Writing about Literature

LO: avoid mystery openings. 

Three errors are common.  Find which one you committed:

1. Identify your subject.  Include early in your essay—preferably in the opening sentences—a phrase like “in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice.”  Even if your teacher gave everyone the same topic, and your title includes the author and title of the work, you should indicate your subject.

2. Avoid repeating the author’s name:

REDUNDANT: In Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn Twain satirizes hypocrisy.

BETTER: In his novel Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain satirizes hypocrisy.

3. Avoid repeating a character’s name that is part of a title:

REDUNDANT: In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, Othello is a good man, but he succumbs to jealousy.

BETTER: In William Shakespeare’s Othello, a good man tragically succumbs to jealousy.

Bamm-Bamm and Boo-Boo cannot bear redundant names. 

LC: place commas carefully. 

The first sentence below wrongly implies that Jane Austen wrote only one novel.  Correct the error by using a comma after but not before the title.

WRONG: In her novel, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. . . .

RIGHT: In her novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. . . .

L.Th: make your thesis interpretative. 

A good thesis usually includes two features:

1. An aspect of the work: a theme, character, part, writing technique, or issue.

2. A statement about the meaning or effect of the work, usually pertaining to character or theme.  Such a statement is often a generalization about life or some abstract idea.

Thesis: In his poem “To Althea, From Prison,” Richard Lovelace defines true freedom as a quality of a person’s soul.

Aspect (a theme): Lovelace’s concept of freedom.

Statement about meaning: true freedom (Lovelace feels) is a quality of a person’s soul.

The most common flaw in student writing is the failure to include the second feature.  A list of insights (into, say, symbolism in The Great Gatsby or irony in “A Rose for Emily”) is not enough. The thesis must explain why the insights are important and how they advance our understanding of the work as a whole.  In the example below, the unrevised version lacks a conclusion about the meaning of the poem: 

Incomplete: Andrew Marvell uses imagery in his poem “To His Coy Mistress.”

Good: In his poem “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell uses contrasting images of death and youthful energy to present his philosophy of living for the pleasure of the day.

As in any other academic essay, a thesis in an essay on literature is a judgment, not a fact.  It must be arguable; there must be room for debate.

L.Sum: avoid plot summary and paraphrase. 

Assume that your readers have read the work.  Your task is not to tell them what happens in a story, or to paraphrase a poem.  Your task is to interpret the work—that is, to explain what it says and analyze the way it says it. 

SUMMARY: Sammy is a convenience store clerk.  One day three girls walk into the store wearing swimsuits.  When the manager scolds them, Sammy decides to quit his job.

INTERPRETATION: Sammy’s reasons for quitting are more complex than he realizes. . . .

You may need to remind your reader of factual details in order to comment upon a particular passage, especially if you are writing about a long novel.  If so, keep the summary brief—a sentence is usually enough—and go on to the commentary you want to make.

L.Con: provide context. 

Do not make your readers look up passages.  Although they have read the work, they do not have it memorized.  Help them with a brief explanatory phrase: 

CLEAR: Chapter Twenty-One is an ironic scene.

BETTER: Jane’s return to Gateshead is an ironic scene.

Avoid mentioning line or page numbers except in citations.  Even readers who have memorized John Milton’s poem “L’Allegro” do not automatically know what line 134 is:

UNCLEAR: Line 134 uses a metaphor.

CLEAR: Milton compares Shakespeare’s poetry to “native wood-notes wild” (134).

LVT: use present tense when you write about literature.  

Although most fiction is narrated in the past tense, and although stories and plays may be set in the past, it is conventional to write about the action that takes place in them using the present tense. 

WRONG: Huckleberry Finn ran away from home and rafted up the river.

RIGHT: Huckleberry Finn runs away from home and rafts up the river.

Often writers using the present tense inadvertently shift to the past after using a quotation: 

WRONG: Gulliver is shipwrecked in a strange land.  When he awakens, he makes a startling discovery: “I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground” (17).  He was a prisoner of tiny people called Lilliputians.

