how to analyze a novel ?

{ANALYZING NOVELS & SHORT STORIES}
Literary analysis looks critically at a work of fiction in order to understand how the parts contribute to the whole. When analyzing a novel or short story, you’ll need to consider elements such as the context, setting, characters, plot, literary devices, and themes. Remember that a literary analysis isn’t merely a summary or review, but rather an interpretation of the work and an argument about it based on the text. Depending on your assignment, you might argue about the work’s meaning or why it causes certain reader reactions. This handout will help you analyze a short story or novel—use it to form a thesis, or argument, for your essay.

Summary

Begin by summarizing the basic plot: “Matilda by Roald Dahl is about a gifted little girl in small town America who learns to make things move with her mind and saves her teacher and school from the evil principal.” This will help ground you in the story. (When you write your paper, you probably won’t include a summary because your readers will already be familiar with the work. But if they aren’t, use a brief summary to orient them.)

Context

Research the author’s background and other work. This can give insight into the author’s perspective and bias, as well as tell the reader what he might be commenting on. For example, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ringsis about a group of friends who embark on an epic journey and fight a great war. Knowing Tolkien fought in the Battle of Somme during World War I and that his closest friends were killed helps explain his sentiments about war.

Other questions about context can stem from the story itself. Consider the narrator’s personality and their role in the story. In The Outsiders, the narrator is the character of Ponyboy Curtis and not the author, S.E. Hinton. Also consider who the narrator is addressing. At the end of The Outsiders, for example, you find out that the entire book was an essay for one of Ponyboy’s teachers, which makes the story seem more honest and real.

Setting

When and where a story takes place can be profoundly significant. Consider where the author’s story is placed and why the author made that decision. In Shakespeare’s Othello, for example, the setting is Italy, although Shakespeare was writing in England. He set his play elsewhere, in part, so he could make social commentary about England without incurring the wrath of English rulers.

Remember, many stories would be irretrievably altered if their setting were different and setting is, therefore, integral for interpreting the story’s meaning. For instance, the setting for Faulkner’s work—the American South after the Civil War—is essential to his overall message. Faulkner’s characters are people who can’t move on, and through them he suggests that the South similarly can’t get past the Civil War and the wrongs of slavery.

Plot

Story lines usually follow patterns like those in the example below. Identifying essential plot points will help you to analyze, interpret, and explain the story.

Main Problem (Conflict): The plot hinges on some major problem, often a conflict between characters or an obstacle that must be overcome.

Ex. In Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda, Matilda’s parents neglect her and the Trunchbull is evil to everyone, including Miss Honey. The Trunchbull is Miss Honey’s aunt and cheated her out of her inheritance.

Climax: The high point of the action, when the conflict or problem could either be resolved or cause a character’s downfall.

Ex. Matilda uses her telekinetic powers to scare the Trunchbull into believing the ghost of Miss Honey’s father is haunting her. The Trunchbull runs away, leaving Miss Honey her house and belongings.

Resolution: The conflict or problem is solved and normalcy or a new order is restored.

Ex. Matilda’s family flees so her dad can escape prison, but Matilda gets to stay and live with Miss Honey.
Characters

Characters are the driving force behind stories, both major characters and minor ones, and authors use them to broadcast their most important messages. You won’t be able to analyze every character, but pick out several important ones to consider.

First, describe the character for yourself; next, consider why the character was portrayed in that way. The following are some guiding questions:

What are the character’s main personality traits? Why did the author give him these traits?
Ex. In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, the character Dumbledore is wise, calm, courteous, protecting, encouraging, powerful, and ambitious. As the story progresses, his faults and imperfections appear. Rowling creates Dumbledore as a force to protect and guide Harry.

What is the character’s role in the story? Is she the hero? The bad guy? A secondary character? Why did the author give her this role?
Ex. Dumbledore is the classic “teacher wizard” figure, in that he is all wise and has magical powers that others do not. People have an instinctive trust in this type of character; he voices many of Rowling’s most important themes.

