HU 145, ESSAY #2: THEMATIC ANALYSIS ESSAY, WITH RESEARCH
For this essay, you have two options. You may either write your analytic research essay on 1 text of your choice from our schedule (story, poem, or play), or you may write a comparison/contrast literary analysis research essay on 2 texts from our schedule.
If you choose the 1-text option, this assignment will work much the same way your first essay did, with the exception of being longer and including literary research.
If you choose the 2-text comparison/contrast option, the paper will still work much the same way your first essay did, with the only differences being the length, the research, and the comparison/contrast element.
Whichever option you choose:
This will be a 5- to 7-page essay (appr. 1,650-2,300 words), plus an MLA-style Works Cited page, and must include at least 3 credible, professional, and relevant secondary sources.
The Works Cited page will contain MLA citations for your primary and secondary sources. (The literary work[s] you’re analyzing are your “primary” sources.) You will write your essay in MLA format; you can refer to our “Sample MLA-Formatted Document” to see how the paper should look. All sources, primary and secondary, should be cited according to MLA guidelines in both the in-text citations and on the Works Cited page.
You will want to smoothly integrate some quotes from and specific references to specific elements of the literary text(s) you’re analyzing to help illustrate, emphasize, and prove your analytic points. You will also want to smoothly integrate quotes from and/or references to your secondary sources, as well.
Notes about your research: At least two of your secondary sources should be scholarly, peer-reviewed analysis articles from credible literary journals found in the Hunt Library online or our HU 142 Small Library. Your other source can be another scholarly analysis, or you can use author bios, author interviews, or credible, professional sources related to subject matter relevant to the work you’re writing about, such as an article about post-partum depression if you’re writing about Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” or something to do with quantum physics if you’re writing about Le Guin’s “Schrödinger’s Cat.” Other exceptions to this policy may work with my approval.
Some unacceptable sources: reviews, straight plot summaries personal blogs or websites, and student-helper websites such as eNotes, Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Shmoop, Grade Saver, etc. If you have any questions about finding sources, or about the credibility of any sources you’ve found, please don’t hesitate to ask. The reading assignment called “Conducting Literary Research” should also prove helpful to you.
Remember that in your intro, you need to identify the title of the text(s) you’re analyzing (correctly, in terms of quote marks or italics) and the author(s). Your thesis should appear at the end of the intro.
NOTE: You may not write about the same text you wrote about on Essay #1 except with permission from me.
There is no official Rough Draft assigned, but I will be glad to look at one and/or to meet with you about your paper. We will also have workshop opportunities in class in which we can converse about your ideas and you can make some progress toward your draft. Don’t forget that the CCDM is also available for draft feedback. Please see our Course Syllabus/Policies document for more information about putting together your draft and getting feedback from me, and see our Course Schedule for relevant dates.
GUIDANCE FOR BOTH THE 1-TEXT AND THE 2-TEXT COMPARISON/CONTRAST OPTION:
You are to write a thematic analysis of one or two of your assigned texts with help from secondary source research. In short, you will provide an independent, interpretive close reading of the text(s) and smoothly integrate some ideas from credible sources into your work to help make your case. You may use these integrated quotes or paraphrases to help support or illustrate your claims, or in some cases you may disagree with and argue against them, but the combination of your own analytical and interpretive ideas and the perspectives from your secondary sources will work together to develop and ultimately prove your thesis.
The essay will be centered on your own interpretive/analytic/argumentative claim (your thesis) regarding the text(s), i.e., what you see as the key theme(s) (or main underlying idea) of the work(s). The focus of your thesis and analysis will come from you, but you must also demonstrate that you have engaged with other critics’ ideas regarding the text you have chosen to analyze. Your essay will be structured around your main points, but occasionally integrating and/or acknowledging related research of others will enhance your own work and show that you have become familiar with the field of literary scholarship as it relates to your particular subject.
Remember that your primary objective in a paper like this is to say something insightful and worthwhile about the texts that your reader may not have considered. You want to open your readers’ eyes to a way of understanding the text(s) that sheds light on both the text in general and, in a larger sense, the human experience.
Consider your audience to be individuals from the general, educated public who are interested in thinking about literary texts and what we may refer to as “the human condition,” i.e., what it means to be a human being broadly or in a more specific context. This audience is also interested in how writers use various literary elements (plot, character, imagery, word choice, irony, etc.) to help create their themes.
GUIDANCE SPECIFIC TO THE 2-TEXT COMPARISON/CONTRAST OPTION:
The assignment works the same way if you choose the 2-text comparison/contrast option as it does if you choose the 1-text option, with the exception of the comparison/contrast element.