There is no error until “was,” which should be “is.”  Influenced by the past tense in the quotation, the writer mistakenly shifts tense.  There are two exceptions to the present-tense rule.  One is the occasional situation in which you talk about two different times in the work: 

RIGHT: Huck now is sorry that he played a trick on Jim.

The other is the situation in which you talk about historical facts pertaining to the work.  In the example below, the first verb is in the present tense because it refers to fictional events within the novel; the other two verbs are in the past tense because they refer to historical facts. 

RIGHT: Dr. Frankenstein conducts experiments involving electricity, which still seemed mysterious in 1818 when Mary Shelley wrote the novel.

LT: avoid dull titles.  

“Hamlet” is not an appropriate title for an essay about Hamlet.  Make your title a statement about the work.  One useful pattern is a creative title or quotation followed by a colon and a factual subtitle.  The subtitle is usually a statement of the topic in the form “_____ in _____” (for example, “Hospitality in the Odyssey” or “Symbolism in Jane Eyre”).  If the title or subtitle is long, center them on separate lines, with one blank line between them.

DULL: “The Road Not Taken” Essay

DULL: Comparison Essay on Huckleberry Finn

BETTER: A Bridge to Heaven: Pride in “Revelation”

If you cannot think of a title, consider using a quotation from the work you are studying.  Keep it short; a two-to-four-word quotation can work well.  You may alter the phrasing of the quotation.  You do not need citations or quotation marks for quotations included in your title.

LI: avoid the irrelevant “I” and “me.”  

Write in the third person, without calling attention to yourself.  Do not write “I feel the poem means . . .” or “When I first read the story. . . .”  Readers will assume that any argument you present is your own, unless you explicitly state otherwise: “Some commentators have argued that Twain’s novel is racist.”  Even if you are not sure that you are right, you do not need to apologize for offering an opinion.  You do, however, need to support it with evidence and reasoning.

The Keables Guide recommends applying the rule to plural first-person pronouns as well, avoiding “we,” “us” and “our.”

AVOID: The ending surprises us.

BETTER: The ending surprises readers.

LB: do not boast.  

Avoid phrases like “deeper meaning” or “hidden meaning.”  They sound like boasting, and they give the false impression that writers set out to deceive readers.  Be more objective.  Sometimes students who write about “deeper” or “hidden” meanings are really talking about the difference between figurative and literal meanings:

BOASTFUL: Although Frost’s poem seems on the surface to be about two roads, on a deeper level it is really about choices in life.

OBJECTIVE: The roads in Frost’s poem are symbols of the choices everyone faces in life.

L.Terms: do not misuse literary terms.

1. Do not use literary terms for their own sake.  When you identify the form and find the devices, you have done valuable work, but your job is not finished. 

WRONG (analysis without interpretation): Sidney’s poem is an Italian sonnet, with an octave and a sestet.  Its rhyme scheme is abbaabbacdcdee.  Sidney uses personification to describe the moon.  Line 10 has a rhetorical question and irony.

Readers will only ask, “So what?”  There is no reason to mention formal and stylistic features unless you use them to explain what the work says and how it says it.  

BETTER: In the octave Sidney personifies the pale, silent moon as an unhappy lover.  The sestet asks rhetorically whether lovers on the moon are as cruel as their earthly counterparts. The ironic question “Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?” criticizes proud beauties who regard devoted lovers as fools.

2. Do not use informal literary terms.  Some terms you may hear in movie reviews or other popular usage are too imprecise for academic writing.  Such terms trivialize the works of art they describe: 

INAPPROPRIATE: In Paradise Lost, Satan is the bad guy and Eve is the love interest.

They imply that an epic poem is written by formula, like a low-budget movie or a soap opera.

INAPPROPRIATE: The poem’s message is that you should live for the moment.

“Message” implies that a work of art is simple and heavy-handed, like a child’s fable—or like propaganda or advertising that exists only to tell readers to support a political cause or purchase a product.

Other examples of terms rarely if ever used in academic writing about literature: 

LRC: do not repeat what was said in class. 