What are the character’s morals or ethics? Why does the author give him those?
Ex. Dumbledore’s morality is based on compassion, understanding, and respect for all. If the respected, powerful teacher says something, Rowling’s readers, and Harry, will be more likely to believe it.

Why does the character do what she does? Why did the author make her act that way?
Ex. Readers find out that Dumbledore was not born wise and all knowing, but was ambitious and egotistical when he was young. His wisdom was gained through pain and tragedy. This illustrates Rowling’s theme that a normal, flawed person, with courage and love, can save the world.

What is the character’s relationship to other characters and why? Why did the author create the relationships?
Ex. To Cornelius Fudge, Dumbledore is a threat because of his power and influence. In being frightened and resentful of Dumbledore, Fudge shows himself to be a weak man who blames others for his mistakes—Rowling’s comment on government.
Literary Devices

Various literary devices help convey meaning or create a mood. Look for these in a story to identify key points and their contribution to the author’s overall meaning. The following are a few common literary devices.

Allusion. An indirect reference to another artistic work or person, event, or place (real or fictitious). The author makes the allusion with the intention that the well-known object will create an association with the new object in the reader’s mind. For example, the title of William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury is an allusion to a line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—a futile speech made by an embittered man who has ruined his life. Alluding to that speech in the title helps Faulkner set the tone for his story of a family in ruins.

Foil. A character used to contrast a second, usually more prominent character in order to highlight certain qualities of the more prominent character. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fortinbras is a foil for Hamlet in that he is unhesitating in action and war-like in nature; in contrast, Hamlet is thoughtful, analytical, and careful.

Foreshadowing. The use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in a literary work. For example, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet tells her nurse to find Romeo’s name: “Go ask his name. If he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding-bed.” This foreshadows the danger of Romeo’s name being Montague and of Juliet’s death because of their marriage.

Irony. An implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. There are three kinds of irony: verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else; dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that the characters don’t know; and situational irony is a discrepancy between the expected result and the actual result. For example, in Macbeth, the three witches recount the prophecies that must be fulfilled for Macbeth to fall. He therefore believes he is invincible—ironic because these prophecies cause his downfall.

Symbolism. The use of an object or action to mean something more than its literal meaning. For example, in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, one of the principle characters, Caddy, falls and stains her white dress when she’s a child. The stained dress symbolizes (and foreshadows) her later loss of purity. A character can also be equated with an object throughout a work, another form of symbolism. In Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, an aunt is repeatedly seen carrying an empty bag, which symbolizes her childlessness.

Themes

Themes are big ideas that authors comment on throughout a work using tools such as context, setting, and characters. Common themes are good vs. evil, human nature, religion, social structure, authority, coming-of-age, human rights, feminism, racism, war, education, sex, friendship, love, compassion, and death. Most books deal with multiple themes, some more obvious than others. Identifying an author’s themes gives you a starting place for your thesis. It gives you a general topic. However, a theme is general. You have to dig a little deeper to identify the author’s statement or attitude about that topic.

Ex. Theme  T.H. White’s The Once and Future King deals with the theme of authority, among others.
Ex. Specific Theme  Other Arthurian writers associate King Arthur’s greatness with military glory and valorous deeds. White is different in that he presents Arthur as a political innovator and implies that king is not great because of an aptitude for war, but because of his ability to balance government strength and social justice.
Tying It Together

Once your analysis is complete, develop a thesis that makes an arguable claim about the text. It should connect one of the themes you’ve identified with specific proof from the text (i.e. setting, context, plot, characters, symbolism, allusions, etc.). Sometimes, you will also use the support of other analysts or literary experts.

Ex. Thesis  In The Once and Future King, White shows that the ideal leader is not one of military strength, but one who balances government power and social independence. He achieves this through his satire of the knighthood, his depiction of Merlin’s philosophical experiments, and his portrayal of Arthur.

