Analysis Assignment
Length: 1500-1600 words
Mechanics: 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spacing, APA documentation
An analysis requires you to take some theoretical perspective and apply it to specific examples in order to lend them new meaning. Literature often uses a variety of theoretical perspectives – such as psychoanalytic, historical, Marxist, and feminist – to yield new insights into familiar works of poetry, fiction, and drama. To analyze well, you need to understand the theoretical perspective thoroughly, and then you must examine texts closely for evidence of this perspective.
Your theoretical perspective for this assignment will be informed by three essays from our textbook: Weiland (pp. 337-342), Kardos (pp. 343-355) and O’Brien (pp. 356-360). These essays explain the nature of fiction and the importance of engaging the reader early on in the first chapter or even in the first sentence of a novel.
Choose any four specific examples of first chapters of novels provided in the textbook (pp. 361-403): Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Crane, and Bram Stoker. If you choose, you may substitute for two of these with first chapters of novels with which you are more familiar. Be sure to use the correct APA entry for a book in your References page.
Follow this structure:
Paragraph One: In your introduction, explain the importance of writing a good first chapter for a novel. Rely on Weiland, Kardos, and O’Brien as your sources to help you explain the theoretical perspective that you will be applying to the first chapters that you have selected.
Paragraphs Two, Three, Four, and Five: Each of these paragraphs will discuss one of the four first chapters of novels. Evaluate the first chapter and explain what makes it weak or strong. Think about such concepts as the hook, implicit questions, characters, setting, conflict, narrator or narrative perspective, tone, assumptions or “rules,” stakes, key information, beginnings in medias res, “magic,” audience, etc. How do these grab you or bore you? DO NOT SUMMARIZE THE CONTENT OF THE CHAPTER. Your purpose is to explain how each chapter works and how the information in it interests, confuses, or bores the reader. What in the first sentence and the first chapter of the novel engage the readers and cause them to continue reading? Give specific but brief examples/quotes as support. Arrange these paragraphs logically from the most successful first chapter to the least successful – or vice versa.
Paragraph Six: Make comparisons and contrasts among the four chapters. What makes one chapter superior to – or worse – than the others?
Paragraph Seven: Make some general conclusions about the nature of first chapters.
Use this form for your references page:
Austen, J. (2016). Emma. In L. Behrens & L. J. Rosen (Eds.), Writing and reading across the curriculum (13th ed., pp. 361-367). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Use this form for a complete novel separately published:
Smith, G. (2003). Hidden in the shadows. New York, NY: Doubleday.
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