Literary Analysis Essay
The Literary Analysis Essay is a tightly focused argument in which the student is required to 1) make an argument about how literary devices in a short story contribute to its overall meaning, and 2) support your claims with evidence from both the primary and a secondary text.
The Literary Analysis breaks down a work of literature to
identify its elements and examine the way they work together, thus discussing or interpreting the work. This essay is neither a summary of the work or biography of the author. Nor is it a critique (an assessment of a creative work that comments on its good and bad qualities) of the short story’s efficacy. Instead students should analyze how the formal components contribute to the meaning of a literary work.
Engage in critical analysis to focus on how a particular literary devices deployed by the writer contribute to the overall theme.
Write evidence-based literary analyses of literature demonstrating close reading and interpretive skills, logical reasoning, and argumentative strategies.
Identify and analyze literary devices within a short story.
Effectively summarize and paraphrase source material using signal phrases (attributive tags) and parenthetical in-text-citations (MLA format).
Construct properly formatted bibliographical citations (of primary and secondary sources).
