English 104: Suggested Topics and Advice for Writing the Literary Analysis Paper
An important component of this course is learning how to write evaluations and interpretations
of literary works. Whether you are writing about short stories, poems, or plays, you must offer
an opinion (an argument) about the literary work and you must back up that opinion with
evidence (facts from the literary text).
Each essay should be approximately 1,000 words in length, double-‐spaced, and typed with
standard font size and margins. The essay will be evaluated based in part upon your use of a
good thesis sentence, the support of the thesis through textual evidence, and your ability to
offer thoughtful analysis rather than plot summary. As always, your paper should be written in
standard academic English, be substantially free of grammatical and mechanical errors, and
should conform to the standards set out below.
1. The paper should not have a separate cover pager. Write your name and date of the
assignment in the upper left corner. Center the title of the essay, without underlining or
using quotation marks.
2. Your first paragraph will engage the reader’s interest as it narrows to a thesis. If, for
example, you write on the topic of initiation, you might begin the essay by stating
something about the popularity of initiation stories, what initiation means, and then narrow
to the point (thesis) of your essay. (Ex.: “In this short story, initiation serves to ____”).
3. The thesis should clearly state the topic of the essay and the point you will develop. Do
not make announcements, such as “This paper will be about . . .” Instead, boldly state your
point, such as, “Through the use of the speaker’s home as a symbolic prison, Frost indicates
that the lost child is not the only one who has been buried.” Or “Browning uses dramatic
monologue to reveal the Duke as a murderer” or even “Jig has beaten the American in the
end of Hemingway’s story and will keep her child.” These are statements which offer an
interpretation of one part of the poem or story, an interpretation which will need evidence
from the poem or story to support it.
4. Each paragraph will develop a single point that develops your thesis. Make references to
the text, but do not simply re-‐tell the story/poem/play. Remember, your reader has also read
the story/poem/play. If you quote from the literary work, be judicious and make sure that the
quote develops the support you are developing for your thesis. At times a paraphrase may also
be effective. If you are incorporating lines of poetry into your paper, write the poetry as a
standard sentence with a (/) used at the end of a line or stanza to let the reader understand the
structure of the poem. At the end of the quotation, use the line number as indicated in your
text. For example, “He had enough of life/to know that he wanted no more” (1-‐2) indicates the
line break of the poem and which lines are quoted. Please refer to the sample essays in your
text for further clarification on how to incorporate references from literary works in your own
essay.
5. Always write in the present tense unless there is a clear reason to use past tense. Literature
is a living text.
6. Do not refer to any writer by his or her first name. Unless you and William Shakespeare are
close, personal friends, refer to him as Shakespeare.
7. The conclusion will restate the idea of the essay and may make some general comments or
conclusions., If, for example, you were writing a paper about the image of death in two poems,
you would remind the reader about the comparison or contrast your found in this image in the
two poems, and then you might write something about the value of understanding imagery in
order to gain insight into a poem’s meaning.
8. If you are using sources, you must properly document the sources both within the paper as
parenthetical citations as well as provide the necessary information about the sources on an
accurately formatted works cited page. Use MLA format.
9. Unless they appear in something you are quoting, do not use “I, me, my, mine” or “we, our,
us, let’s,” as these are meant to be formal, academic essays. Instead, use only third person, for
example: “one, they, them, the critic, the reader,” and so on.
10. All essays must be submitted online in the appropriate assignment folder.
Below are some suggested themes for the fiction essay. Alternatively, you may develop your
own topic, though you may use only texts we have read in this course. If you do so, make sure
that you have the topic approved by your professor before you begin to write.
1. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” two sisters have a different notion of what heritage
means. Who has it “right”? Do they both have an argument? Explain and support your
answer with specific references to the text.
2. While many see Abner Snopes as a villain in William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” others
see him as waging class warfare on a system that marginalizes him. At one point, Sarty
says “maybe” his father “couldn’t help but be” what he is. Is that the case? Why does
Abner keep setting fires?
3. Ernest Hemingway employed what he called “the iceberg theory” when he wrote “Hills
Like White Elephants.” What is the iceberg theory and how is it employed here? (Think
about setting in particular).
