TKAM Summary, Commentary and Analysis

Summary - summarizes the story. (What happened? Where? Who did what and when?)

Commentary - expresses an opinion about the story. (Did you like it? Why or why not?)

Analysis - explains the writer's point and how she makes it. (How did the author use literary tools to make her point?)

Identify each of the following sentences as an example of summary, commentary or analysis. Then, by using the analyzing sentences as your model, change the summarizing sentences to make them analysis.

  1. Maycomb, a small, sleepy town, is located in the state of Alabama.

  2. Lee uses the mockingbird, a symbol of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson, to show how innocence is destroyed by hatred.

  3. Bob Ewell attacks the Finch children in the woods as they walk home from a school-sponsored event, a Halloween party.

  4. Scout Finch, a delightful character, says many charming and funny things.

  5. Lee chooses the night of Halloween, a symbol of both the joy and the fears of childhood, to express the novel's theme of loss of innocence.

  6. Atticus Finch, a great father, teaches his children everything important.

  7. Scout saves Tom Robinson, an innocent man, from being lynched by an angry mob of men.

  8. The best part of the novel is when the people in the balcony, Afro-Americans, stand up for Atticus as he leaves the courtroom.

  9. The denouement of the novel confirms Scout's new understanding of her world, a place not as simple as it seemed.

  10. I, Stephen Abel, didn't like this novel.