5 elements of literary analysis

When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use. No matter what specific direction your essay takes, your points and observations will revolve around the rhetorical situation of the document you are analyzing.

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Setting : Where and when is the story set? Setting represents both the physical location but also the time i. Character : A person or animal or really anything personified. There can be one main character or many, and often there are secondary characters, but not always. Plot : The events that happen in a story are called the plot. In a plot you typically find an introduction, rising action, a climax, the falling action, and a resolution.

Plot is often represented as an arc. Conflict : Every story must have a conflict, i. Without conflict, the story will have no purpose or trajectory. Theme : Idea, belief, moral, lesson or insight. Is it happy, funny, sad, depressed? Tone can be portrayed in multiple ways, through word and grammar choices, choice of theme, imagery and description, symbolism, and the sounds of the words in combination i.

Style : This is how things are said. Word choices, sentence structure, dialogue, metaphor, simile, hyperbole. Style contributes significantly to tone. Are you teaching this topic? A helpful infographic is also provided. Looking for a book on this topic? Subscribe to hear about new Dreamers Creative Writing resources as they are posted.

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About the OWL. The RSCC OWL was born June 5, It's among the oldest (​and wisest) OWLs. Contact Information. Comments about these. AP English Essential Elements of Fiction Analysis. One. A character is a person presented in a fictional work, one fitting a type and fulfilling a function. Types of.

Students are asked to write literary analysis essays because this type of assignment encourages you to think about how and why a poem, short story, novel, or play was written. Another way to look at a literary analysis is to consider a piece of literature from your own perspective. Allegory - narrative form in which the characters are representative of some larger humanistic trait i.

In this lesson, students will review literary elements and use that knowledge to analyze a literary work. Students will:.

A short story is a short work of fiction. Fiction, as you know, is prose writing about imagined events and characters. Prose writing differs from poetry in that it does not depend on verses, meters or rhymes for its organization and presentation.

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We often tend to look at literary elements separately: structure plot , symbolism, point-of-view, setting, theme, etc. You may also write about character as long as you are combining it with an analysis of one or more of the above elements. Therefore, you can choose to focus on one of these elements, or you can write an essay which considers two or more of these elements. Which element s you choose to write on is entirely up to you, as is the choice of story, but if you choose to combine elements, you must show how these elements are related for example, how setting helps us to understand how a character acts. As before, you probably want to begin by formulating a question, then answering that question in your thesis.

The Seven Elements of Fiction

The Elements of Fiction. Plot, Setting, Character, Conflict, Symbol, and Point of View are the main elements which fiction writers use to develop a story and its Theme. Because literature is an art and not a science, it is impossible to specifically quantify any of these elements within any story or to guarantee that each will be present in any given story. Setting might be the most important element in one and almost nonexistent in another. Just as a Crime Scene Investigator cannot approach a crime scene looking for a specific clue e. To assume could blind you to important elements. Literature teachers sometimes give the impression that plot is not important, that anyone interested in plot is an immature reader. Of course plot is important. It was what got us interested in reading in the first place. It was the carrot on the string that pulled us through a story as we wanted to see what would happen next.

Before a construction worker builds a house, he or she has to know how to hammer a nail, screw in a screw, and drive a Ford F with a rifle rack and a tool chest in the bed you may think that last one is a stereotype, but not where I come from.

General Education. The AP Literature exam is designed to test your ability to analyze literature. That means you'll have to know how to use analytical tools, like literary elements, to uncover the meaning of a text.

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Setting : Where and when is the story set? Setting represents both the physical location but also the time i. Character : A person or animal or really anything personified. There can be one main character or many, and often there are secondary characters, but not always. Plot : The events that happen in a story are called the plot. In a plot you typically find an introduction, rising action, a climax, the falling action, and a resolution. Plot is often represented as an arc. Conflict : Every story must have a conflict, i. Without conflict, the story will have no purpose or trajectory. Theme : Idea, belief, moral, lesson or insight.