Teachers do not want reports of what they or any of your classmates said.  They want original thinking by you based on close study of the text.  If the class discussed one line for twenty minutes, you probably will not have much new to say about it, but it is probably not the only line worth talking about at length. Look for that other line, that fresh insight, that new angle, that surprising connection between events that happen thirty chapters apart.

Often students begin writing too soon.  They start with an idea, outline an essay, and consult the text only to find a few quotations to support preconceived ideas.  The essays they write are rarely good.  Your teacher wants to see fresh discoveries.  The students who write the best essays spend a long time studying the text, taking notes, and analyzing evidence before they begin to write.

L.Tone: maintain an objective tone.  

Inappropriate: Fitzgerald’s profound wisdom and poetic language make The Great Gatsby a timeless classic.

Inappropriate: The Great Gatsby is tedious, sentimental hogwash.

Your purpose as a literary critic is to interpret, not to praise or blame.  Your style should be restrained and objective; there is room for liveliness and wit, but you should use them with discretion.  Even if you do find The Great Gatsby beautiful and moving, the greatest service you can do Fitzgerald is to demonstrate the beauty of his novel through your calm, insightful explication.

L.Org: avoid mechanical organization, especially the formulaic five-paragraph essay. 

Even insightful essays may have monotonous organization.  Your college teachers will groan when they read the 5PE (five-paragraph essay).  Do you enjoy reading things that sound as if they were written by a robot for the entertainment of robots?  In the following essay, there is no reason for anyone to read past the first paragraph, because the rest is repetition.

Paragraph 1: In poem X, the poet uses imagery, alliteration and diction to say _____.

Paragraph 2: In poem X, the poet uses imagery to say _____.

Paragraph 3: In poem X, the poet uses alliteration to say _____.

Paragraph 4: In poem X, the poet uses diction to say _____.

Paragraph 5: In poem X, the poet uses imagery, alliteration and diction to say _____.

Nor is it necessary to organize an essay by following a literary work part-by-part:

Paragraph 1: In poem X, the poet says _____.

Paragraph 2: In stanza 1, the poet says, “_____.”  By this she means . . .

Paragraph 3: In stanza 2, the poet says, “_____.”  By this she means . . .

Paragraph 4: In stanza 3, the poet says, “_____.”  By this she means . . .

Paragraph 5: The poet says _____.

Next semester the same student, studying novels, will write, “In the first chapter. . . .”  Your essay is your own argument and should be ordered by its own logic. There are many possibilities: move back and forth between contrasting characters or conflicting attitudes toward death; build an argument that the hero’s tragic flaw is pride; illustrate ways the first-person narrator becomes the object of irony.  The organization need not be predictable and dull.

LA: refer clearly to the author. 

Three kinds of error are common.

1. The first time you mention an author, use the full name: “Robert Frost.”  In later references use the last name only: “Frost,” not “Mr. Frost” or “Robert.”  In the first reference, use the version of the name the writer uses: “Percy Bysshe Shelley,” not “Percy Shelley”; “T. S. Eliot,” not “Thomas Stearns Eliot.”

In the first reference, call writers by the version of their names they use.  Writers unsure how to refer to the author produce awkward phrasing:

AWKWARD: Symbolism of roads is used to talk about choices.

BETTER: Frost uses roads to symbolize choices.

2. Avoid terms like “speaker,” “narrator” and “persona” except when poems and stories are clearly written from an ironic point of view.  Otherwise they are usually unnecessary.  Although Andrew Marvell may not have addressed his poem “To His Coy Mistress” to a real person, and may never even have had a coy mistress, you gain nothing by using “the speaker.”  If you write “the narrator,” the flaw is worse, because “To His Coy Mistress” is not a narrative poem.  In most situations you should just use the author’s name.

UNNECESSARY: The speaker urges his mistress to seize the day.

WRONG: The narrator urges his mistress to seize the day.

BETTER: Marvell urges his mistress to seize the day.

