Writing the Analytical Essay
Essential Questions
• How do writers develop themes in short fiction?
• How does a writer clarify or enhance his or her writing by using varied sentence structure, modifying phrases and clauses, diction, and alliteration?
Objectives
You will:
• determine the meaning of vocabulary in context, using reference materials as needed.
• make complex inferences using text evidence to support understanding.
• analyze authors’ approaches to developing the theme of a text and its commentary on the human condition.
• evaluate how different literary elements shape the author’s portrayal of plot and setting.
• relate the characters, text structures, and main ideas of texts to their historical and cultural setting.
• analyze the development of the characters through literary devices and the impact of the narration shifts.
• reflect on understanding to monitor comprehension by asking questions, summarizing, and making connections.
• synthesize and make logical connections or thematic links using text evidence to support understanding.
• plan and write an analytical essay of sufficient length using a variety of sentence structures, clauses, and phrases with a controlling idea.
• revise and complete a legible and error-free draft of an analytical essay.
Writing effective analytical essays requires attention to detail, both when reading the piece you are analyzing and when writing the essay as a reflection of your analysis. Each segment of the essay serves its own function: as you learned in prior lessons, the introduction includes a very specific theme statement, and the body paragraphs present a topic sentence (a claim supporting the theme statement), followed by text evidence and explanations of the evidence. The conclusion is the final touch of the essay.
In order for it to be effective, you should have laid the groundwork throughout your essay by establishing an effective theme statement in your introduction. It is important to support your claims in the body of the paragraph, and to emphasize the point in your conclusion with a provocative emphasis on everything that you have attempted to prove throughout the essay.
Effectively, your conclusion will extend the established theme by applying it to implications on the human condition.
