Literary Analysis
The basic minimum that each section must have is as follows:
Summary: 125-150 words—no more than 200!
This section is about
______________
It begins with
______________
It develops into
______________
Ending with ______________, character ______________
Analysis: addresses ONLY ONE element in each section, i.e. the student wrote about one theme in the
paragraph, not two themes.
 Writing Style: must address ONE writing element that contributes to understanding the
development of any aspect of the story
 Theme: must address ONE central idea of the text
 Character Development: must address ONE character at a time
 Each section must also have a minimum of 2 quotes...regardless...with proper parenthetical
citation: author and page number, e.g. (Conrad 3).
Each analysis section must also follow a pattern of writing that is evident when you are reading it
S: statement that identifies what the writer will be writing about, i.e. the ONE element
E: evidence, i.e. 2 quotes with explanation AND parenthetical citation (at least the page number)
E: evaluation, i.e. analysis = the intention of the writer & importance to the work as a whole
Essential Questions that students could focus on in their evaluation/analysis:
 Writing Style: How does this element lead to an understanding of the development of story
line/plot, characters, theme
 Theme: What does the writer reveal about the nature of the human spirit
 Character Development: What factors of the protagonist or antagonist shape the character's
decisions
Journal Format and Guidelines
FORMAT: TYPED! Double-spaced with Cover page

Each journal entry must have 4 parts (label them A,B,C,D):
A.
Begin by writing the page numbers and/or chapters that the entry covers.
B.
Next, write a brief summary of this section (approximately 5 to 8 sentences; roughly 150-200 words). Use the basic summary format as
follows:
This section of (Author's Name) Title of Work is about theme, main idea, conflict in the work.
It begins key point or the introduction of setting, characters and conflict then elaborate!
It develops into key point or climax then elaborate!
Ending with key point action, author’s/ character's name what is the author/character doing now.
C.
Now, analyze the portion of the book you have just read. This part of your journal entry will require the most thought and is very
important to your complete understanding of the story. It is your thoughtful and intelligent interpretation of important elements of the
novel. Keep in mind that it is more than just a listing of your ideas; rather, you should try to analyze and extract meaning from the story
that is more than just superficial speculation. You can do this by debating, arguing, reasoning, and explaining your thinking. Although
most of the journal writing should be your own words, it is also required that you justify your points with well-chosen quotes from the
story (minimum of TWO quotes). Write these quotes out; do not just cite a portion of them or just give the page number…instead you
cite the page number after the quote—NOT in the sentence!
Also, remember that an analysis is not just telling more detail about the summary. In this entry you should discuss in depth two of
the following:

the author’s writing style and how it affects the understanding and development of the story
E.g.: Does the author use “stream of consciousness”? Figurative or descriptive language? Dialogue or dialects? (Remember,
however, that you need to show how these stylistic traits affect the reader’s understanding of the story, and speculate on why
the author has chosen to use them.) –see attached document

themes that you see developing—see attached document

the development of the characters—see attached document
Please label each section as “Author’s Writing Style,” “Themes,” and/or “Character Development.”
Keep in mind that it is preferable that you write in depth on two of the three choices rather that briefly on all three of them.
D. Finally, give your personal reaction to the story. You can do this by discussing one or more of the following:

how the story relates to your personal life or to real life in general

how the story or the characters make you feel and/or why you like or dislike them

