Analyzing a Short Story /Analyzing Literature

1. Analyzing a Short Story /Analyzing Literature

2. Literary Elements Setting Theme Language Plot Character Point of view

3. Plot • It is the term used to describe the actions and events in a story. Key terms related to plot include conflict—the problems a character faces in a story, and climax—the high point of a plot, the scene that settles the story’s main conflict and determines how the story turns out.

4. Setting • It is the time and place in which a story takes place. It may provide background for understanding characters and events in the story of for creating a particular mood or atmosphere.

5. Character: • They are individuals in a story. Characterization is the way that an author reveals the qualities and traits of these individuals—either directly through description, thoughts, or feelings or indirectly through dialogue.

6. Theme: • It is an important idea about life of human nature revealed in a story. It is not just a subject, like “war,” but an insight, such as “war wounds are not only physical.” (Authors usually don’t state their themes directly, the readers have to draw their own conclusions about theme by analyzing the characters, events, setting, and dialogue the author uses.)

7. Language: • Authors of fiction, just like poets, use Language to achieve certain effects. For example, an author may use alliteration(repeated consonant sounds) or assonance(repeated vowel sounds) to create a particular mood in a story. Another author may use a refrain(a repeated word or phrase) to try to drive home an important point.

8. Point of View: • It is the vantage point or “angle” from which a story is told. Infirst-person point of view, the narrator is a character in the story, and speaks using the pronounI. A first person narrator can tell only what he or she sees, hears, is told, or believes—but not what any other character sees, hears, is told, or believes. Inthird- personpoint of view, the narrator speaks from outside the story—not as a character—and uses third-person pronouns such as he, she and them. Athird-person omniscient narrator can reveal the thoughts of all characters of describe any event. A limited third-person narrator reveals the thoughts of just one characters; that is, the story’s events are filtered through the mind of that one person.

9. Literary Analysis Definition • A literary analysis is an examination of the different parts of a literary work. An analysis of a short story can focus on one literary element, or it can show how two or more literary elements work together to make the short story memorable.

10. Writing: Literary Analysis