Writing About Literature

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Writing About Literature
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DO NOT

• Give a plot summary of the story
• Your audience (teacher) already knows the story

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Do

• Refer to details from the plot when you give
  examples to support your argument

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DO NOT

• Summarize the authors life

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Do

• Refer to important events in the authors life if
  it is part of your argument

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Read and Re-read the Text

• Read critically
• Search and mark evidence to support your argument
• Incidents in the story
• Subtleties of style

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Organize Your Essay

• Chronological Order
• Paragraphs separate the process or series of
  events into major stages.

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Organize Your Essay

• Classification
• Paragraphs divide the material into major
  categories and distinguish between them.

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Organize Your Essay

• Increasing Importance
• Paragraphs are arranged so that the most
  important point comes last, thus building the
  essays strength.

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Organize Your Essay

• Cause and Effect
• Indicates casual relationships between things and
  events.
• Be careful not to mistake coincidence with
  causality, nor to disregard other possible causes.

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Organize Your Essay

• Comparison and Contrast
• Line up related ideas for a detailed account of
  similarities and differences.
• It is important to decide whether you will be
  concentrating on similarities or differences. In
  general, the more similar things are, the more
  you concentrate on the differences, and vice
  versa.

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Use Evidence

• Each part of your argument must be supported by
  evidence from the text

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Your Title Should

• Express your argument
• Name the text and author

Louise Mallards Symbolic Death in Kate Chopins
Story of An Hour
The Splintered Consciousness of Roselily in Alice
Walkers Roselily
Anthony Groomss Use of Language in Jack n
Jill
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Technical Difficulties
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Titles of Literary Works

• Underline or italicize titles of books,
  periodicals, plays, films, and television programs

This Boys Life
As I Live and Breathe
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Titles of Literary Works

• Put quotation marks around titles of stories,
  poems, essays, and one-act plays.

Roselily
The Heart Through Time
Fall of 1961
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Authors Name

• Use authors full name the first time you mention
  it in the introductory paragraph.
• Thereafter, use the last name only.

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In Your Introduction

• Identify the author
• Identify the text
• State your argumentthesis statement

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Always

• Use present tense to refer to the action in a
  work of literature.
• Until the end of The Story of An Hour, the main
  character is known only as Mrs. Mallard.
• Roselily begins her story in a dream-like trance.

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Always

• Credit your sources
• Directly after each quotation or paraphrase
• In the Works Cited page