Remember that a thesis for a literary analysis should NOT merely:

Summarize the plot (“The Once and Future King tells the story of the legendary King Arthur.”)
Announce a general theme (“The Once and Future King gives important ideas about leadership.”)
Offer a review of the book (“The Once and Future King is a literary classic that everyone should read.”)
Before you begin to write, check the assignment and follow your instructor’s specific guidelines

Version 2

Novel Analysis
By Martin Cothran and Andrew Pudewa

Every novelist must create a world out of his own imagination. He must form and fill it, invest it with an intrinsic causation, and infuse it with meaning and purpose. How does a novel do this, and how does it do it well—and furthermore, how would we know?

The philosopher Peter Kreeft has observed that a work of imaginative fiction has five basic elements: It has a setting, the world of the story; characters, who are the workers in the story; plot, which is the work of the story; a theme, which is the wisdom of the story; and a style, which is the words of the story.

Setting

The setting of a story is a fundamental element in a story’s believability. The author has to find a way to make the world he has imagined a real world, one in which the reader can lose himself. One of the clearest examples of this is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s descriptions of Middle Earth are so vivid that the reader finds himself immediately at home—or in danger—in it. The green, welcoming world of the Shire, the peace and contentment of the last homely house in Rivendell, the magical yet terrifying world of the elves’ Lothlorien, and (let us shiver as we think of it) the dark, terrifying land of Mordor are places that almost seem more real than our own world. They may not exist, but when we encounter them in Tolkien’s great work, we feel as if they should.

There are other writers who have demonstrated a remarkable ability to create a real world: Washington Irving creates such a strong sense of setting in “Rip Van Winkle” that the Catskill Mountains seem almost to constitute a character in his story. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s accounts of her childhood on the frontier make use of concrete things and actions in a way that makes us see, hear, smell, taste, and touch her world.

Other writers do not do this as well. As great a novelist as Dostoevsky is, his world is not vivid to us because of his lack of setting. This is perhaps due to his interest in the psychology of his characters. Still, he has been judged by many critics as inferior to his fellow Russian novelist Tolstoy in this regard, since Tolstoy is a master of vivid description.

Character

The second thing a novel should do is to give us real characters. A novelist must create characters who, in order to be plausible, must have a combination of predictability and unpredictability: they will act according to their kind, and yet they will have within themselves the power to defy their own natures. The novelist must, like God, create a being who is under his own complete control and who yet controls himself—a character whose will is his own and whose will is yet in ultimate concord with the author’s own overriding will. They will be the author’s characters, and yet they will be their own. It is only when an author has achieved this that his characters are truly believable.

While Dostoevsky is weak on setting, he excels in the reality of his characters. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes of three sons: Dmitri, who is at the mercy of his own passions; Ivan, whose intellect seems to have smothered his passions; and Alyosha who, unlike his two brothers, is a whole person whose passions are controlled—but not extinguished—by his reason.

Dostoevsky was fascinated by the fact that people who displayed certain characteristics with an almost iron regularity could suddenly change so dramatically. And in novels like The Brothers Karamazov, he creates characters that have all the psychological complexity of real people. This is a hard balance to achieve: to have characters act according to character but not be so pre-programmed as to be the mere puppets of the author.

In many modern novels the characters are not whole characters: they are broken in some way. And in many cases, the characters themselves are representative of certain modern characteristics. This often takes the form of characters representing worldviews. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri and Ivan represent the two sides of the modern split personality: the existentialist or hedonist (Dmitri) and the rationalist or materialist (Ivan). This is also the case in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, in which one character represents an extreme sort of spiritualism (old Tarwater) and the other an extreme form of rationalism (Rayber). In both these cases there are people who avoid these extremes, and they are either whole people (Alyosha) or seeking wholeness (young Tarwater).

Plot

The plot of the novel involves a believable chain of causation. The structure of our own world goes beyond merely giving things a place: it is invested also with causes. Nature has its laws, created by the Lawgiver, according to which things do what they do. And men too, the highest created things, have their own purposes—those they have as individuals and those they have by virtue of being men. So, too, in the world of the novel: There will be laws according to which things work, and the plot will proceed in a way that seems natural and has a plausibility within the context of the world the author creates.

