Analyzing a passage
In writing about literature or any specific text, you will strengthen your discussion if you offer
specific passages from the text as evidence. Rather than simply dropping in quotations and
expecting their significance and relevance to your argument to be self-evident, you need to
provide sufficient analysis of the passage. Remember that your over-riding goal of analysis
writing is to demonstrate some new understanding of the text.
How to analyze a text?
1. Read or reread the text with specific questions in mind.
2. Marshal basic ideas, events and names. Depending on the complexity of book, this
requires additional review of the text.
3. Think through your personal reaction to the book: identification, enjoyment, significance,
application.
4. Identify and consider most important ideas. Return to the text to locate specific evidence
and passages related to the major ideas.
5. Use your knowledge following the principles of analyzing a passage described below:
test, essay, research, presentation, discussion, enjoyment.
Principles of analyzing a passage
1. Offer a thesis or topic sentence indicating a basic observation or assertion about the text
or passage.
2. Offer a context for the passage without offering too much summary.
3. Cite the passage (using correct format).
4. Then follow the passage with some combination of the following elements:
o Discuss what happens in the passage and why it is significant to the work as a
whole.
o Consider what is said, particularly subtleties of the imagery and the ideas
expressed.
o Assess how it is said, considering how the word choice, the ordering of ideas,
sentence structure, etc., contribute to the meaning of the passage.
o Explain what it means, tying your analysis of the passage back to the significance
of the text as a whole.
5. Repeat the process of context, quotation and analysis with additional support for your
thesis or topic sentence.
Sample analysis paragraphs
from James McBride’s The Color of Water
An important difference between James and his mother is their method of dealing with the pain
they experience. While James turns inward, his mother Ruth turns outward, starting a new
relationship, moving to a different place, keeping herself busy. Ruth herself describes that, even
as a young girl, she had an urge to run, to feel the freedom and the movement of her legs
pumping as fast as they can (42). As an adult, Ruth still feels the urge to run. Following her
second husband’s death, James points out that, “while she weebled and wobbled and leaned, she
did not fall. She responded with speed and motion. She would not stop moving” (163). As she
biked, walked, rode the bus all over the city, “she kept moving as if her life depended on it,
which in some ways it did. She ran, as she had done most of her life, but this time she was
running for her own sanity” (164). Ruth’s motion is a pattern of responding to the tragedy in her
life. As a girl, she did not sit and think about her abusive father and her trapped life in the
Suffolk store. Instead she just left home, moved on, tried something different. She did not
analyze the connections between pain and understanding, between action and response, even
though she seems to understand them. As an adult, she continues this pattern, although her
running is modified by her responsibilities to her children and home.
The image of running that McBride uses here and elsewhere supports his understanding of his
mother as someone who does not stop and consider what is happening in her life yet is able to
move ahead. Movement provides the solution, although a temporary one, and preserves her
sanity. Discrete moments of action preserve her sense of her own strength and offer her new
alternatives for the future. Even McBride’s sentence structure in the paragraph about his
mother’s running supports the effectiveness of her spurts of action without reflection. Although
varying in length, each of the last seven sentences of the paragraph begins with the subject “She”
and an active verb such as “rode,” “walked,” “took,” “grasp” and “ran.” The section is choppy,
repetitive and yet clear, as if to reinforce Ruth’s unconscious insistence on movement as a means
of coping with the difficulties of her life.
from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
#1 The negative effect the environment can have on the individual is shown in Morrison’s
comparison of marigolds in the ground to people in the environment. Early in the novel, Claudia
and Frieda are concerned that the marigold seeds they planted that spring never sprouted. At the
end of the novel, Claudia reflects on the connection to Pecola’s failure:
I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, our land,
our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year.
This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will
not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no
right to live. (206)
Morrison obviously views the environment as a powerful influence on the individual when she
suggests that the earth itself is hostile to the growth of the marigold seeds. In a similar way,
people cannot thrive in a hostile environment. Pecola Breedlove is a seed planted in the hostile
environment, and, when she is not nurtured in any way, she cannot thrive.
#2 One effect of the belief that white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes are the most beautiful is
evident in the characters who admire white film stars. Morrison shows an example of the
destructive effect of this beauty standard on the character Pecola. When Pecola lives with
Claudia and Frieda, the two sisters try to please their guest by giving her milk in a Shirley
Temple mug. Claudia recalls, “She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the
silhouette of Shirley Temple’s face” (19). This picture of two young African-American girls
admiring the beauty of a white American film star is impossible for Claudia to comprehend.
Another character who admires white beauty is Maureen Peale. As Pecola and the girls walk past
a movie theater on their way home with Maureen, Maureen asks if the others “just love” Betty
Grable, who smiles from a movie poster. When she later tells the others she is cute and they are
ugly, Maureen reveals her belief that she is superior because she looks more like a Betty Grable
image than the blacker girls do. Pecola’s and Maureen’s fascination with popular images is
preceded by Pauline’s own belief in the possibility of movie images. She describes doing her hair
like Jean Harlow’s and eating candy at a movie. Rather than being transported into the romantic
heaven of Hollywood, she loses a tooth and ends in despair. “Everything went then. Look like I
just didn’t care no more after that. I let my hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just
being ugly” (123). Admiring beauty in another is one thing; transferring a sense of self-hatred
when a person doesn’t measure is another. At that point, the power of white beauty standards
becomes very destructive.
