Text Analysis:
Basics
2005 Spring Graduate Writing II
Outline & Main Points
• Main Argument
– should suggest the scope and structure
of your paper;
– Needs re-consideration
– should comes with a clear definition of
terms. e.g. the Lost Generation;
– should be followed by a response to
current scholarship.
• Structure & Coherence
– use logical transitions to avoid gaps.
Outline & Main Points (2)
• Analysis –
– The quote is unrelated to the analysis.
– Be close to the text.
– Straighten out the different semantic
levels the text involves or categories your
analysis works with. (e.g. Beloved –
Beloved’s different identities; different
readings of history; Lady Oracle –Joan at
different ages )
• Context
-- avoid sweeping generalization about the
social background.
• Language –local errors, sentence
structure, professional tone.
Main Argument-- does not
suggest the structure (1)
• As pieces of memory of African Americans
are recollected through the process of
Beloved’s retrospect, my analysis here
proposes to release black people’s
traumatic memory from history and an
infant phantom’s nostalgic desires for her
loss under an assumption that they can
get rebirth from the images of life and
death in this sort of feminine writing.
• 1) androgynous figure; 2) going back to
the mother & Africa; 3) repetition as
chorus and against linear history
Rev. Main Argument and
Structure (1)
• As fragmentary memories of African
Americans’ experience of the Middle
Passage are recollected and connected with
her personal sense of loss, Beloved’s
soliloquy not only evokes the individual and
collective trauma of loss, but also asserts
her and the race’s right to own their identity
and “origin.”
• 1) loss on the individual and collective
levels;
• 2) assertion on the individual and collective
levels.
• Other clues: “I am not dead.”
Main Argument and
Structure (2) --scope
• Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most
famous tragedies, deals not only with
young Hamlet’s individual dilemma but
also with the nation’s destiny
accompanying a series of suspicions
aroused by the emergences of the ghost.
In order to present how the play creates
an uncertain and suspicious atmosphere
to intensify Hamlet’s gloominess and his
conflict with Claudius and also foreshadow
the tragic ending, the intention of this
paper is set to analyze the first Act of the
play bit by bit so as to see the buildup of
its atmospheric designation.
Rev. Main Argument (2)
scope broadened
• Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies,
deals not only with young Hamlet’s individual
dilemma in life but also with that of his nation’s.
The motivation and justification of both his
procrastination and final revenge have been topics
for endless analyses and debates. This paper argues
that Hamlet is conditioned to do both, as is shown
first in the atmospheric setup in Act I, and then in
the monologues which embody contemporary social
discourses. The play, first of all, creates an
uncertain and suspicious atmosphere to intensify
Hamlet’s suspiciousness and desire to choose and
clarify. Hamlet’s monologues, on the other hand,
reveal ideologies of family hierarchy to which he
firmly subscribes. Both the atmospheric designation
and the monologues, then, reveal how Hamlet’s
tragedy is that of one suffering from the conflicting
ideologies of identity as a social role and as one
formed with individual choices.
Main Argument and Structure
(3) –not supported
• (On “Winter Dreams”)
• I merely want to present how Fitzgerald
presents the same theme: “the loss of
dream” (?) in a shorter length in this story,
and Fitzgerald almost has “completed a
man’s whole life” in nineteen pages
successfully by using metaphorical
elements with colors, smiles, names, and
seasons (?) to convey his hidden
criticism(?) that the environmental force
causes the loss of dreams.
Main Argument and Analysis (3) “ Winter
Dreams” -ref
• Why-- “Nor, when he had seen that it was no use, that he
did not possess in himself the power to move
fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any
malice toward her. “
• Dexter’s responses: “When autumn had come and gone
again it occurred to him that he could not have Judy Jones.
He had to beat this into his mind but he convinced himself
at last. He lay awake at night for a while and argued it over.
He told himself the trouble and the pain she had caused
him, he enumerated her glaring deficiencies as a wife. Then
he said to himself that he loved her, and after a while he
fell asleep.” . . .
• Judy’s approach and Dexter’s response:
"I wish you'd marry me."
