Analysis Fun with Thurber:
Ransdell’s Rough Analysis Types for English 101 & 107
For Unit 1 of English 101/107, have your students write one of the following kinds of
analysis. (For the sake of simple comparisons, I’ve based all the examples on the Thurber
fable reprinted below.) You might want to start the semester with a Textual Analysis
since most students have done that kind of writing in high school but need practice with
college-level close reading. For Unit 2 you might want to repeat the assignment—or feel
free to choose one of the other forms. Save the Contextual Analysis for Unit 3.
While I’ve labeled the analysis types, they actually combine and collapse. Give your
students parameters of some kind, but what you need is for students to write essays with
organized structures and developed analysis based in part on a text they read (or
experienced) for your class.
For Units 1 and 2:
Textual Analysis (Close Reading)
What might the author be trying to suggest through this text?
What could be the author’s message or advice?
In “The Unicorn in the Garden,” Thurber suggests that men are so dominated by
women that they must resort to cruel tricks to find peace.
Note: Students often think there is only one right way to “read” texts. Assure
them that any text might have any number of meanings; all they have to do is offer a
reasonable interpretation.
Rhetorical Analysis
What strategies does the author use to deliver a particular message?
By exaggerating the wife’s dialogue in “The Unicorn in the Garden,” Thurber
suggests that women’s attitudes need to change before women will be able to
communicate with men effectively.
How does the author use the concept of audience to make the text more effective?
Knowing that his audience is other middle-class males, Thurber “preaches to the
choir” when he uses “The Unicorn in the Garden” to suggest that women make men’s
lives miserable.
Literary Analysis
What literary or poetic elements does the author use to produce the text?
What is the overall effect?
Through successful use of imagery, Thurber suggests that the conniving husband
of “The Unicorn in the Garden” acts in justifiable self-defense when he has his wife sent
to the “booby-hatch.”
Cultural Analysis
How does the text illustrate an aspect of the culture that produced it?
In what ways is the text a product of its times?
How do modern readers react to it and why?
Thurber’s “The Unicorn in the Garden” shows how problems caused by gender
roles were such an expected part of American life in the 1940s that humor became an
important coping strategy.
Reader-Response Analysis
How might the reader make meaning of the text by comparing it to personal
experience?
How might the reader use the text to explicate a personal philosophy?
Although I didn’t go to the extent of sending my ex-boyfriend to the “bobbyhatch,” I agree with Thurber’s husband in “The Unicorn in the Garden”: since people
with an exaggerated sense of their own authority will always cause harm to themselves as
well as to others, they need to be stopped at all costs.
Comparative Analysis
How does the author’s text compare to a modern text on a similar theme?
How do the characters resemble those in recent films or in other examples of pop
culture?
In James Thurber’s 1940 “The Unicorn in the Garden,” the author suggests that
women and men are so far from understanding one another that there is no way they can
get along; the modern TV show Sex in the City shows that as much as times have
changed, there are more ways in which they have remained the same. The most difficult
aspects of understanding the opposite sex include…..
For Unit 3:
Contextual Analysis (Text-in-Context)
For the research unit (text-in-context unit), students look at how texts “talk” to one
another and affect one another. To complete their essays, the students should use a
combination of at least five texts. You might ask them to use the materials you’ve read in
class, look for similar materials, or hunt for more formal kinds of research. Browse
through ereserves to find material other instructors have found useful
(eres.library.arizona.edu, password “gat.”). The students’ essays should demonstrate an
understanding of how to use summary, paraphrases, and quotations, and should conform
to a standard citation system (MLA or APA).
A few basic approaches:
a) Multiple texts, similar theme
How is the theme of X explored in various texts?
Whether it’s Tobias Wolff, Bobbie Ann Mason, or James Thurber, the authors
agree: communication between the sexes is so difficult that not even life partners come
close to understanding one another.
b) Multiple texts, contrasting themes
How do the author’s concerns relate to those of Y and Z?
When we’re children, we have conflicts with parents and siblings, when we’re
older we have conflicts with our partners, and somewhere along the line, we have
conflicts with society. As we see through the texts by Amy Tan, James Thurber, and
Flannery O’Connor, to be successful in life means to develop strategies to deal
successfully with multiple kinds of conflict even if it means giving up some of our own
principles.
c) Sets of texts by the same author
What is one of the author’s overall messages?
Through his cartoons, essays, and fables, James Thurber shows that people’s
expectations are so predictable that we can use that information against them, and in the
name of self-defense, we should.
d) One primary text plus research that helps explain a biographical, psychological, social,
economic, historic, or cultural angle.
What are some biographical aspects of the author’s life that may have influenced
his or her world-view?
While James Thurber’s “The Unicorn in the Garden” suggests a cynical version of
marriage, a careful analysis of Thurber’s parents’ marriage as well as his own help
explain his outlook.
e) A film plus related texts
How do the themes in Film X relate to themes in other texts that we’ve read?
Denial is a fact of human nature. As we see through The Queen, “The Unicorn in
the Garden,” and “Two Kinds,” it’s much easier to shift the blame to someone else than
to examine the problems we’ve created for ourselves.
Thurber, James. “The Unicorn in the Garden”
Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his
scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in
the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke
her. “There's a unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.” She opened one unfriendly
eye and looked at him. “The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back
on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still
there; he was now browsing among the tulips. “Here, unicorn,” said the man and pulled
up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there
was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife a gain. “The
unicorn,” he said, “ate a lily.” His wife sat up in bed and looked at him, coldly. “You are
a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in a booby-hatch.” The man, who
never liked the words “booby” and “booby-hatch,” and who liked them even less on a
shining morning when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment. “We'll
see about that,” he said. He walked over to the door. “He has a golden horn in the middle
of his forehead,” he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn; but
the unicorn had gone away. The man sat among the roses and went to sleep.
And as soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast
as she could. She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the
police and she telephoned the psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and bring a
straitjacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived they sat down in chairs and
looked at her, with great interest. “My husband,” she said, “saw a unicorn this morning.”
The police looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police. “He told
me it ate a lily,” she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police and the police looked at
the psychiatrist. “He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead,” she said.
At a solemn signal from the psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized
the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they
finally subdued her. Just as they got her into the straitjacket, the husband came back into
the house.
“Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?” asked the police. “Of course not,” said the
husband. “The unicorn is a mythical beast.” “That's all I wanted to know,” said the
psychiatrist. “Take her away. I'm sorry, sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jay bird.” So
they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband
lived happily ever after.
Moral: Don't count your boobies until they are hatched. Fables for Our Times (1940)
Ransdell 10/07