why you like or dislike the way the story is written

what you think will happen next

questions you have about the story
Typed single-spaced for the purposes of fitting onto one page for the example
LEAP Journal for The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Entry # 1:
A. Section Covered: Chapters 1-7 (pages 1-86)
B. Summary: The Jungle starts out in the beginning of the twentieth century at the wedding of Ona and Jurgis, two Lithuanian immigrants whose families
have migrated to Chicago. Money is extremely tight and the jobs that the members of the families have are painful and rigidly laborious, to the point
in which the family is exhausted every day. In the beginning the family found themselves wrapped up in many “swindles”, however they have begun
to become experts on the ways of Packingtown, the place in Chicago where they live, and they pay close attention to their money. In the beginning
optimism was flying high, however soon that was shot down and the realization of what their lives had become overcame the family. They dwell in a
poorly constructed house where the danger of missing any rent results in immediate eviction. Life is dreary to put it lightly and there is absolutely no
room for any luxuries at all. Every one of the adult and even teenage family members have the monotonous daily schedule of waking early, working
all day, eating a small dinner, and heading to bed with hardly any room in between.
C. Analysis:
Author’s Writing Style: Upton Sinclair makes this read captivating in numerous ways. He loads the text with descriptive words allowing the reader to
easily formulate pictures in their head. The events that are taking place in the story and the scenery around the characters is created in the readers
minds through Sinclair’s descriptions. The pens of animals, the houses, and all of Packingtown are vividly described and easy to picture. For
example, when Sinclair is describing the musician at the wedding, “He is only about five feet high, but even so these trousers are about eight inches
short of the ground. You wonder where he can have gotten them-or rather you would wonder, if the excitement of being in his presence left you time
to think of such things” (11). Through this the musician can be mentally illustrated while Sinclair also describes the musician’s reputation and the
excitement of the reception. Along with these details, the author also uses a number of similes and metaphors that serve the purpose of keeping the
story from becoming bland and boring. When Sinclair is describing the slaughtering, “In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was
quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious-a very river of death” (37). Although this piece of writing is fictional, Sinclair
packs it with history. The writing contains immense knowledge about what was going on with immigration in the early 1900’s and what kind of jobs
these immigrants had to do. Sinclair exemplifies the hardships that not only the immigrants, but all the citizens of America were going through.
Coinciding with this, Sinclair presses a dark mood on the reader. This is a very dark and depressing story and the author leaves the reader feeling
somewhat depressed and lucky for what the reader has.
Character Development: YOU SHOULD WRITE TO ONLY ONE CAHARACTER. THERE ARE MANY LISTED HERE FOR
YOU TO LEARN ABOUT DIFFERENT WAYS TO WRITE ABOUT CHARACTERS. Jurgis: Upon reaching America Jurgis was
especially optimistic about the situation at hand. Even upon reaching Packingtown, after losing most of their money and living in a slum, Jurgis was
still optimistic and enjoying the laborious job that he was forced to work. The men are talking to Jurgis, telling him “…stories to make your flesh
creep, but Jurgis would only laugh” (25). However now that he is seeing what kind of politics are involved in every level of command and how
corrupt the business is, he is beginning to lose this optimism. Ona: Ona starts out staying at home and being treated almost in a pampering way,
compared to the circumstances of others. However soon she is forced into the working world and forced to mature a little more. Not to say that she
was immature, she just never had done much work in her life. Upon reaching America she had to jump in and start doing some hard work. Teta
Elzbieta: Teta is the one character who has not changed a whole lot and has remained steadfast. She came into America a hard worker who wasn’t
easily discouraged. She was almost the family glue holding everything together through all the hardships. Teta is a woman of very strong traditions,
to Teta the very suggestion of an untraditional wedding “was an affliction” (67). Stanislovas: Although he is not a main character, it is important to
note his change. Only a boy of thirteen, he was forced to lie about his age and find a job working in the cellar of an unsanitary factory, often walking
to work in the rain and snow, freezing all day long while he worked. He was forced to mature very quickly and he is being deprived of an education.
Themes: The main theme that continues to occur is that of the “swindles” that take place. From the day that the Lithuanian family arrived on U.S. soil,
they have been schemed out of their money in almost every way imaginable. By the time they had finally reached Chicago, they hardly had any
money left to call their own, continuing to find themselves wrapped up in swindle after swindle. In this section the family is threatened by a very
influential man in Packingtown, Ona’s boss Phil Connor, who has been raping Ona. When Ona is explaining to Jurigis what Connor had told her, she
says, “He told me he would—we would all of us lose our places” (151). This exemplifies how the very foundation of Packingtown is based on
schemes and black mail: targeting especially the immigrants. Along with this the other theme that occurs is that of misleading propaganda. The
family was told that there was great prosperity to be found in American and anyone who cared to travel there would surely find themselves rich. Even
after arriving in Chicago, after all of the money they were conned out of, they still believed, due to what the influential people had said, that money
could be quickly made in the factories. This type of propaganda has continued to spread throughout the first two sections. Jurgis found himself
sucked into a union believing that “…belonging to a union meant an end to all of their troubles” (92). This proved to be untrue and Jurgis did not find
any help in the union.
D. Personal Reaction: Although this story is very dark, I do like it a lot. It shows me what kind of situations people were going through in that time era
and it also makes me thankful for what I have. This story relates to real life because there are still immigrating families today that are forced to do the
lowest jobs offered. Although the conditions may not necessarily be quite as bad, there are still plenty of people who are fighting just to break even. I
like the way the story is written because it keeps me interested. I don’t find myself spacing out or becoming bored when I read. I like the characters
because they are a close knit family and they stay together, all of them hard workers that have strong moral values. I have a feeling that things are
going to take a turn for the worse in the next section.
*********Thesis Entry: Your final requirement is to write a thesis statement and give at least three examples from your book that will support
it. Put this as your final entry after your last journal.
How to Analyze a Character(s)
Setting:
Where does the story take place?
Development:
Problem/Conflict: What is the character’s problem at the
beginning of the story?
Goal: What does the character want to happen by the end of
the story?
Outcome: How does the end of the story affect the
character?
Description:
Appearance: what does the character look like?
Personality: How would you describe the character’s
personality?
Protagonist or Antagonist?
Insights:
Thoughts: What are the character’s most important
thoughts?
Feelings: What are the characters’ most important feelings?
Statements and Actions:
Statements: What is the most important or memorable thing
the character says?
Actions: What is the character’s most important action?
Interactions: How does the character get along with other
characters?
My Impressions:
Like: What do you like most about this character?
Dislike: What do you dislike most about this character?
Personal Connection: Who does this character remind you
of and why?
Bigger Questions:
How does the setting affect how the character:
 Speaks
 Acts
What events foreshadow the future?
 How does the setting contribute to this?
In the End:
Is the character
Round?
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
Interacts

