdays. It's part of a general obsolescence of subjunctive forms. Other examples of this obsolescence, however, seem to me quite acceptable: "If he was here, I'd tell him what I thought" is (to me) an acceptable alternative to the more elegant "If he were here, I'd tell him what I thought."

• Misplaced main subject: compare these two beginnings.

  • "In Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, he begins by describing ..."
  • "In his novel,The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway begins by describing ..."

  The latter form is much superior, placing the author's name in the emphatic position as subject of the main clause rather than in an introductory phrase.

• Here's an annoying instance of an absence of commonsense in scholarly documentation: the failure, when citing a reprint, to give the date of first publication. Compare these two versions of a possible end note:

  Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: New American Library, 1961), 5.

  Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813; rept. New York: New American Library, 1961), 5.

  The first version makes it sound as though the novel was first published in 1961. When the work cited is less well known than Jane Austen, this habit can be seriously misleading.

• Caution: Other people's pet peeves:
  Personally, I find it acceptable to use the plural "they / them / their" as a gender-neutral pronoun, especially after words like "everybody" and "everyone." The argument that "everyone" must be singular because it contains the word "one" is pedantic in the extreme. What counts in language is not logic but usage. Most educated people do this in speaking, and it has a long tradition of acceptance by distinguished writers. If you have a particularly fussy instructor, however, you may find this marked unacceptable. In that case, "him or her" becomes unavoidable, clumsy as it. (The unspeakable -- literally and figuratively -- "s/he" gimmickry is to be eschewed by all save writers who prefer political correctness to a graceful style.)

  Consult a discussion by linguists of gender neutral language and a delightful and instructive anti- pedantry page about how "Jane Austen and other famous authors violate what everyone learned in their English class".