Some novels hurtle toward a conclusion with an air of necessity; others take some twists and turns. An author can easily violate the integrity of his own characters if the plot becomes too deterministic. Some authors are so good they can play the two things against each other. In Romeo and Juliet (by William Shakespeare), there is a time at the beginning of the story when a number of outcomes are possible. But when Romeo slays Tybalt, his fate is sealed. In an act of will (even in the heat of passion), he has made his will irrelevant; in an act of his own choosing, he seals his fate. Romeo’s action leads to other actions that can’t help but follow, and although we are saddened by his end (and that of Juliet, which his action also precipitates), we know, given what he has done, that it must be.

Just as in real life, the end of a good story will not necessarily be evident in the midst of it, but when you have finished it, you should be able to look back on it and be able to say that it has ended in the best or only way it could have ended. Every story has a right ending, and part of being the “right” ending is being a just ending. For some stories the right ending is a happy one. For some the only right ending is a sad one. In a very general sense, this is the difference between a comedy and a tragedy. They are both satisfying. But if a story that is really headed for a happy ending is given a sad one, or a sad one a happy ending, we feel cheated.

In the classic 1956 science fiction movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (movies are stories too), studio officials didn’t like the ending, in which the aliens take over the earth, and so they pressured the director to tack on a happy ending: the earth is saved. But the happy ending was not the natural ending, and an otherwise great film is compromised by a clearly contrived ending.

On the other hand, Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain is clearly heading for a happy ending. The protagonists have earned it. But the author, in a ham-handed attempt to make some sort of existentialist statement, kills off one of the two main characters. The reader is devastated and feels the injustice of the story. G. K. Chesterton criticized Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles for a similar reason: that the author sacrifices his main character for an extraneous reason—in Hardy’s case, a political one.

Theme

Behind the characters and events there is an inherent moral purpose. This has to do with the story’s theme. Just as we see that our own world means something and the events seem to have a purpose, so also should a work of creative imagination. The actions of the characters in a story will not be random or senseless; they will reveal, in an implicit or explicit way, some theme or moral.

Since the theme has a lot to do with the ethos of a story, one way it can be categorized is by how it deals with the good. There are twisted stories in which bad is portrayed as good, and good bad, and which employ disordered archetypes. Books such as A Clockwork Orange may explicitly teach a disordered morality, but many books assume it—the disorder exists underneath the story, so to speak, making it hard to detect. Many of Ernest Hemingway’s books assume an underlying belief that the world lacks order and purpose and the events of life are ultimately meaningless. The classic example here may be The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. A twisted story should not necessarily be avoided (Hemingway has many virtues worth discussing), but many should be.

There are broken stories: stories in which good is good, bad is bad, and bad wins—books such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (by Robert Louis Stevenson) and Dostoevsky’s The Double. Again, these are stories that may still have value. If the story has no redeeming message to justify why the bad wins, then the reader would be better off reading something else. But there are some broken stories that do. The Double, for example, portrays a man who is so alienated from himself that he actually becomes two people. It is Dostoevsky’s way of portraying the disintegrated modern personality, which results from rejection of Christianity.

There are healing stories: stories in which good is good, bad is bad, and good doesn’t win as you would expect, but there is redemption nevertheless. In many of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, such as “The Little Match Girl” and “The Little Mermaid,” the protagonist does not survive, and yet there is some clear meaning or purpose to the ending. The novels of Wendell Berry also have this quality: every character does not live happily ever after, but even the tragic events that they endure give their lives more meaning and purpose than they would have had if there been a happy ending.

Finally, there are whole stories where good is good, bad is bad, and good wins. Most hero tales can be classed in this category, as well as many other books.