Also, for the 2-text option, the research requirement is still a minimum of 3 secondary sources, with at least 1 secondary sources for each text you’re discussing. However, note that using at least 4 secondary sources, or 2 per work, is a good idea for the compare/contrast option, but only a minimum of 3 is required.
What can be valuable about writing a comparison/contrast essay discussing the similarities and/or differences between 2 literary texts? By comparing and/or contrasting important elements of the 2 works (theme, context, setting, characters, imagery, word choices, juxtapositions, motifs, etc.), you can shed light on both texts and help the reader see them both in a way that is clear and enlightening.
A comparison/contrast essay asks the writer to explore the similarities and differences between two types of people, cultures, places, objects, or ideas, and, like other rhetorical strategies, this one can carry a great deal of persuasive force. Evaluations or judgments about something often depend on a successfully executed comparison and contrast argument, as for example, when a person has to make a decision whether to move to a new town, where to go to school, or which car to buy. We might compare and contrast political candidates, potential homes, investment vehicles, and careers. Indeed, anything can be analyzed by comparing it with and contrasting it to something else.
Although simple comparison and contrast arguments can be made using items within a single class (i.e., cars, trees, reptiles, planets, and towns), analogous comparison and contrast arguments show similarities and differences between two items or ideas of different classes, such as a child’s room and a junkyard, painting and poetry, writing and mountain climbing, football and warfare, language and clothes, or prison and poverty. Comparing a short story to a poem or a poem to a film, for instance, can also yield insightful results.
For this option, you should compare and/or contrast elements of two of the works of literature you’ve studied so far this semester, with your primary objective being to say something insightful and worthwhile about both texts that your reader may not have considered. Remember that it is not enough simply to point out difference and/or similarities. You must effectively argue that by comparing/contrasting these two texts, readers can draw some powerful conclusions about both, i.e., that by considering both texts at the same time, readers can gain insights into both (and into the human experience or the human condition) that they may not have been able to gain if considering either alone.
Notes on writing about literature:
Use the present tense to write about the writing of others, and in this paper, do not speculate based on your feelings or what you imagine the characters would do in a situation outside of the story itself. Stay in the text as much as possible without wasting too much space devoted to discussing “real-life” scenarios, personal experience, or comparisons to other texts outside of the one(s) you have chosen for this essay. Base your analysis instead on the texts themselves, and use plenty of examples as textual evidence to support your points.
Do not summarize the plot or describe a character. Observations are a fine way to begin, but you should use those observations to then make an argument about the stories’ interpretation.
Remember: more analysis, less plot summary.
Also, if you are analyzing a character, remember that describing the character is not the same as analyzing him or her and how the author used the character to help create themes and meanings in the work.
Be sure to use ample quotes from the work, and specific references to specific scenes and elements from the work, to help develop and prove your thesis.
Try to reference your secondary sources AT LEAST TWICE EACH (in most cases), either through exact quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing. Also, whether you are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing, you will still need to provide an in-text citation, either in the form of a lead-in phrase (“According to Bill Smith in The Paris Review, …), with the page number(s) in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence, like this (32); or with the entire citation coming in parentheses at the end of the sentence, like this (Smith 32). Note that page numbers won’t be needed if there are no page numbers in the source, such as in some electronic sources.
As always, if you come across a source that you aren’t 100% certain is a credible, usable source, I recommend running it by me, and I can give you some feedback on its appropriateness and usefulness for this assignment.
Finally, avoid using language that assesses the quality of the work. You are writing an analysis, not a review or a critique. It is irrelevant whether you liked or disliked the work, whether you thought it was good or bad, whether you found it to be exciting, boring, awesome, terrible, or anything in between. All that matters is your analysis of its themes and elements. Approach the work as a detective might investigate and analyze a crime scene or some evidence, as a coach or a sportswriter might explore and analyze a team’s performance, as an archeologist might examine and analyze a newly found set of bones, as an aeronautical engineer or crash-site investigator might scrutinize and analyze the scene of an airline tragedy. You are explaining what a work illustrates, says, or suggests; analyzing the elements of it that created those meanings and ideas; and using textual evidence in the form of quotes and specific references to specific elements, moments, scenes, and lines of dialogue in it to help develop and prove your analysis (thesis, theory).
Ultimately, the main purposes of this paper are to further hone your analytical reasoning, close-reading, and writing skills. You are gaining valuable practice in writing in an academic tone for an educated audience, and you are recognizing the links between fictional and artistic creations and the real-world aspects they represent. This assignment will also help you forge a link between thinking and writing, a connection absolutely essential to your future success as an educated person.
