Prompt:
In an essay of 1500 – 2000 words, state a theme you find in the novel. REMEMBER – observations about key ideas in a novel and the author’s messages in the text are fully up to interpretation. While there are no right answers, when you make a claim, you need to back it up with evidence from the text. For this assignment, your chosen theme is your thesis statement.
Use at least TWO secondary sources to help support your claims. Look through the optional list below to get ideas.
Background:
The Purpose of a Literary Analysis
Important: A literary analysis is not merely a summary of a literary work. Instead, it is an argument about the work that expresses a writer’s personal perspective, interpretation, judgment, or critical evaluation of the work. This is accomplished by examining the literary devices, word choices, or writing structures the author uses within the work. The purpose of a literary analysis is to demonstrate why the author used specific ideas, word choices, or writing structures to convey his or her message.
Motif and Theme
In a literary work, a motif can be seen as an image, sound, action, or other figure that has a symbolic significance, and contributes toward the development of a theme (Links to an external site.). Motif and theme are linked in a literary work, but there is a difference between them. In a literary piece, a motif is a recurrent image, idea, or symbol (Links to an external site.) that develops or explains a theme, while a theme is a central idea or message. A motif can be expressed in a word (e.g. struggle) whereas a theme is expressed in a phrase or sentence (e.g. the struggle to be authentic will always be thwarted by societal expectations).
Motif and Symbol
Sometimes, examples of motif are mistakenly identified as examples of symbols. Symbols are images, ideas, sounds, or words that represent something else, and help to understand an idea or a thing. Motifs, on the other hand, are images, ideas, sounds, or words that help to explain the central idea of a literary work – the theme. Moreover, a symbol may appear once or twice in a literary work, whereas a motif is a recurring element.
https://literarydevices.net/motif/ (Links to an external site.)
Goal:
The purpose of this essay assignment is to demonstrate the ability to:
Make keen, detail-oriented observations in a work that dig beneath the surface of the text and leads to analysis.
Explore your observations of a text and explain and show the significance of your observations.
Make connections to larger ideas beyond the story while maintaining focus on the specifics.
Organize your ideas logically into paragraphs, and organize those paragraphs into a flow your readers can follow.
Integrate outside sources and synthesize them into your work. This also requires evaluating sources for credibility.
Make a claim about a theme in the novel (which in this case would be your thesis).
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