On the other hand, Thomas Hardy wrote poems using the voices of a naive young soldier, a dead man, and a dog.  To refer to such a poem, it is important to distinguish the author from the speaker.

RIGHT: Hardy uses irony to reveal the speaker’s uncertainty.

RIGHT: Hardy uses irony to reveal the soldier’s uncertainty.

3. Know the author’s gender and the correct spelling of the author’s name.  A few seconds spent checking in your text or on the internet can prevent an embarrassing error that undermines your readers’ confidence in you. 

WRONG: Flannery O’Conner uses irony in his story “Revelation.”

L.Ch: call characters what the author calls them.

The rule applies to nicknames, honorifics and titles.

1. Nicknames.  Except in his title, Mark Twain rarely calls Huckleberry Finn “Huckleberry”; he uses “Huck,” and so should you.  However, you should not call Jane Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet “Lizzy,” a nickname which only her parents and sisters use.  Call her “Elizabeth,” as her creator usually does.

2. Honorifics like “Ms.”  Students may be confused about the proper use of the honorifics “Miss,” “Mrs.” and “Ms.”  It is right to be sensitive to discrimination on the basis of sex, but “Ms.” is out of place for a character in a nineteenth-century novel.  “Ms.” became widely used only around the 1970s; it would have seemed meaningless or disrespectful when Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.  Do as Austen does; she usually calls Elizabeth Bennet “Elizabeth” and Caroline Bingley “Miss Bingley.”  Saying “Miss Bingley” does not make you a sexist.  It is a practical solution, respectful of the author’s social norms and minimally distracting to your readers.  The same rule applies to married female characters, like Mrs. Ruby Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation.”  Not even feminist English professors in the articles they publish call her “Ms. Turpin.” 

3. Titles.  Do not assume that every title takes a form like “King Arthur.”

INCORRECT: Both plots feature dead monarchs: Hamlet Senior and King Duncan.

Shakespeare never uses either phrase.  Use a phrase like “the ghost,” “Hamlet’s father,” or “Duncan.”

L.Bkgd: omit unnecessary background information.

Do not write, “William Shakespeare, a famous English poet born in 1564. . . .”  Assume the reader knows who the author is.

L.Doc: use secondary sources with caution. 

Using literary criticism usually does beginning students more harm than good.  Your library and the internet contain a vast number of sources.  Most of the easily available internet sources are of low quality.  Even students with good intentions who carefully document their sources still become bogged down in inappropriate choices and technical jargon.  Teachers want to know what you think.  If you do want to use outside sources, see your teacher for advice on which ones to use and how to use them.  You are responsible for documenting your use of the sources according to proper form.  Undocumented use of others’ ideas (not just others’ phrasing) is plagiarism.  See Documentation: responsibilities.

LR: do not repeat “in/of the poem/story/play.”  

After your initial paragraph names the work you are discussing, there is no need to remind readers.  Omit phrases like the ones highlighted below:

UNNECESSARY: In the play, Romeo is in love with Juliet.

UNNECESSARY: The third stanza of the poem uses a metaphor.

When you have been analyzing Romeo and Juliet for an entire essay, readers who encounter a sentence without “in the play” will not think you have suddenly started talking about War and Peace or the Ming Dynasty.

Do not overcorrect.  The writer correcting the sentence below omits too much:

UNNECESSARY: The truth comes out in the last chapter of the novel.

OVERCORRECTED: The truth comes out.

It is obvious that the truth comes out in the novel; where else could it come out?  However, it is not obvious that it comes out in the last chapter.

CORRECT: The truth comes out in the last chapter.

L.Sh: do not rely on the “this shows that” pattern.  

Two problems are common.

1. Avoid “this shows that” sentences.  Students who learn to ask good questions (“Why does the writer include a certain detail?” “What does it reveal about the character?”) may fall into mechanical and awkward patterns of commenting on evidence.  They can afford to be more creative.  For more information, see QV and Q.Punc. 

MECHANICAL: Emily’s cane has “a tarnished gold head” (27).  This shows that . . .