The directness of this confused him. He should have told her
now that he was going to marry another girl, but he could
not tell her. He could as easily have sworn that he had
never loved her. . . .
Rev. Main Argument and Analysis (3)
“ Winter Dreams”
• Why does Dexter love Judy Joans without marrying
her? If he does not want to marry her, why does
he then break the engagement with his fiancée?
What makes him, in other words, lose his dream?
In this paper, I argue that the dream of marrying a
beautiful upper-class woman gets broken not only
because Judy is superficial and insincere, but also
because Dexter does not have “the power to move
fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones.” The power, I
think, is more emotional than economic. In this
materialistic society, Dexter loses his dreams
because neither the target nor the dreamer is
capable of realizing it.
• Structure: 1) Dexter’s dream (colors); 2) Judy’s
superficiality; 3)Dexter’s self-adjustment and
subsequent coldness; 4) society’s indifference and
focus on appearance and pleasure-seeking.
Main Argument(4) –need reconsideration
• As a result, I would like to argue that
his conventional images of a woman
and economic power interfere her
path to search for freedom. (Jane
Eyre)  a bit one-sided (Rochester
conventional and Jane independent.)
Main Argument (4) --ref
• Jane Erye
• “While arranging my hair, I looked at my
face in the glass, and felt it was no longer
plain: there was hope in its aspect and life
in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if
they had beheld the fount of fruition, and
borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple.
I had often been unwilling to look at my
master, because I feared he could not be
pleased at my look; but I was sure I might
lift my face to his now, and not cool his
affection by its expression. “
Main Argument (4) –ref 2
• Jane Erye
• Chap 2 – Jane—aware of her plain
appearance--"had I been a sanguine,
brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child—though equally dependent
and friendless—Mrs Reed would have
endured my presence more complacently;
her children would have entertained for
me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling;
the servants would have been less prone
to make me the scapegoat of the nursery"
Main Argument (4) –ref 3
• Jane Erye
• Chap 23 –Jane: "Do you think, because I am poor,
obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and
heartless? You think wrong -- I have as much
soul as you, -- and full as much heart...
Rochester: “You—poor and obscure, and small and
plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a
husband"  [and she does accept him.]
• Chap 24 --"Do you remember what you said of
[his French mistress] Céline Varens?—of the
diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not
be your English Céline Varens"
Main Argument (4) –ref 4
• Jane Erye
• Chap 38—
• “Reader, I married him. . . . ‘Mary, I have
been married to Mr. Rochester this
morning.’“
• “I meant to become her[Adel’s] governess
once more, but I soon found this
impracticable; my time and cares were
now required by another--my husband
needed them all.”
Rev. Main Argument (4)
• The story of Jane as a “poor, obscure, plain and
little” orphan, I argue, is one of insistent but
uncertain self-assertion as well as ultimate
domestication. On the one hand, Jane Erye
seeks to assert her economic independence and
maintain her equality with Rochester in love,
while the latter insists on his masculine authority.
On the other, although the story ends with
humbling of Rochester and their happy marriage,
altogether Jane’s “growth” is not a growth beyond
the 19th-century ideologies of “beauty” but rather
that into wifely responsibilities.
• Structure: 1) Jane’s obscure background +
plainness; 2) Jane’s pursuit of economic
independence; 3) tug-of-war: Jane assertion vs.
Rochester’s domination; 4) Red Room, Bertha,
and Jane’s ultimate submission to social ideology
of marriage and beauty.
Definition
• Briefly speaking, if the meaning of life can be
measured by two mediums, the process, or the
outcome, the idea “existence is prior to essence”
focuses on the process rather than the outcome
In the epigraph on The Sun Also Rises,
Hemingway quotes from Ecclesiastes, “One
generation passeth away, and another generation
cometh; but the earth abideth forever…The sun
also ariseth, and the sun goesth down, and
hasteth to the place where he arose…according to
his circuits…” (1). The quote cannot explicate the
concept of life more: life is a circle, where there is
no ending and no beginning; since every point in a
circle can be a start and can be an end, counting
on the outcome (vague) becomes useless.