Style

In his book Christ and Apollo, William Lynch points out that there are two kinds of imaginative fiction. The first sends its message through writing that is concrete. The significance shines through the characters and events in the story. It is incarnational writing. The second kind attempts to communicate its message through more abstract prose. It is a more direct approach, one which tries to communicate ideas more like expository writing. Imaginative fiction should be incarnational: the meaning and purpose of the story should shine through the characters and events in the story, all of which point toward the author’s purpose. A good writer doesn’t need to spell things out for his readers.

In Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s farmer boy, Almanzo, stops by the horse barn one day and beholds the family’s young colts:

Their nostrils fluttered when they breathed, their ears moved as swiftly as birds. They tossed their heads with a flutter of manes, and daintily pawed with their slender legs and little hoofs, and their eyes were full of spirit.

Wilder could have just described abstractly how beautiful the horses were, but she doesn’t. She never says they are beautiful: she shows it. There is a concreteness about the story that almost transforms it into poetry: we see what Almanzo sees; we hear what Almanzo hears; we feel the way Almanzo feels. And when Almanzo eats, which he seems to do throughout the book, we taste what Almanzo tastes. And when he is done, we, too, are content.

Different writers will use these five elements differently, and some will emphasize one or more of them over others. For example, setting is emphasized in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” where the Catskill Mountains almost seem to be a character in the story. Character is emphasized in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and in Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych. Plot seems to be the predominant element of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

But one thing is common to all great novels: although we can analyze them in various ways, they ultimately defy our analysis. In a great novel, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and it is hard to say exactly why it is great. The greatness of a novel is, in the final analysis, a mystery, and perhaps the greatest benefit of analyzing it is to realize just how mysterious it is.

Version 3

Book Analysis Guidelines

The principal aim of these book analyses is not to have you write a lot but to have you think a lot about the book you are reading. The analyses also provide a focus for you while you are reading the books from the termtime reading list and allows you to consider why you like certain books, what technical aspects these books have in common. Finally, learning to evaluate books technically gives you a means to share books you enjoy with others who might enjoy them and to learn from others about reading you might enjoy.

The Book Analysis Format

The format is somewhat arbitrary and strict. This is to keep your report simple and your task clear. You report on a book from the termtime list and which you have not read before.

I. The first section/paragraph tells

A. The name of the book.

B. The name of the author.

C. When the book was written or published.

D. A one-sentence summary of what the book is really about.

This is not an overall plot summary but the a summary of the essence of the plot.

E. Any other pertinent details about the book:

1. is the book part of a series?

2. does the book have an interesting relationship to the author's life or career?

3. any other interesting details

a. about the book?

i. historical fiction

ii. science fiction

iii. fantasy

iv. some other genre

b. about the author?

II. The second section/paragraph tells

A. The goal the author had in writing the book.

Note that the author's goal in not the theme of the book: why the author wrote the book is not the same as what the book means.

B. What devices the author uses to achieve his or her goal.

III. The third and core section/paragraph talks about the use of characterization in the book

A. In sections A through D, give four distinct ways the author establishes characterization, and for each instance noted, support your observation with a reference (not a quotation) from the book.

B. Realize that what a character is like is not the same as how the author establishes the character.

IV. The final section/paragraph sums up your analysis

A. List several strengths of the book.

B. List several weaknesses of the book.

C. Say what sort of person would enjoy the book.



The first book analysis will be in Harvard Outline form (as are these guidelines); later you may have to give a fully written analysis, but the structure is the same.

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Stylistic Guidelines

Be Sure & Be Subtle

1.) Do not use phrases such as "I think", "I believe", or "in my opinion". First, the analysis is supposed to be your opinion. Who else's would it be? Second, you should not suggest that you are apologizing for your opinion. If you aren't sure then read note number two.

2.) If you aren't sure of something, do not hedge or fudge; go back and find out. If you don't know what the story's about, go back and study it again; but don't guess or apologize or second-guess yourself (changing in the conclusion what you set out to prove in the beginning is a real no-brainer). Reader's will resent such habits.

3.) Avoid self-consciousness. Do not refer to yourself as author or reviewer, to the analysis as such, or to "the reader" as if other readers are somehow less enlightened than yourself. The focus of your analysis is the book and its author; try to keep the focus where it belongs.

