ELA B30: Essay Assignment: Analysis of a Short Story
Due Date: Week of March 16-20
Outcome CR B30.4
For this essay, you need to read, analyze and explain one of the following short
stories:
1. A Battlefield in Moonlight – John Biguenet
2. The Fly - Katherine Mansfield
3. The Piece of String – Guy de Maupassant
4.The IWM 1000 – Alicia Yanez Cossio
5.Revolution – Vic Finkelstein
6.The Lottery – Shirley Jackson
7.The Cop and the Anthem –O. Henry
8.Just Lather, That’s All – Hernando Tellez
9.Hands of Lead, Feet of Clay –Jamal Mahjoub
*Just click the links above to access the stories.
The minimum required length for the revised draft of this essay is 750 words. Your
essay should be written in a formal voice and needs at least five paragraphs,
including an introduction with a clear one-sentence thesis statement and a
conclusion with a restatement of that thesis. Your essay should have at least three
body paragraphs.
Your Analysis:
You can assume that your audience has read the short story that you choose for your
subject but has not studied or analyzed it. Your job is not to summarize the story but
to help readers appreciate it and to understand its meaning. To help you go beyond a
simple summary of the story, you should ask yourself what point the writer is trying to
make. What is the author trying to tell us through the story?
You might start by thinking about the theme or themes conveyed in the story.
"Theme" can be defined as the "main point" or, more specifically, the "comment
about life" that an author conveys in a story. In other words, what is the story telling
us about life? With a possible theme in mind, you should then reread the story
carefully, making notes on anything that seems to relate to the theme.
As you consider a possible thesis for your essay, it might be helpful if you come up
with three or four important and related claims (or critical insights about the story)
that you think you can support with specific evidence from the story. These claims
could then be the bases for the different body paragraphs of your essay. From the
claims, you could then formulate a one-sentence thesis statement. Each claim you
present in your essay should be supported with ample evidence from the story itself.
Be an active reader. Review the example of Lucy’s analysis of Simple Recipes to
review this process. Read the story you are writing about several times. When you
reread the story, you should have a pen or pencil in hand, annotating to help you
remember things you notice and to write down any questions that come to mind.
Adapted from Instructor R. Rambo from Illinois Valley Community College: http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/essay2_fall2011.htm
Sample Essay
Here is an effective literary analysis you can reference as an example:
Disappointment: An Analysis of “The Story of an Hour”
Please review the analysis of Simple Recipes that we looked at closely in class too.
We will discuss each story as a class, and you should use some of the ideas we
discuss to help you develop your interpretation of the story.
No Need for Citations and Documentation
Sometimes, an essay on a short story will include parenthetical citations for page
numbers of quoted words and a separate "Work Cited" page listing publication
information for the story, all according to Modern Language Association (MLA)
standards. However, please do not include parenthetical citations or a "Work Cited"
page with your essay. Understanding how to cite and document material properly can
get somewhat complicated, and, at this point, I would prefer than you focus on
developing and presenting your interpretation well without having to think about the
proper citation and documentation of your subject. Later in the course, we will
discuss MLA citation and documentation of sources.
Referring to the Narrator
Typically, essays are written in the voice of the author, whereas short stories are
written in the voice of a narrator, a persona created by the author to tell the story. As
you are writing about a short story and are referring to what the storyteller says, you
should not refer to what the "author" says but to what the narrator says.
The Writing Process
Additional Resources
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Getting Started on Essays
Formal Writing Voice
Revision Checklist
Checklist: Organization and the Support and Development of Ideas
Checklist: Style and Mechanics
Organizing and Developing Persuasive Paragraphs
Good Paragraph / Bad Paragraph: Effectively Developing a Persuasive
Paragraph
Integrating Quotations into Sentences
Using Quotations Properly
The Rubric
The information on the Web pages linked above can help you with your writing.
Adapted from Instructor R. Rambo from Illinois Valley Community College: http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/essay2_fall2011.htm