Rev. Definition
• The Sun Also Rises opens with two epigraphs:
Gertrude Stein’s “You’re all a lost generation,” and
the lines from Ecclesiastes, “One generation passeth
away, and another generation cometh; but the
earth abideth forever…The sun also ariseth, and
the sun goesth down, and hasteth to the place
where he arose…according to his circuits…” (1). Is
it true that nothing is new under the sun and all
human lives run in their definite route? That the
characters, being part of these circles of life and
death, are completely lost to the meaning of life?
The meaning of life, I argue, is not pre-given;
rather, one’s existence itself determines one’s
meanings. This paper examines the choices the
protagonists make in the novel and argues that its
‘meanings’ reside not in the ending, but rather in
the process of choice-making, and, more
importantly, the human concern and grace
maintained in the process.
Argument --a response to
current scholarship.
• The Sun Also Rises –
– not all the characters are Hemingway’s
heroes ;
– agreeing with Hemingway?
– the controversies around Brett
II. Structure and Coherence
• Buried Child –
• Thesis: Through the subtle exchanges in dialogue
and the characters’ use of symbols, the family is
shown to be imprisoning, rife with power struggle
which ultimately leads to a possibility of
regeneration. (end of one paragraph)
• (next par.) Shepard sets the setting in Midwest,
Illinois. From the beginning of the play, the
setting is dark and a little weird. The family and
the house seem to be isolated from the outside
world and fragmentary inside.
Rev. Structure and
Coherence
• Buried Child -- Thesis: Through the subtle
exchanges in dialogue and the characters’ use of
symbols, the family is shown to be imprisoning,
rife with power struggle which ultimately leads to
a possibility of regeneration. (end of one ¶)
• (next ¶) In the dark and gloomy background of
the Midwest, the family and the house look
lifeless and isolated, with dialogue suggesting
hidden conflicts and a buried secret.
• (next ¶)(transition: from the gaps in dialogue to
the secret hidden beneath. How it is revealed.)
• (new ¶: Symbols of covering and constraints get
used differently and suggest different meanings.)
Structure & Coherence –Buried
Child
• . . .. This means that, in his mind, [Dodge] is
covered with dark cloud, because of his wife and
son’s betrayal.
• (¶) However, in Act III, the sun comes out. It
represents the truth comes out (mechanical
transition; loose sentence structure & repetition).
(Suggestion: which represents the disclosure of
truth.) When the sun comes out, Halie is the one
feels delightful. She can see a hope and a bright
future. Here, sun is the symbol of hope and new life.
Consequently, rain and sun provides a contrary
symbolic meaning to produce effects and mental
states for characters.
• (¶)(Gap^)“Corn and corn field are also important
symbols in the play. In first act, when Tilden brings
plenty of corn into the house, no one believes that
is from their own corn field. Nobody can see the
field, except Tilden. Corn field can be the symbol of
their past and their family duty.”
Rev. Analysis –Buried Child
• . . .. This means that, in his mind, [Dodge] is
covered with dark cloud, because of his wife and
son’s betrayal.
• (¶) Besides the dark cloud, the other symbols are
used and interpreted differently by different
characters. Corn and the corn field, for one thing,
can mean secrecy, family tradition as well as
power of regeneration. In the first act, when
Tilden brings plenty of corn into the house, no
one believes that is from their own corn field
since it has been neglected. This “miraculous”
growth of the corns in the field suggests the
regenerating power of Nature, which neither
human neglect nor meddling can stop. In Tilden’s
hand, the corn, on the other hand, becomes a
means of disclosure as he husks the corn and
throws the husks at his father, just as from the
field he finds the corpse of the buried child. (next
page)
Rev. Coherence –Buried Child (2)
• (¶). Finally, if the sun are life-giving, the rain
that comes with dark cloud is, too, in an indirect
way. When the sun comes out in Act III, Halie
feels delightful and sees a hope and a bright
future. Here, the sun is the symbol of hope and
new life. Towards the end and after Dodge dies,
however, she says to Dodge that it must be the
rain that causes the growth of the crops, the rain
that apparently hides and constrains, but “takes
everything straight down deep to the roots” to
allow growth and regeneration.
