CRI1000 Critical Inquiry & CRI1050 Reading Interpretation

How to Analyze a Text

1. Read or reread the text with specific questions in mind.
2. Organize basic ideas, events and names. Depending on the complexity of book, this requires additional review of the text.
3. Think through your personal reaction to the book: identification, enjoyment, significance, application.
4. Identify and consider most important ideas (importance will depend on context of class, assignment, study guide).
5. Return to the text to locate specific evidence and passages related to the major ideas.
6. Use your knowledge following the principles of analyzing a passage described below: test, essay, research, presentation, discussion, enjoyment.

How to Analyze a Passage 

1. Offer a thesis or topic sentence indicating a basic observation or assertion about the text or passage.
2. Offer a context for the passage without offering too much summary.
3. Cite the passage (using correct format).
4. Then follow the passage with some combination of the following elements:
   • Discuss what happens in the passage and why it is significant to the work as a whole.
   • Consider what is said, particularly subtleties of the imagery and the ideas expressed.
   • Assess how it is said, considering how the word choice, the ordering of ideas, sentence structure, etc., contribute to the meaning of the passage.
   • Explain what it means, tying your analysis of the passage back to the significance of the text as a whole.
5. Repeat the process of context, quotation and analysis with additional support for your thesis or topic sentence.

• A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis

  Learn the practice of close reading, the first step in literary analysis.

• Literary Analysis Guide

  Discusses how to analyze a passage of text to strengthen your discussion of the literature.

• Literary Terms

  A list of literary terms that can help you interpret, critique, and respond to a variety of different written works from the Purdue Online Writing Lab.

• Narrative Techniques

  Lists, defines and provides examples of the many methods author's use to convey meaning in a story through setting, plot, perspective, style, theme, and character.

• Literary Devices

  A website dedicated to literary devices with definitions and examples. Also includes grammatical terms and definitions of types of essays.

Plot: the sequence of events that occur through a work to produce a coherent narrative or story.

Setting: the time and place in which a story takes place.

Protagonist: the main character of story, novel or a play.

Antagonist: a character in conflict with the protagonist.

Narrator: the voice telling the story or speaking to the audience.

Dialogue: spoken exchanges between characters in a dramatic or literary work, usually between two or more speakers.

Conflict: an issue in a narrative around which the whole story revolves.

Tone: a way of communicating information that conveys an attitude. Authors convey tone through a combination of word-choice, imagery, perspective, style, and subject matter.

Theme: the central idea or concept of a story.