Flat?
Static?
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Feels
How do the character(s) actions contribute to this?
Dynamic?
Four types of characterization:
 Physical description.
 Speech and actions.
Thinks
How do you know?
Direct comment from the narrator.
Speech and actions of other characters.
Four types of characters:
 Round: A complex and fully developed character.
 Dynamic: A character that develops throughout the story.
 Flat: A character described by one or two traits.
 Static: A character that does not change from the beginning of the story to its end.
Five ways to analyze characters:
 Motivation: What causes the character to act?
 Behavior: What does the character do?
 Consequences: What results from the character’s behavior?
 Responsibility: Is the character held accountable for his/her actions?
 Expectations: Are the reader’s expectations fulfilled or challenged? Why is this so?
Questions for further analysis:
 If they were a shape?
 If they were a car?
 If they were a weather
system?
 If they were an article of
clothing?
 If they were a book genre?
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



If they were music/song?
If they were a sport?
If they were a piece of
furniture?
If they were an element in
nature?
If they were a food?
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

Most Importantly:
 What is the author’s purpose in creating this particular character in this particular manner?
If they were a number?
If they were a sound?
If they were an instrument?
How to Analyze a Theme
Theme is the underlying meaning of a literary work. A statement of theme is most often a truth about life
or humanity, which the author is communicating to the reader. Themes are not usually found on the
“surface”; instead, readers have to dig to discover them. Even though the actual theme will not be directly
stated, these “seeds” are planted throughout the book. It is implied through characterization, setting,
conflict, and plot. As you read and reflect, the theme grows into a message about humanity and life.
Choose three theme seeds from the following list. Complete a graphic organizer for each of your theme
“seeds.”
• man’s inhumanity to man
• friendship
• jealousy/envy
• competition/rivalry
• microcosm vs. macrocosm
• fear
• moral
courage/responsibility
• reality vs. memory
• conformity vs.
nonconformity
• conscience and guilt
• reminiscence/reflection
• change under crisis
• innocence vs. age
• war and peace
Theme
What exactly is this elusive thing called theme?
 The theme of a fable is its moral.
 The theme of a parable is its teaching.
 The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave.
In fiction, the theme is not intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly at all. You
extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story.
In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself.
The writer's task is to communicate on a common ground with the reader. Although the particulars of
your experience may be different from the details of the story, the general underlying truths behind the
story may be just the connection that both you and the writer are seeking. Answer the question:
What is the author saying about ___________________?
Finding the Theme
Here are some ways to uncover the theme in a story:
 Check out the title. Sometimes it tells you a lot about the theme.
 Notice repeating patterns and symbols. Sometimes these lead you to the theme.
 What allusions are made throughout the story?
 What are the details and particulars in the story? What greater meaning may they have?
 Remember that theme, plot, and structure are inseparable, all helping to inform and reflect back
on each other. Also, be aware that a theme we determine from a story never completely explains
the story. It is simply one of the elements that make up the whole.
How to Analyze a Writing Style
Writing Style--the way you put together a sentence or group of sentences
Point of View
An automobile accident occurs. Two drivers are involved. Witnesses include four sidewalk spectators, a policeman,
a man with a video camera who happened to be shooting the scene, and the pilot of a helicopter that was flying
overhead. Here we have nine different points of view and, most likely, nine different descriptions of the accident.
In short fiction, who tells the story and how it is told are critical issues for an author to decide. The tone and feel of
the story, and even its meaning, can change radically depending on who is telling the story.
Remember, someone is always between the reader and the action of the story. That someone is telling the story from
his or her own point of view. This angle of vision, the point of view from which the people, events, and details of a
story are viewed, is important to consider when reading a story.
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Is it fixed or does it change?
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
Does it stay the same distance from the events of the story, or does it zoom in and zoom out, like a camera lens?
Who is telling the story?
Types of Point of View
Objective Point of View
With the objective point of view, the writer tells what happens without stating more than can be inferred from the
story's action and dialogue. The narrator never discloses anything about what the characters think or feel, remaining
a detached observer.
Third Person Point of View
Here the narrator does not participate in the action of the story as one of the characters, but lets us know exactly how
the characters feel. We learn about the characters through this outside voice.
First Person Point of View
In the first person point of view, the narrator does participate in the action of the story. When reading stories in the
first person, we need to realize that what the narrator is recounting might not be the objective truth. We should
question the trustworthiness of the accounting.
Omniscient and Limited Omniscient Points of View
 A narrator who knows everything about all the characters is all knowing, or omniscient.
 A narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character, either major or minor, has a limited omniscient point of
view.
As you read a piece of fiction think about these things:
 How does the point of view affect your responses to the characters?
 How is your response influenced by how much the narrator knows and how objective he or she is? First person
narrators are not always trustworthy. It is up to you to determine what is the truth and what is not.
 Think about the ways that point of view is used to help understand the plot
Setting
Eudora Welty said, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and
happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the
proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?..."
Writers describe the world they know. Sights, sounds, colors, and textures are all vividly painted in words as an
artist paints images on canvas. A writer imagines a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his or her mind.
The location of a story's actions, along with the time in which it occurs, is the setting.
Setting is created by language. How many or how few details we learn is up to the author. Many authors leave a lot
of these details up to the reader's imagination.
What Setting Tells Us
In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," the narrator carefully describes the house that Miss Emily lives in. This
description helps us picture a decaying Mississippi town in the post-Civil War South. We also learn about Miss
Emily's resistance to change.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled
balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But
garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss
Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. Later we enter the house itself and, eventually, end up inside one particular room. The
physical details of the setting become linked with the values, ideals, and attitudes of that place in different times.
***Setting can add an important dimension of meaning, reflecting character and embodying theme.
Notice how the details of the setting provide the clues for solving the conflict. As a result, they illuminate the deeper meaning
of the story.
Characters
Memorable characters come alive for us while we read. They live on the page and in our hearts and minds. We cannot forget
them. Yet, they are fictional; they don't really exist.
Be alert to characters in the same way you are when you meet someone. Observe their actions. Listen closely to what they
say and how they say it. Notice how they relate to other characters and how other characters respond to them. Look for clues
as to their purpose and significance in the story.
Learning About Characters
 Characters are either major or minor and either static (unchanging) or dynamic (changing).
 The character who dominates the story is the major character.
 Don't be fooled however--you might never even see the story's major character.
 Also, major characters do not have to be dynamic. Emily Grierson doesn't change at all in Faulkner's "A Rose for
Emily," yet she is the major character.
Readers can learn about characters in many ways, including:
 Physical traits
 Actions
 Dialogue
 Attire


