California State Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay
Task–Literature Analysis Essay
Write a 4- to 6-page essay that analyzes one or more of the works discussed during the entire semester. These works include the following:
- Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
- J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
- Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Your “Course Documents” in the “Writing Literature Essays” folder in your Blackboard course shell contains much information about how to write a literary analysis essay.
For this assignment, you must write about a piece of literature you’ve been assigned to read for your course. Your essay must be an argument that provides your interpretation/analysis of the work and supports that claim with appropriate and sufficient details (evidence) from the work. Your interpretation must come from your own reading and thinking about the work—not from critical or literary analyses you have read about it (including CliffsNotes and SparkNotes).
Here’s a step-by-step process for tackling this significant assignment (20% of your final grade):
INVENTION
oExplore Your Topic
§Examine what you already think about the text. Reread your Reading Journals and reread the Threaded Discussions about the work(s) you would like to write about.
§Consider what PERSPECTIVE you’d like to use to examine the work(s). Look up perspectives and their explanations in the Course Glossary. Some examples include the following:
üCultural Perspective
üHistorical Perspective
üPsychological Perspective
üMarxist Perspective
üBiographical Perspective
üFeminist Perspective
üFormalist Perspective
§Or, consider a SPECIFIC LITERARY TOOL that the author used that you’d like to explore more deeply. Some examples include the following:
üCharacterization
üLanguage
üSymbolism
PLANNING
oDevelop a Claim
§You must develop a central, controlling claim—the main argument you plan to support in your essay. Without a clear claim, the essay goes nowhere—it rambles, making points that seem unrelated.
DRAFTING
oWrite a draft of your literary analysis.
§Sandwiching Information: One technique for developing paragraphs in a literary analysis paper is to link your mini-claim to solid textual evidence. You must be sure to connect your evidence in your own words to the point that you are making. You cannot assume that your reader will see the connection between the evidence you cite and the claim you are making. To sandwich the body of your essay, state a mini-claim (supporting the major claim), then explain it and support it with information either quoted directly or paraphrased from the text. Next, explain the paraphrase or quote, and bring in more evidence. This explanation of material tells the reader what the paraphrase or quote means to your overall argument.
REVISING
oSet aside your first draft for a while, then come back to it asking these questions:
§What do you think is the strongest part of your literary analysis?
§What do you think is the weakest part?
§Think about your main claim:
üIs it reasonable and logical?
üAre you making a point you believe in or are you just trying to fulfill the assignment?
üAre you making the argument you want to make?
üIf not, how can you revise your claim to reflect this new idea?
EDITING
oAfter the content of your essay is complete, then work on the less important editing issues: capitalization, commas, etc.