MECHANICAL: Emily’s cane has “a tarnished gold head” (27), symbolizing that . . .

BETTER: The “tarnished gold head” (27) on Emily’s cane is a symbol of . . .

BETTER: Like the “tarnished gold head” (27) on her cane, Emily . . . 

If you do use “show,” you should seek alternatives, if only for the sake of variety.  Every one of the words below is a metaphor; writers should carefully determine which verb fits the context.

Alternatives to “show”:

Use them with care. They are not interchangeable. “Portray” is a metaphor from painting. In literary criticism, it means the ways an author represents a character or subject.

WRONG: The bloody dagger that Macbeth sees portrays his loss of sanity.

RIGHT: Shakespeare portrays Macbeth as a good warrior who yields to temptation.

WRONG: The migrant workers portray courage in facing hardships.

RIGHT: Steinbeck portrays the trials of migrant workers displaced from their homes.

2. Beware of “display,” “exhibit,” “highlight,” “showcase,” and the nearly meaningless word “emphasizes.”  Not only are they overused, but the metaphors they imply are often inappropriate.

MISLEADING: Mark Twain showcases Huck Finn’s sympathy for Jim.

MISLEADING: Mark Twain highlights Huck Finn’s sympathy for Jim.

“Showcase” implies that the reader is like a customer or museumgoer looking at jewelry or insect specimens in a glass box.  What does “highlight” imply?  That Mark Twain is like a beautician and that Huck’s sympathy is like a streak of dyed hair?

L.Wdy: avoid wordy transitions.

If your teacher marks “L.Wdy,” identify which of three common flaws applies to your writing.  Often two or three of them go hand in hand.

1. Avoid wordy transitions.  Do not burden sentences with transitional phrases like the ones highlighted below (on James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues”).  

WORDY: Another example of the recurring theme of children and drugs in Harlem happens when the narrator talks about how Sonny is exposed to drugs.

BETTER: Sonny is exposed to drugs.

2. Do not keep saying “the author says.”  Just talk about the characters, the ideas, and/or the language.

WORDY: When Hamlet says, “Alas, poor Yorick!” (5.1.185-86), he is saying that he is shocked to discover that he knew the man whose skull he holds.  In the next sentence, when he says, “I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” (5.1.186-87), he means that Yorick, the king’s jester, was witty and imaginative.  He says that Yorick carried him “on his back a thousand times” (5.1.187-88) when he was a little boy.  When Hamlet says, “And now how abhorred in my imagination it is!” (5.1.188-89), he is telling Horatio that he is shocked and disgusted at the physical remains.

BETTER: Hamlet is shocked to discover that the skull he holds belongs to Yorick, a man “of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” who carried him “on his back a thousand times” (5.1.186-88).  Literally looking death in the face, he recoils with disgust at its “abhorred” (5.1.188) physical reality.

3. Do not overuse sentences with “use.”  It is good to analyze style, but your essay will become tedious if you keep writing “The author uses ____ to say ____.”

MECHANICAL: Blake uses an apostrophe when he addresses the tiger.  He calls it “burning bright,” using a metaphor to describe its bright hide.  Blake asks, “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry,” using a rhetorical question to ask what god could have created such a frightening beast.

BETTER: Blake asks the tiger what god could have created such a frightening beast, whose hide is “burning bright” like flames.

LF: Avoid vague analogies between form or sound and meaning. 

Occasionally a connection is clear.  When World War I poet Wilfred Owen describes “the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle,” there is little doubt that he is imitating the sound of machine guns. However, unless the connection you make is clear and convincing, you are more likely to make your essay worse.

UNCONVINCING: The poem is broken into stanzas, showing the poet’s broken heart.

UNCONVINCING: The poem describes a dying toad, and the varied sentence length and punctuation make the poem sound like a fluctuating heart.  The long and short lines resemble the jagged line on a heart monitor.

Writers too impressed by their own cleverness to resist such far-fetched analogies should save them for the second-to-last paragraph and add “perhaps” or “may suggest.”