Opinions
Point of view
There are no limits on the types of characters who can inhabit a story: male or female, rich or poor, young or old, prince or
pauper. What is important is that the characters in a story all have the same set of emotions as the reader: happiness, sorrow,
disappointment, pain, joy, and love.
As Nathaniel Hawthorne said, "Blessed are all the emotions be they dark or bright." In emotions lie the motivations of the
characters who drive the story.
The Elements of Plot Development
If an author writes, "The king died and then the queen died," there is no plot for a story. But by writing, "The king died and
then the queen died of grief," the writer has provided a plot line for a story.
 A plot is a causal sequence of events, the "why" for the things that happen in the story. The plot draws the reader into
the character's lives and helps the reader understand the choices that the characters make.
 A plot's structure is the way in which the story elements are arranged. Writers vary structure depending on the needs
of the story. For example, in a mystery, the author will withhold plot exposition until later in the story. In William
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" it is only at the end of the story that we learn what Miss Emily has been up to all
those years while locked away in her Southern mansion.
What Goes into a Plot?
 Narrative tradition calls for developing stories with particular pieces--plot elements--in place.
 Exposition is the information needed to understand a story.
 Complication is the catalyst that begins the major conflict.
 Climax is the turning point in the story that occurs when characters try to resolve the complication.
 Resolution is the set of events that bring the story to a close.
 It's not always a straight line from the beginning to the end of a short story. In Ernest Hemingway's story "The Short
Happy Life of Francis Macomber," the action shifts from past to present. This shifting of time is the way we learn
what happened and why, and it keeps us interested in the story. But good stories always have all the plot elements in
them.
 Ask yourself the following questions-- "Why did the author arrange the story elements the way s/he did? How does
s/he control our emotional response and prepare us for reversals or surprises?"
Diction
Simply put: word choice—how words are formulated to create something magical, e.g. figurative language
Figurative Language—look them up if you do not remember what they are!
Imagery
Oxymoron
Metaphors
Paradox
Personification
Pun
Simil