Writing about
Fiction
Writing an essay interpreting a work of
literature means that we must probe our initial responses to the work, examining
the work closely to find the basis for our thinking. This analysis of the work
and of our reactions to it helps us to discover and create new meaning. But we
do not write for ourselves alone; we also write for others. We present our
interpretations as arguments. We make a claim about a story, novel, or play
just as we would about an issue or problem. As with all argumentative writing,
we must provide reasons and evidence to convince readers that our interpretation
is plausible. Since literary works can be interpreted in different ways, we do
not seek to prove that we have discovered the one correct or final meaning.
Instead, we try to convince our readers that we have analyzed the work carefully
and thoughtfully and have found a reasonable way of understanding it.
Approaching the Story or
Novel:
You need an approach that will lead to
ideas. Your goal is to write an essay interpreting the story or novel you have
read. These steps provide a starting point:
- Read the story or novel for
pleasure, diversion, and insight.
- Approach: Look over the list of
approaches that follows to find one that interests you. Any approach will
enable you to begin serious analysis of a story or novel to discover what it
might mean. Try several approaches.
- Annotate: Reread the story or
novel with pencil in hand, annotating anything you notice that is at all
relevant to the approach you are taking. To annotate, mark on the text itself
and write in the margins, or keep a list of relevant pages and passages. Do
this several times.
- Inventory: Look over your
annotations and inventory them. Organize them into patterns.
- Write: Analyze your inventory and
write at least a page about the patterns you have discovered. What does this
reveal?
- Assert: Reflect on what you have
learned through this approach. In a sentence or two, assert one or more ideas
you now have about the story or novel.
A Catalog of Approaches:
- Surprising or Puzzling Statements:
Select a surprising or puzzling statement that especially interests you. Then
reread, annotating to explore the significance of the statement as it appears
throughout the novel.
- Patterns: To find patterns of
related words, images, actions, or scenes, reread, watching for words or
passages that suggest particular feelings, moods, or meanings. Reread and
annotate.
- Character or Character Change:
Examine the personality and state of mind of one of the characters. Annotate
the story or novel, noting the character's name, speech, actions, thoughts,
motives and goals, relations with other characters, contradictions in
thoughts, development, etc.
- Narration/Point of View: Analyze
how the story is told, who tells it, how much the narrator knows, and how
trustworthy the narrator is.
- Ironies or Contradictions:
Identify ironies or contradictions in events and what characters think, say,
or do. Annotate the novel with one or more ironies or contradictions in mind.
- Literary Motifs: Analyze the novel
as an example of a conventional literary motif, such as the conflict between
the individual and society, coming of age or initiation, a journey or quest,
the disparity between appearance and reality, and the double, in which two or
more characters represent alternative realities.
- Setting: Consider the physical
setting of the story or novel: place and time of the events, whether the
setting or scene changes, the way the writer presents the setting, whether the
setting reflects the characters' actions, moods, etc.
- Structure: Analyze the novel in
terms of its arrangement: opening, foreshadowing, points of tension, climax,
the ending.
- Historical, Social, and Economic
Contexts: Analyze the novel for specific historical, political, economic,
social, or religious references.
- Author's Biographical Context:
Analyze the novel for specific references that may have parallels in the
author's life.
Finding a Thesis:
Your aim is to find a thesis you will be
able to develop and support with specific evidence from the story or novel. You
may already have a tentative thesis in mind, but it is still advisable to
consider several other possibilities.
- Listing generalizations: Begin by
reviewing all the assertions or generalizations that you wrote as you
completed each approach to the novel. Start a list of the most promising
ones.
- Choosing a possible thesis: From
your list, choose one to refine into a thesis for your essay.
- Writing and revising a tentative
thesis statement: You now want to turn your generalization into a thesis
statement. A good thesis should offer an interesting idea about the story or
novel, be concise and well focused, preclude easy challenge, and include the
key terms that you will use in your discussion of the story or novel.
Consider your thesis tentative at this stage. Once you begin collecting and
organizing evidence to support your thesis, you may decide the evidence
supports it only partially or even contradicts it. Be prepared to revise the
thesis to fit your new understanding of the story or novel.
- Consider your readers: Two things
are essential to know about your readers: whether they are familiar with the
novel, and whether they are likely to favor other interpretations. Knowing
these things will help you phrase your thesis, choose your evidence, construct
your argument, and write your paper.
Gathering Textual
Evidence:
Having settled on a tentative thesis and
identified your readers, you now need to find evidence to support your thesis.
As you draft and revise, you will constantly be returning to the story or novel
for evidence. But first you need to find evidence.
- Identifying evidence. With your
thesis in mind, search for evidence that will support it. Note everything you
can find that seems relevant to your thesis--dialogue, events, descriptive
details, key words, images. Annotate this evidence. You may also find
evidence that contradicts your thesis. Do not ignore this evidence. Let it
lead you to clarify and revise your thesis.
- Organizing evidence.
Your goal is to begin by grouping evidence around probable ideas. One
way is to list the ideas, give each a number, and then review the evidence you
have identified, coding each piece of evidence for the idea it seems to
support.
- Evaluating evidence.
Determine whether you have sufficient evidence to support your thesis
and develop a convincing argument.
- Researching other critics'
interpretations. After you have examined the story or novel closely and
have developed a thesis, your instructor may encourage or require you to
search out other interpretations to help you clarify and develop your ideas.
Reading what others have written is like entering a conversation about the
story or novel. You may agree or disagree, find your own ideas supported or
challenged, discover new insights, or learn nothing at all. If you do the
research, be sure to cite any ideas from other critics that you use in your
essay. Whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize others' ideas, keep the
focus on your own argument. Do not write a report surveying what others
think; write an essay arguing for your own interpretation. Let the sources
work for you. If you read published interpretations, keep careful notes of
your research, noting direct quotations you may use later. Keep a record of
your sources, including page numbers.
Source: Dr. Mary Susan Johnston,
English Department, Minnesota State University - Mankato (1989)