4.) Don't inflate your analysis or its subject (also called Mohammed Ali-izing the subject). Don't imply (much less state) that your topic or analysis is "the greatest of all time." That the book is a well written book and your analysis is a well written analysis should be sufficient.

5.) Remember that almost anyone can read the book you are analyzing for the total experience (and I hope some will). What your analysis provides is, in very condensed form, your insight into the author's technical support of his or her goal.

6.) Few if any of the books on your list are badly written. Whether you enjoy a book or not will not depend on the author's competence, rather on your individual taste; and this is as it should be. Therefore, rather than trashing a book you did not enjoy, your most productive approach might be to ascertain what sort of person would enjoy your book. Your own feelings about the book should probably not be stated but implied through your choice of words. Realize that most books are mixtures of strengths and weaknesses; books you enjoy may have slow parts (why?), and books you dislike may still do some things well.

7.) In an outline one always labels each new section or subsection with a number or letter (as appropriate) and also with a header describing what the section contains. (Unnumbered headers or numbers without headers are incorrect.)

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Footnotes:

Ways to establish characterization:
What means does the author use to reveal character? (Check page 286 of your Short Stories 1 book.)
Are there contrasting characters?
Are the characters consistent? adequately motivated? believable?
Is any of the characters a changing character? If so, is the change or development large or small? How is the change depicted and brought about?
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Each time you cite an aspect of your chosen device, you must support your observation with a reference to a point in the book, but do not include quotations, footnotes, or page or chapter references.

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Saying that "anyone" would enjoy the book is somewhat overgeneral.

Version 4

How to Write a Book Analysis Paper
by Mara Pesacreta, Demand Media


Writing a book analysis paper is a good way to analyze a piece of literature.

A book analysis paper is an essay that describes factual and personal information regarding a work of literature. Book analyses are typically about four paragraphs. They are meant to provide a brief overview and review of the book, without providing unnecessary details. You may choose to write a book analysis in order to think critically about the piece of literature and determine your literary preferences. In order to write a book analysis paper, read the book, create an outline, and write the essay.
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Step 1
Read the book. In order to write a book analysis paper, you have to read the book. Reading the book will enable you to analyze it better and comprehend its positive and negative attributes. You can find a book that you would like to read online, at the library, or at the bookstore.
Step 2
Create an outline in order to organize your information for the book analysis paper. Your outline should have at least four headings. The first heading can be the introduction, while the second heading can be the literary objective. The third section can be about the characters in the book, and the fourth section can be the positive and negative aspects of the book.
Step 3
Organize the introductory information in the outline. The introductory paragraph of the book analysis paper should contain basic information about the book, such as the title, the author, the publication date, a very brief summary, whether or not the book is part of a series, and the genre.
Step 4
Determine the literary objective of the book. Under the second heading of your outline, write notes about the message the author wanted to portray when writing the book. For example, the author may have written a book about friendship in order to display its typical characteristics. Also, list some of the prominent literary devices within the book. For example, the author may have used foreshadowing in order to provide you with insight on how the book would end.
Step 5
Take notes on the characters within the story. When you write the outline and the book analysis paper, you have to explain the qualities of the main characters within the book. For example, the main character of the book may have a bold personality, whereas the friend of the main character may be shy and timid.
Step 6
Write notes about the positive and negative aspects of the book. Your book analysis should describe the strengths and weaknesses of the book. For example, the positive aspects of the book could be that the plot was engaging and that the story was not overly descriptive. The negative aspects of the book could be that more characters were not involved in the story and that the outcome was disappointing.
Step 7
Write the book analysis paper. Use your outline to help you write the paper. Each heading corresponds to a separate paragraph. As you write the paper, do not use the pronoun "I."
Step 8
Proofread your book analysis paper. When you proofread your paper, read it aloud. This will help you to find mistakes that you will not always notice by reading it silently. Also, have a friend read your paper aloud. Then, fix your mistakes and create the final copy of your book analysis paper.