By: Myles Allan

Picture this: you’re in your first ever English class at college. Maybe you’ve never taken a literature class in high school, maybe you’re only taking it for a degree requirement, maybe it’s your major or minor. In any case, your professor has you read a really old novel by some dead guy that you’re having trouble understanding. At the end of this novel, your professor assigns you a paper analyzing the work. They don’t give you a prompt or any sort of direction. They just ask you to tell them what you think. What do you do? Panic? Drop out?

It doesn’t have to be that scary. Literary analysis is a skill that we often take for granted in our day-to-day lives. The ability to read a text, organize the key takeaways, and understand their context in the real world is something that takes practice, and unless you know where to start, the task can be a daunting one in any English course. This guide will help you review what makes effective literary analysis, and will teach you to upgrade your papers from surface-level to philosophical!

What is Literary Analysis, Anyway?

“Literary analysis” is a broad term that encompasses several different approaches to evaluating or criticizing a text. Analyzing literature doesn’t mean summarizing it, though your analysis can build from the foundations of the work. For example, within your analysis, you can ask yourself some of the following questions:

Character

How do the characters develop over the course of the story? Does the way they are represented affect the context of the story?

Setting

When and where does the text take place? How does the setting affect the way the story is told?

Theme

What message is the text trying to convey? Does the author want you to believe something?

Tone

Who is the story meant for? How does the author talk to their audience?

Author

Is the author biased? How might their life change the way the text is interpreted?

Medium

Does the way the story is told contribute something to its meaning? Would the story be different as a play, a movie, a game etc.?

Some attributes are easier to talk about than others. Maybe you’re more drawn to character development, or discussions about theme. Maybe you’re attached to something completely different, like symbolism, diction, or metaphor. Regardless, literary analysis works best when you talk about something that interests you. When you read something, ask yourself: what stuck out to me about this text? If I was talking about this text with someone else, what is the first thing I would bring up? That’s always a good place to start.

Remember: unlike science, math, or the more objective fields, your opinion matters in literary arts. If you didn’t enjoy a text, or a certain part of it, it might be worth it to analyze why you feel that way. Literature is only as effective as its audience, so if a piece isn’t working for you, literary analysis might help you to figure out why.

The Lens Method

While the topics in the last section might help you get the ball rolling, not all of them will be ample subjects to write a full-length research paper. If you have trouble developing your analysis, or the other subjects don’t interest you, the lens method might be a more effective way to think about your research paper.

Imagine you’re looking at a text through a microscope, and the different lenses help you focus on specific aspects of it. Perhaps you’re a Criminal Justice major, and want to look at a book like Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevskythrough the “criminology” lens. You could research theories about why people commit crime, and compare it to the characteristics of the text you read. Perhaps you’re interested in psychology and want to see the way different mental illnesses are represented in films like Split. The “psychological” lens might be for you.

There are lots of different lenses you can look through when it comes to literary analysis. Here are some examples:

Feminist Theory

How are women represented in the text? Does this text uphold or challenge sexist beliefs?

Queer Theory

How is gender/sexuality represented in the text? Can characters be interpreted as queer?

Political Theory

Is the theme conveyed in the text political? Does this text have a political implication or agenda?

Cultural Studies

What does this text say about different cultural issues? How does it represent different groups?

Historical Studies

When was this text released? Do the historical events around the text change the context?

Race Theory

How does this text represent characters of different ethnicities/nationalities/etc.? Does the text balance social power between different races?

Looking at a text through these lenses and asking these kinds of questions are great ways to start thinking about a research paper, or any kind of formal literary analysis. Not only that, but asking these questions can help you answer a very important question about any text:

So what?

Literary theories can explain the implications of a text in the bigger picture. A lot of essays require you to answer the so what? question, usually within the conclusion of your paper. If you can look at a text through one of these lenses, you can also discuss why a text matters and how certain elements might affect the real world. Perhaps a text influences certain beliefs that the general public holds, like the sociological ‘Jaws effect’, in which the movie made people believe that sharks are inherently dangerous. Maybe a text convinces people to vote a certain way, or treat people differently. These are all potential ways to answer the so what? question.

 At the end of the day, the most important part of literary analysis is deciding what matters to you when you read something. The only way you can figure this out is by thinking critically about every text you come across, even the ones you don’t enjoy or feel like you’re being forced to read. This type of practice can carry over into your everyday life, too. When you see something come across your social media feed, like a TikTok or a Twitter thread, ask yourself some of the questions outlined in this article. You might have a stronger understanding of what you’re reading.

No piece of text exists in a vacuum. Every piece of literature only exists when it’s read, and how the reader interprets this experience is almost as important as the text itself. So, the next time you read a book that your professor assigns you, even if you can’t find yourself reading past the first page, ask yourself…

What kind of literary analyst are you?