Buried Child –Ref.
• I've never seen such corn.... Tall as a
man already. This early in the year.
Carrots too. Potatoes. Peas. It's like
a paradise out there. . . . A miracle.
Maybe it was the rain. . . . I've never
seen a crop like this in my whole life.
Maybe it's the sun. Maybe that's it.
Maybe it's the sun. (BC 64-65)
Analysis (1): quote
unrelated to the analysis.
• He concludes that Dexter breaks his fiancée’s
heart and leaves alone away. He loves Judy, but
he does not marry her, because he realizes that
he cannot possess her. It is only a matter about
his life attitude rather than a matter about love
affair. Fitzgerald decpicts, “Dexter was at bottom
hard-minded. The attitude of the city on his
action was of no importance to him, not because
he was going to leave the city, but because any
outside attitude on the situation seemed
superficial” (233). By this conclusion, readers
realize that Dexter decides to keep the loss of
dream in his mind to replace keeping after to the
dream.
Rev.: Analysis (1): an analysis
built around the quote.
• Winter, at the end, is symbolic of the hardened
heart of Dexter. Dexter not only breaks his
fiancée’s heart, but also protects himself against
being hurt by Judy, one he loves but cannot
possess. He is also indifferent to what others
would think of him, and, as he is leaving the city,
“any outside attitude on the situation seemed
superficial” (233). Only the knowledge of Judy’s
becoming an unattractive housewife brings tears
to his eyes, and the memory that "long ago,
there was something in [him], but now that thing
is gone.”
Analysis (2): Be close to the
text
• And do not ignore related aspects
(which can be mentioned briefly it
were not your focus).
• 1. Since darkness is an image
analyzed as part of the uncertain and
gloomy background, darkness as
Hamlet’s (external and internal) color
of mourning should not be ignored.
Analysis (2): Be close to the
text
• 2. Hamlet: “When Claudius claims
young Hamlet to be his cousin and
his son, and ask him to cheer up, we
can notice that he is reluctant to be
in the position of a son as he states
that he has been “too much in the
sun/son.” (Act I, ii, 63 & 67) (see
next page)
Analysis (2): Hamlet –ref.
2. Hamlet: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and
my son, -HAMLET
[Aside]
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
KING CLAUDIUS
How is it that the clouds still hang on
you?
HAMLET
Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the
sun. (see next page)
Analysis (2): Be close to the
text
• 2. Hamlet: “When Claudius claims young
Hamlet to be his cousin and his son, and
ask him to cheer up, Hamlet is reluctant
take it as he first says in an aside that
being called a son is “a little more than kin,
and less than kind.” Further, he puns on
the word sun to say that he is not
beclouded but is “too much in the sun,”
suggesting both his unwillingness to be
Claudius’s son and his knowing the crime
(Act I, ii, 63 & 67).
Analysis (3) –analysis without
support; quick switching between
different levels.
• Beloved
• “The sun” forcing Beloved to close her eyes is not
just to blind her but to burn her in the drought of
the land as a tyrant (249). The sun is also related
to the feeling, “heat,” in fever or disease which
externalizes psychological and historical
traumatic anxiety of African Americans. Although
the sun might burn her to death, Beloved’s crying
out her desires is a “speaking out” on the one
hand and a resistance to death, even a search for
life on the other.
Rev 1. Analysis (3) –
clarification of semantic levels
• “The sun” forcing Beloved to close her eyes is not
just to blind her but to burn her as she, like the
other slaves, stands there as commodities to be
bought (249). Amidst the description of the
hardship the slaves go through in the Middle
Passage and afterwards, including hunger, death
and rape, Beloved, on the other hand, inscribes a
story of love and origin. She said that she
cannot find “[her] man the one whose teeth [she]
have loved a hot thing.” Whether the man is the
one who is on top of her dead, or raping her, she
loves him as they are companies in the Middle
Passage. The sun here, then, is related to love.
