READING AND WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
English 1102 and 2020: Writing About Literature and The
Short Story
Instructor: V. Schwab
Adapted from The Little, Brown Handbook
Reading and understanding a piece of literature involves reading AND
REREADING closely to develop an interaction between you and the
story, poem or play. Responding critically is not about making
negative judgments, but about analyzing the “parts” or aspects of the
work (such as theme, plot, character, setting, use of symbolism),
and/or interpreting their meaning (based on your own personal “take”
on the story or poem, supported by evidence from the literary text)
and evaluating the significance or quality of the work.
Don’t hesitate to underline or highlight passages that especially
interest you or about which you have questions. Another good idea is
to keep a reading journal, in which you write about what you’ve read—
your reflections, questions, ideas.
Questions for literary analysis:
PLOT: The relationship and patterns of events.
What happens?
What conflicts occur?
How do the events connect to each other and the whole?
CHARACTER: The people the author creates (including the
narrator of the story or the speaker in a poem)
Who are the principal people in the story?
How do they interact?
What do their actions, words, thoughts reveal about their personalities
and the personalities of other characters in the story?
Who is in conflict? Do the characters stay the same? Do they change
from beginning to end? How?
TONE: The narrator’s or speaker’s attitude, perceived through
the words
What tone or tones do you hear (angry, sad, sarcastic, bitter)? If there
is a change, how do you account for it?
