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Sep 28, 2024 · The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work. While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions: What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
- Step 1: Reading The Text and Identifying Literary Devices
- Step 2: Coming Up with A Thesis
- Step 4: Writing The Body of The Essay
- Step 5: Writing A Conclusion
- Other Interesting Articles
The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis. Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writi...
Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text. If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example: Your thesis statementsh...
The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.
Theconclusionof your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader. A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighti...
If you want to know more about AI tools, college essays, or fallaciesmake sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
Start with a clear introduction that introduces your topic and thesis. The body paragraphs should each focus on a specific aspect, supporting your thesis. Don’t forget topic sentences—they guide readers.
- Ask Questions. When you’re assigned a literary essay in class, your teacher will often provide you with a list of writing prompts. Lucky you! Now all you have to do is choose one.
- Collect Evidence. Once you know what question you want to answer, it’s time to scour the book for things that will help you answer the question. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to say yet—right now you’re just collecting ideas and material and letting it all percolate.
- Construct a Thesis. When you’ve examined all the evidence you’ve collected and know how you want to answer the question, it’s time to write your thesis statement.
- Develop and Organize Arguments. The reasons and examples that support your thesis will form the middle paragraphs of your essay. Since you can’t really write your thesis statement until you know how you’ll structure your argument, you’ll probably end up working on steps 3 and 4 at the same time.
Jun 24, 2020 · Good introduction - The introduction clearly establishes the literary text being discussed and the thesis that will be proven in the essay. Strong conclusion - The conclusion restates the thesis and uses parallel structure to give the essay a sense of importance and finality.
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Attributions. Images and video created by Dr. Sandi Van Lieu and licensed under CC BY NC SA. Student essay example by Janelle Devin and used with permission. Previous: Sample Paper in MLA and APA. Next: YC Writing Resources.
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Dec 3, 2019 · A detailed guide on how to write a literary analysis essay. It also includes sample essays and different writing tips that will help you improve your skills.