Moreover, Beloved re-tells the story of a
‘beginning’:” In the beginning I could see her I
could not help her because the clouds were in the
way.” Through this re-telling, she makes visible
or present the lineage from Sethe’s mother, to
Sethe and then to her.
Rev 2. Analysis (3) –
clarification of semantic levels (2)
• “The sun” forcing Beloved to close her eyes is not just to
blind her but to burn her as she, like the other slaves,
stands there as commodities to be bought by their white
masters (249). Amidst the description of the hardship the
slaves go through in the Middle Passage and afterwards,
including hunger, death and rape, Beloved, on the other
hand, inscribes a story of love and origin. She said that
she cannot find “[her] man the one whose teeth [she] have
loved a hot thing.” Here “a hot thing” can refer back to the
sun, but it also connotes a loving heart that is associated
with the man and later the woman who jumps off the ship.
Whether the man is a dead corpse or a rapist, whether the
woman is Sethe or another unknown woman, she loves
them all the same as they are companies in the Middle
Passage and they form a community of African American
slaves.
• The other way Beloved re-tells the story is to re-inscribe an
origin, a ‘beginning,’ when she can see “her”--the mother.
Through this re-telling, she makes visible or present the
genealogy from Sethe’s mother, to Sethe and then to her.
This genealogy is not just of Sethe’s family, but also that of
Black female slaves.
Analysis (3) -ref
• I am not dead the bread is seacolored I am too hungry to eat it
the sun closes my eyes those able
to die are in a pile I cannot find my
man the one whose teeth I have
loved a hot thing . . .
• In the beginning I could see her I
could not help her because the
clouds were in the way
Analysis (3) –classification (2)
•
•
1)
2)
Analysis of mother-daughter relations in Lady Oracle
Joan -- possible categories:
symbiotic relations in early childhood; e.g. the
mother’s makeup scene;
Childhood and Teenage Socialization with an
extended schizoid-paranoid stage:
a)
b)
c)
d)
3)
-- early failure in socialization: ballet;
-- her failure in synthesizing her feelings of love/need and
narcissism/destructiveness:
-- e.g. the dream,
-- Battling with Mother on eating; taking on a mother-role
outside;
Gradual Separation from the Mother:
a)
b)
c)
Simultaneously, she distracts herself with fantasies and
surrogate mothers, e.g. fat lady and ---.
Turning point (1): breakup with the mother  fantasies 
creativity;
Turning point (2): the mother’s death; a delayed depressive
stage.
IV. Context
-- avoid sweeping generalization about
the social background
-- e.g. discussion of Jane Eyre in relation
to the “images” of Nineteenth-century
women
-- e.g. discussion of Ernestina in The
French Lieutenant’s Woman in relation
to the typical images of Victorian
women.
V. Language: local errors
• (Article) : e.g. the first act; the Lost
Generation
• Wrong expression: Metaphoric study
• (WORD FORM): in retrospect;
retrospection
Language: usage &
Sentence Structure
• The different social positions are also barriers to
interfere her to voice herself freely in front of
Rochester, because a governess, an ambiguous
position in society (wrong apposite), is required
to be equipped with abundant learning, but
ironically her status is merely regarded as a
servant. (parallelism)
• Correction: The discrepancy between Rochester’s
and Jane’s social positions make it hard for Jane
to voice her opinions in front of Rochester. As a
governess in her ambiguous social position, Jane
is required to be learned as a teacher as well as
humble as a servant. (parallelism)
Language: Professional Tone
• I am especially interested in . . .
• Through the description of her appearance, the
reader will have no difficulty to associate her
image with stereotypical Victorian women. When
the reader appreciates the portraits of the
nineteenth-century ladies, he or she will discover
easily that Ernestina’s features are very similar to
theirs.
• (Either avoid such kind of general description or
give examples. To find examples, you can either
use Thomas Sully’s portraits-http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/sully_thom
as.html -- or start from here: Women as Subject
in Victorian Art -- Representations of Women
http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/arts2.html.
This page, however, does not include images of
Victorian ladies.)