Integrating Quotes into Essays
Examples of what integrated notes look like:
As the narrator explained, "The river was grayish-blue in the
afternoon sun" (116).
The water turned "...grayish-blue in the afternoon sun" (116)
symbolizing the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Integrating Quotes into Literary Analysis
The following are snippets of actual high school student essays that illustrate how to
smoothly integrate quotes into a literary analysis. Notice how naturally the quotes blend
into the essays, yet they provide evidence for the writers’ analyses.
from an essay on Baldwin’s GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN……….
Baldwin presents more opposing images as cleanliness and dirtiness appear throughout
the book. John tries to clean his home and the church, to rid these places of their insistent,
habitual dust and dirt, figuratively their sins and imperfections . He routinely sweeps up the dirt in
his living room and his church only to be disappointed when the wind carries more back to him.
On a sub-textual level, John is trying to scrub his own soul clean of the dirt of sins committed but
perhaps not quite understood yet. By the end of the novel, John has weighed cleanliness and
dirtiness of the soul on a set of scales in his mind and experiences an epiphany when John's
spiritual awakening happens (204). The narrator reveals, "The light and the darkness had kissed
each other, and were married now, forever, in the life and the vision of John's soul.” With his
coming of age, John has made peace with both sides of the scales in his soul. He finds a balance
that Richard, Royal, and Gabriel were not able to find. It will be his salvation in an emotional
sense for years to come.
From Act I, Scene V, lines 37-51:
Lady Macbeth: “ Come, you spirits/that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full/ Of direst cruelty ! Make
thick my blood, stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,? That no
compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace
between/ Th’ effect and it! Come to my women’s breasts,? And take
my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,/ Wherever in our sightless
substances/ You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, /
and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,/ That my keen knife see not
the wound it makes,/ Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,/
to cry, ‘Hold, hold!’’
A student wrote this analysis of the above Lady Macbeth quote………………
Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy demonstrates her determination to accomplish royal murder, her
ambition to gain royal power. She calls on hell’s own demons with the plea “Come you spirits,” to
gird her “blood” from allowing any pity for the murder victims to enter her soul. She commands
the demons to “unsex” her and remove her feminine instincts while filing her with “direst cruelty.”
Finally, Lady Macbeth orders the night to shroud her in such darkness that she cannot see the fatal
wound she inflicts nor should “heaven [be able to] peep through the blanket of darkness” to
discover her deeds. Lady Macbeth’s indomitable will sets Macbeth on the irreversible course
toward destruction and downfall with her haughty and demanding words. She will meet those
summoned demons in her sleep later in the play as the guilt of the murders preys on her soul, and
she will take her own life trying to escape the clutches of memory.
from an essay analyzing John Cheever’s essay, “The Reunion”…….
….Charlie grows increasingly uneasy and embarrassed in his father’s presence. As they
enter an empty restaurant, his father hails the waiter with a “boisterousness that seemed out of
place.” So begins Charlie’s silent judgment. His becomes a withdrawn spectator. With obnoxious
commands and caustic language, Charlie’s father tries to control and intimidate. He crossquestions Charlie and orders the waiter like a trained animal. His impatience leads to derisive
commands—“Get us another table,” sarcastic condescension—“Chop-chop,” and false
ingratiation—“If it wouldn’t be above and beyond the call of duty.” Throughout this spree,
Charlie follows his father from restaurant to restaurant. As his father threatens and throws
tantrums, one wonders who the adult in the group really is.
INTEGRATING QUOTES PRACTICE
Read the following poem by Gary Soto. Then re-write the paragraph properly integrating
the quotes.
Old House in My Fortieth Year
by Gary Soto
The clod’s stubbornness gives in to my fist.
The snails groans a single bubble under my shoe
The roots of every chinaberry I’ve swung from
Needle even further into the moist earth.
I’m home in these weeds. I’m home in these bones,
This flesh with its laughter and fatherly scent,
Flesh held up by a frayed belt on its last hole.
I don’t have to walk far to hear the jay
Or a vicious dog, a coal breathing in each eye.
The old house has been smoothed by sand
And the rake of years. I don’t know this place,
Really, or the boy buried in this flesh of mine.
One error, and I’m the man pushing a cart.
Another error, and I march a long row of cotton
Or beets. The stars wheeled around an icy comet,
And by fortune, I’m now at home in this body—
The heart down to business
And slapping blood through its swinging door.
“Old House in my Fortieth Year” is a metaphorical poem about the inevitability and
mystery of aging, and moreover the author’s seeming acceptance and simultaneous
befuddlement about the process. To convey his message he uses sensory images to
invoke feelings of distaste or pleasure as he himself goes through stages of distaste and
pleasure. At first, it seems like he is a man confronting this change as he confronts his
garden. However, in the beginning of the second stanza there is a subtle change in tone
that leads the reader to believe he is beginning to accept rather than revolt against the
eventual condition of aging that all men experience. This calm imagery leaves as the tone
is contradicted by his final statements where he does recognize certain vitality within
himself even if that vitality is far removed from the boy who is now a stranger.
"The water was grayish blue...." (116) which symbolized the
blending of the colors of the soldiers' Civil War uniforms and
the philosophies those soldiers believed in.