Writing a Critical Lens Essay/Research Paper
A. Understand the critical lens and what it is asking of you. A critical lens is a certain viewpoint you should
look through as you analyze the piece of literature you were assigned. It could be a school of thought,
such as a "Marxist" or "feminist" critical lens, or it could be a quote expressing some sort of general
opinion. Make sure you know what this critical lens is and what it's all about. Talk to your teacher or do
additional research on the critical lens if necessary.
B. Analyze the piece of literature. The best thing is to reread it, if possible, with your critical lens in mind.
As you read, highlight passages that seem to support the critical lens. You can use some of them in your
paper. For example, if you are supposed to look at the text through a psychoanalytic critical lens,
passages that have to deal with a father-son relationship could be used to expound on an overall
Oedipal theme in your paper.
C. Craft an ORIGINAL thesis statement -- an overview of what your essay is going to be about, containing
the basic argument you will be making in your essay. It should create an argument about an aspect of
the critical lens that can be supported by direct quotes from your piece of literature. If you were given a
prompt as part of your assignment, make sure your thesis statement directly answers it.
D. Write the introductory paragraph, which should basically be an extension of your thesis statement. Use
it to explain any concepts you feel you need to go into detail about, or to bring in anything you feel is
necessary before you start getting deeper into the text. This should be a bridge into your work and
establish the lens you will use to analyze the text.
E. Write your body paragraphs. You can go about this several ways: you can write each paragraph about a
separate point you have to make about the text, or you can explain one point in a paragraph and then
use the next several paragraphs to explain and analyze different passages that support it, then start a
new point and do the same thing. The basic purpose of your body paragraphs is to go deep into the text
and analyze it from the perspective of your critical lens. The topics of your body paragraphs must stem
directly from your thesis statement. IN ADDITION TO YOUR PRIMARY SOURCE, YOU MUST USE TWO
ADDITIONAL SOURCES TO SUPPORT YOUR CLAIM/IDEAS. This task will require you to use outside
literary criticism. YOU WILL CITE THREE WORKS IN YOUR PAPER AND HAVE THREE WORKS IN YOUR
PROPERLY FORMATTED WORKS CITED PAGE.
F. Write your conclusion and tie everything together. You have several ways to go about it, but make sure
this conclusion has a closing feel to it, and maybe adds a little something new, like a further explanation
of the critical lens, or another analytical point that stems from earlier ones, so that it's not just recycling
what you've said before. If the introduction is the bridge into your essay, the conclusion should be the
bridge out (back into the “real world”).
Steps to writing a critical analysis paper:
1. Determine which critical theory will best fit your text.
2. Critical theory analyzes a text looking for different traits or through different focal points. Determine
what traits or which focus best suits the critical theory you will use to analyze the text.
3. Now develop a thesis statement that identifies the critical theory to be applied and states what the use
of this critical theory allows readers to see in this work.
4. Find examples from the text that support your thesis.
5. Find outside literary criticism or autobiography/biography (2 sources) that supports your claims.
6. Develop the body paragraphs of your essay with supporting details and commentary for each
paragraph.
7. Develop a conclusion that evaluates how these stylistic elements affect the work.
This type of analysis works well for any piece of literature or philosophy that comes from a readily identifiable
author, era, and philosophical tradition. It works best when you can find autobiographical information on the
author.
Criticism
Historical
Definition
examining the work in light of the time in which it was written OR in light of
current values and norms
Critical Race Theory
examining what the works says about race or which races are
valued/undervalued in a text?
Feminist Critical Theory
examining what it says about the relationship between genders
Marxist Critical Theory
what it says about power relationships
Deconstructionism
examining how the writer creates meaning
Biographical
examining the author’s life as a way to better understand the text
Assignment: Write a 2-3 pages essay analyzing a poem using a critical lens. Your essay should make reference to
particular lines, phrases and poetic devices exploring the way the poet uses these elements to say something
about race, class, gender, psychology, etc. How does the lens you have chosen shape the poem?
My Papa’s Waltz
BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Tiara
By Mark Doty
Peter died in a paper tiara
cut from a book of princess paper dolls;
he loved royalty, sashes
and jewels. I don’t know,
he said, when he woke in the hospice,
I was watching the Bette Davis film festival
on Channel 57 and then—
At the wake, the tension broke
when someone guessed
the casket closed because
he was in there in a big wig
and heels, and someone said,
You know he’s always late,
he probably isn’t here yet—
he’s still fixing his makeup.
And someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down
into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted,
giving himself over so drunk
or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,
though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple,
ravishing music of their hurry.
I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,
where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments
of the music we die into
in the body’s paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing
how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given
the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk
of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form
and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it.
the lost baby poem
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born into winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car
we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas
let black men call me stranger
always
for your never named sake