Take a poem of your choice ( most probably one that yoy have read in your previous classes) and prepare a write up on the use of figurative language in th
e poem your write up shall include
Answers
Answer:Overview
The opening assignment in this literature-themed writing course is the analysis of the single poem, story, novel, or play. This assignment will form the basis of most of the other writing assignments you will be required to undertake in your Writ 102 literature class. It is important that you know how to write an analysis—sometimes called an interpretation or a literary analysis or a critical reading or a critical analysis in order to identify an author’s or text’s main idea through the process of explication. To understand what is required in your analysis, be certain to first familiarize yourself with the Analysis assignment and read Edward Hirsch’s “How to Read a Poem.”
How to Structure An Analysis Essay
There is no one single method for structuring your analysis. In fact, there are several equally valid ways of structuring a literary analysis. What takes time and effort is discovering the best method for your purpose and audience, and the methods presented here are easy enough to modify to fit those needs.
Introduction: Presenting the Main Idea
Regardless of what method you use, it is always sound to begin your analysis with a paragraph that provides the context of the work you are analyzing and a brief account of what you believe to be the poem or story or play’s main theme. At a minimum, your account of the work’s context will include the name of the author, the title of the work, its genre, and the date and place of publication. If there is an important biographical or historical context to the work, you should include that, as well. However, don’t get lost in details. Your audience except a concise (meaning short) level of background. Next, try to express the work’s theme in one or two sentences. Theme is that insight into human experience the author offers to readers, usually revealed as the content, the drama, the plot of the poem, story, or play unfolds and the characters interact. Assessing theme can be a complex task. Authors usually show the theme; they don’t tell it. They rarely say, at the end of the story, words to this effect: “and the moral of my story is…” They tell their story, develop their characters, provide some kind of conflict—and from all of this theme emerges. Because identifying theme can be challenging and subjective, it is often a good idea to work through the rest of the analysis, then return to the beginning and assess theme in light of your analysis of the work’s other literary elements.
Example Introduction Paragraph
Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben’s analysis of William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children.”
“Among School Children” was published in Yeats’ 1928 collection of poems The Tower. It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State. In the course of the tour, Yeats reflects upon his own youth and the experiences that shaped the “sixty-year old, smiling public man” (line 8) he has become. Through his reflection, the theme of the poem emerges: a life has meaning when connections among apparently disparate experiences are forged into a unified whole.
Body: Staying Focused
In the body of your literature analysis, you want to guide your readers through a tour of the poem, story, or play, pausing along the way to comment on, analyze, interpret, and explain key incidents, descriptions, dialogue, symbols, the writer’s use of figurative language—any of the elements of literature that are relevant to a sound analysis of this particular work (See Edward Hirsch’s excellent questions “Talking Back to a Poem” in “How to Read a Poem.”) Your main goal is to explain how the elements of literature work to elucidate, augment, and develop the theme. The elements of literature are common across genres: a story, a narrative poem, and a play all have a plot and characters. But certain genres privilege certain literary elements. In a poem, for example, form, imagery and metaphor might be especially important; in a story, setting and point-of-view might be more important than they are in a poem; in a play, dialogue, stage directions, lighting serve functions rarely relevant in the analysis of a story or poem.
Conclusion: Avoid Repeating Claims
The concluding paragraph of your analysis should realize two goals. First, it should present your own opinion on the quality of the poem or story or play about which you have been writing. And, second, it should comment on the current relevance of the work. You should certainly comment on the enduring social relevance of the work you are explicating. You may comment, though you should never be obliged to do so, on the personal relevance of the work. Here is the concluding paragraph from Dao-Ming’s analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
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