L.Punc: do not comment on the punctuation of a poem or work of literature. 

Punctuation is not a rhetorical device like metaphor or irony; it is only the effect of sentence structure.  Either do not mention it at all, or comment on the sentence structure that produces it. 

IRRELEVANT: The poet uses many commas, showing that he is pausing as he thinks.

The comment below on a poem by Emily Dickinson is naïve:

NAÏVE: The dashes symbolize the sound of the train hitting the rails.

Dickinson uses frequent dashes in hundreds of poems, not just in her one poem about a train.  Even if the interpretation were right, the writer is misusing the word “symbolism.”

Capitalization is not worth mentioning.  The comment below mentions it to prove what is obvious from the context:

SELF-EVIDENT: Shakespeare uses capital “T” to personify time as “this bloody tyrant Time.”

If Shakespeare had not capitalized “Time,” it would still be personified.

L.Pre: beware of imposing preconceptions upon a work of literature. 

Misreadings often result when something in a work of literature that triggers a preconceived train of thought.  Instead of reading with an open and inquisitive attitude that allows an interpretation to emerge from the text, the reader starts looking for evidence to support preconceptions.

Many young readers of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (especially ones who live in warm climates) see a solitary rider and snow and think, “Santa Claus!”  When they see “harness bells,” they stop thinking and start hunting for what they want to see.  While warm and fuzzy thoughts dance in their heads like sugar plums, the horse becomes Rudolph and the “promises to keep” become toy deliveries.  Maybe even Frost’s name subconsciously evokes a corncob pipe and eyes of coal.  They overlook not only the evidence against their reading (that there is only one horse; that a horse is not a reindeer; that most people in rural Vermont rode horse-drawn vehicles in 1922, when the auto industry was young), but also other readings that are more plausible and more interesting.

L.Sp: do not (a) misspell or misuse the names of authors or characters or (b) misquote the title.

The worst misspelling a literary critic can make is the author’s name.  Would you entrust your savings to a stockbroker who cannot add?  Misspell your own name before you misspell the author’s.  Know the author’s gender.  Call authors by the names by which you see them listed.  Henry David Thoreau always goes by all three names.  Call him Thoreau or Henry David Thoreau, but not Henry Thoreau.  A. E. Housman goes by his first two initials; do not call him Alfred Edward Housman.  Use titles properly.  If you are writing about a poem by Sir Philip Sidney, never call him Sir Philip or Sir Sidney; call him Sir Philip Sidney the first time you mention him and Sidney in subsequent references. 

A few seconds spent checking in your text or on the internet can prevent an embarrassing error that undermines your readers’ confidence in you.  Essays that begin with the following sentences immediately tell readers to doubt the writer’s competence: 

EMBARRASSING: In Jane Austin’s novel Pridefulness and Predujice. . . .

WRONG: “Revelation” is about a hypocritical Southern woman named Mrs. Turnip.

RIGHT: “Revelation” is about a hypocritical Southern woman named Mrs. Turpin.

L.An: anachronism.

An anachronism (pronounced “uh-NACK-ruh-nism”) is an error in chronology.  Here are two examples from student essays about William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily”:

ANACHRONISTIC: The townspeople distrust Homer Barron because he is a Yankee and the South was at war with the North.

ANACHRONISTIC: People respected Colonel Sartoris for fighting in World War II.

The first sentence is wrong because the story takes place long after the Civil War ended.  (Among other evidence, there are garages and gasoline pumps, which did not exist during the Civil War.)  The second sentence is wrong because Faulkner first published “A Rose for Emily” in 1930, before World War II started.

The danger of anachronism is one of the reasons students of literature should always know when a work was written and/or first published.

“Anachronism” can also mean a thing that is out of place in time or simply outdated.

Whether or not they are writing about literature, careful writers avoid anachronistic metaphors.  Readers may laugh at the following sentence:

A decline in Athenian culture was part of the fallout from the Peloponnesian War.

“Fallout” is a metaphor of nuclear weapons, which did not exist in the fifth century BC.