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions
Although Tambu recognizes the injustices she and Nyasha endure as females, she hesitates to act
on her suspicion because of fear. First of all, she is afraid that she might not recognize and feel
comfortable with herself in a critical role. She hesitates to pursue her critique, noting to herself,
“I was beginning to suspect that I was not the person I was expected to be, and took it as
evidence that somewhere I had taken a wrong turning” (116). Using other people’s perceptions
rather than her own, she judges her thoughts to be wrong. Although she senses that her behavior
as the “grateful poor female relative” was insincere, she admitted it felt more comfortable. “It
mapped clearly the ways I could or could not go, and by keeping within those boundaries I was
able to avoid the mazes of self-confrontation” (116). While she is somewhat embarrassed that
she lacks the intensity she had when fighting against Nhamo and her father over the maize, she is
reluctant to lose Babamakuru’s protection and fears experiencing the same kind of trauma
Nyasha does in her struggle. Although she says she feels “wise to be preserving [her] energy,
unlike [her] cousin, who was burning herself out,” she reveals that she fears losing a familiar
sense of herself in order to battle injustices.
Definition/Viewpoint Paper Rubric
Definition/
Viewpoint
Essay
Rubric
THESIS and
Introduction
Thesis
Development/
Analysis/
Organization
Selection and
Use of
EVIDENCE
CONCLUSION
Standard
English
Conventions
and Style
Name: _____________________________
Exceeds the Standard
4 =100points
Meets the Standard
3=80points
Partially Meets the
Standard
2=60points
Does not Meet the
Standard
1=40points
• Thesis statement is concise and
articulate and presents an
original, complex, sophisticated
argument. Introduction engages
reader and clearly sets up
argument.
• Thesis statement is clear
and focused, and presents a
thoughtful, comprehensive
argument. Introduction
effectively leads into
argument
• Thesis statement is
based on plausible idea,
but is wordy or unclear.
Introduction only suggests
a focus.
• Thesis statement is
example-based, unfounded
or absent. Introduction
fails to articulate
argument, is confusing or
lacks focus
• In addition to meeting the
criteria for the essay, analysis is
more perceptive/original and
thorough, clear, and precise.
• Organization stems from an
articulate and logical
progression of ideas
• Argument is thoroughly
developed, cohesive and
successfully supported.
• Each body paragraph contains
a clear, focused topic sentence
or sub-thesis.
• Textual evidence is smoothly
integrated into each body
paragraph.
• The essay is organized with
clear transitions between ideas
• Analysis is thoughtful,
comprehensive, well
grounded and not
oversimplified.
• Organization stems from
logical progression of
ideas.
• Argument is well
developed and complete.
• Analysis is plausible but
oversimplified and/or not
well grounded in the text.
• Organization stems from
ideas, but progression may
lack a logical order or
become generalized.
• Argument has some
minor flaws or missing
pieces.
• Body paragraphs lack
clear topic sentence or
sub-theses.
• Textual evidence is used,
but not smoothly
integrated into each
paragraph.
• The essay needs better
organization.
• Analysis is
oversimplified, too general
or unsubstantiated.
• Organization stems from
examples, not ideas,
and/or ideas lack cohesion
and therefore argument is
not proven.
• Argument changes
direction, is incomplete or
inconsistent.
• Body Paragraphs do not
have a topic sentence or
sub-thesis.
• Textual evidence is
misplaced or not
integrated properly into
paragraphs.
• The essay lacks any
organization.
• Relevant and compelling
evidence from a variety of
textual sources that support and
shed light on topic. Each quote
or reference is introduced
effectively (not “dropped”)
• Relevant evidence from
the texts are used to
support the argument. Each
quote or reference is
introduced (not “dropped”)
• Evidence selected is
limited and/or does not
represent best choice for
supporting the argument.
Each quote or reference is
not consistently
introduced
• Specific and direct
evidence is not used, or is
inappropriate or irrelevant.
Quotes are absent or not
introduced
• Conclusion is highly effective
and shows evolution of position.
• Conclusion summarizes
main points and shows
development of thinking.
• Conclusion is present
but lacks focus, is
underdeveloped and/or
changes direction
• Conclusion is not present
or changes topic.
• This paper contains only minor
errors relative to the length of the
piece according to Standard
English conventions.
• Student uses sophisticated use
of transitional devices personal
style, discernible voice and
effective wording, and a variety
of sentence structures.
• Each body paragraph
contains a sub-thesis or
topic sentence.
• Textual evidence is
integrated into each body
paragraph.
• The essay is organized
• This paper contains few
errors relative to the length
of the piece according to
Standard English
conventions.
• This paper contains
several errors relative to
the length of the piece
according to Standard
English conventions.
• Student effectively uses
transitions, effective
wording and a variety of
sentence structures.
• Student has limited use
of transitions, effective
wording, and sentences
lack a variety (writing is
choppy).
GRADE for Definition Essay: ______________
• This paper contains
numerous errors relative to
the length of the piece
according to Standard
English conventions.
There are major sentence
structure problems and
communication is hindered
by the errors.
• Student uses no
transitions, has ineffective
wording and sentences are
short and have no variety
in structure.
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