Prose Analysis: Answer these questions ALWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Prose Analysis: Answer these questions ALWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! • You are still answering: • What is it? (Technique) • What is it doing and how? (Evidence and explanation) • Why is it important? What is trying to be accomplished? What is the purpose? (So what?) • If I could tattoo these question on you, I would! If you answer these questions intentionally, you will write a good analysis!

2. Topic Sentences • Please use the “templates” given on the assignment sheet. This is your CLAIM. You are proving this. The language in your CLAIM should show up in the WARRANT (the so what?) • Don’t just mention the technique in the topic sentence and then never again!

3. Analysis of Technique (What is it)? • Watch the techniques that you choose to analyze. I appreciate the risks that you are taking. Keep taking them, but be thoughtful of how far you stretch. • What techniques aren’t working: sentence structure, pace, word color/word sound, metafictional techniques, point of view. • Pace works like tone: it is created and helps create the tone. Don’t analyze in isolation. Pace is created through sentence structure • Metafictional technique: why would Jane want to call the reader out explicitly? For what purpose? What is she trying to accomplish by doing this? • Point of View: How might the first person point of view be limiting to our understanding of the text? Yes, it’s used, but can we trust it? Why or why not? What questions does it raise?

4. Characterization (Character Development) • is the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character. Characterization is revealed through direct characterization and indirect characterization • Don’t say “Bronte uses character development…” Duh. She also uses tone and words. • Character development or characterization is SEEN and CREATED through the following ways:

6. What is it doing? How? So What? • As you write, ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this selection? What are we supposed to learn about Jane and her environment through this information? What purpose does this selection serve?” Think deeper. Move beyond the obvious. Think deeper! • For example: the selection with the moon and then the scream. This is a scene that sets some gothic overtones for the book: it’s frightening and unsettling (the calm, moonlit night is a common trope in horror films, right?)…it’s too perfect…we are waiting for something bad to happen. The fact that Jane doesn’t panic or the fact that she so willingly follows Rochester says what about her? The fact that Rochester is so quick to act says what about him? What is the purpose of this scene? Why is it important? • You can talk about the personification of the moon, the pacing of the scene (pacing is created like tone), how the dialogue and action characterize Rochester and Jane, selection of detail in terms of what Jane describes about the night

7. Incorporating QuotesThis is a problem! I am getting tired of something I learned how to do in elementary school!

8. Quotations • Punctuate correctly! • When integrating the quote, no matter how you use it, the sentence must be grammatically correct. It must be parallel. • You have to set the quote up. Don’t just leave it stranded! • This is a simple thing to do well. It’s lazy and messy if you aren’t using quotations correctly.

9. Punctuating Brief Quotations… Quoting a Sentence or Sentences: Gene begins to reveal his internal war with Finny when he says,“What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this?” (5). Notice the quote is set up Notice the comma BEFORE the quote Notice the sentence is COMPLETE after the comma Notice the first word of the quote is CAPITALIZED! Notice the page number in the ( )? Notice the punctuation? Do this!!!!

10. Punctuating Brief Quotations Quoting a Fragment: Jack is not able to kill the piglet during their first attempt at hunting for food “because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into the living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (31). Again, notice how my words lead into the quote. The quotation is PART of a grammatically correct sentence. This is a good way to shorten longer quotes; only the important part of the quote is included!

11. Quoting A Quotation Ron said,“Dad yelled,‘No way!’” Golding writes,“Jack seized the conch. ‘Ralph’s right of course. There isn’t a snake-thing. But if there was a snake we’d hunt it and kill it.’” (36). Just like Leper in A Separate Peace, my brother Shaun said,“‘You always were a savage underneath.’”

12. Quotations with Omissions (Using ellipses) According to Gene, the faculty at Devon treated the boys differently during the summer session because “we reminded them of what peace was like…of lives which were not bound up with destruction” (10). Use ellipses when words are omitted from the quotation. Don’t change the context of the quotation. Keep it grammatically correct

13. Quotations with Brief Insertions (Using brackets) It is evident that Finny believes in the war before his fall from the tree because he tells Gene, “I’m wearing this[his pink shirt]as an emblem. We haven’t got a flag, we can’t float Old Glory proudly out the window. So I’m going to wear this, as an emblem”(11). Use brackets when you are inserting your own words into a quote in order to make the meaning of the quote more clear and to make it grammatically correct.

14. Not Integrated: Avoid this! This is what MOST people are doing. It’s lazy! It’s easy to fix! Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, and Ralph becomes disillusioned with the glory of being chief. “He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (76).

15. Integrated: Do this! In the same way that Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, Ralph begins to feel a sense of disillusionment toward the glory of being chief. Golding’s narrator begins to allude to Ralph’s waning enjoyment of being the leader on the island when he states, “He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (76).

16. Methods For Inserting Brief Quotations Final Position For several reasons, “all of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against an enemy they thought they saw across the frontier…” (123). Beginning Position “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy” (202), declares Golding’s narrator at the end of his novel.

17. Long Quotations Long quotations should be set off from the text. Usually "set off" text is preceded by a colon: George Orwell had a difficult time acting as a police officer in Lower Burma.  As demonstrated in the following excerpt from “Shooting an Elephant,” he was frustrated by his conflicting need to maintain law and order while remaining faithful to the idea that the Burmese had the right to be free: All this was perplexing and upsetting.  For at that time I had already up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better.  Theoretically--and secretly, of course--I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. (Orwell 30) Notice the long quote is over 3 typed lines Notice the long quote is indented 10 spaces (2 tabs) over Notice there are NO quotation marks around the long quote Notice the period comes BEFORE the ( ) Notice there is no punctuation AFTER the ( )