2018-03-09
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The following questions will help you to analyze a shot story or an excerpt:
1. Author: Who is the author of the story? What do you know about him?
2. Title: What is the story’s title? Does the story’s title suggest its theme?
3. Setting: Where and when does the story take place? What details does the writer use to create the setting? Does the setting create a particular mood, or feeling? Is the setting a symbol for an importing idea that the writer wants to convey?
4. Point of view: Is the story told from the first-person or the third-person point of view? Is the narrator limited or omniscient? What effect does the point of view have on the way the reader experiences the story?
5. Plot: What events take place in the story? Does the story have an introduction? When does the climax occur? Does the story have a denouement? Does the writer use such special plot devices as foreshadowing, flashbacks or a surprise ending? Is the story suspenseful?
6. Characterization: Who is the main character or protagonist? Who are the other major and minor characters? How does the writer reveal what each of the characters is like?
7. Theme: What is the theme (the message of the author), or central idea of the story? How is the theme revealed? (A theme usually expresses some insight into the human experience. It may deal with values, ideas, beliefs, or life in general.)
8. Figures of speech and devices of sound: Which of them can you find and how do they reveal the author’s ideas?
9. The tone (mood) of the text: What is the writer’s attitude to what he depicts? Is it serious, humorous, ironic, sarcastic, mocking, indignant, matter-of-fact, etc.? How is the author’s attitude revealed – in the author’s commentaries or impersonally, through the characters’ actions and speech?
The structure of the text
Any narrative has a certain number of compositional elements: exposition, development of the plot, climax and denouement.
Exposition is the introduction of the necessary details to the action, such as the time, the place of the action (the setting) or the circumstances which will influence the action.
Plot development means the actions, thoughts or descriptions which lead the reader forward, varying degrees of suspense (the episodes which build up the tension and postpone the completion of the action).
Climax is the event of greatest interest and intensity; the most dramatic point of the action, crucial, culminating point.
Denouement is the final stage of the plot where everything is made clear.
The forms of writing
The major forms of writing are: narration, description, commentary, dialogue/monologue, interior monologue (represented speech). In modern literary texts all these forms overlap and run together.
Narration is an account of events; things are shown as happening one after another.
Description tells how something looks. Here the author brings out the most essential qualities and peculiarities of the objects.
Dialogue/monologue reproduces the speech of the characters.
Commentary represents the author’s meditation, evaluation, comments of the thing he is writing about.
Interior monologue (represented speech) is neither direct nor indirect speech. This form of writing renders the characters’ thoughts which are not uttered. Everything is seen through the character’s inner speech. This form of writing is also called ‘a stream of consciousness’.
Methods of character-drawing
There are two methods of character-drawing: direct and indirect. A character is described directly if we learn about him from descriptions of his appearance, behaviuor, etc.
The indirect method is used when we learn about the personage from other parts of the text: in dialogue the character is described through his own words and the remarks of other personages; in narrations - through his actions.
The protagonist is the most important character in a work. Other characters are called major and minor characters.
Elements of character are: appearance, words and actions, background, personality, motivation, relationships, conflict.
When you analyze a character, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Appearance: what do the aspects of the character’s appearance reveal about his traits?
2. Words and actions: what kind of language does the hero use? what can we learn from his words?
3. Background: what past experience has the character got? how does the past effect the character’s thoughts and actions in the present?
4. Motivation: what makes the character act and speak as he does?
5. Conflict: is the character involved in some conflict? is the conflict internal (within the character’s mind) or external (between the character and the other force)? how is the conflict resolved?
Remember! ALWAYS support your views and opinion with evidence by referring to points in the text.
Special techniques of plot
1. Foreshadowing: this technique involves hinting at an event that will happen later in the narrative. Foreshadowing is often very subtle, so the readers must be attentive for clues.
2. Flashback: is a section in the narrative that interrupts the chronological order of the events to relate something that happened in the past. Flashback helps to explain the motivation of the heroes and tells about their past experience.
3. Suspense: the tension that builds as the reader wonders how the central conflict will be resolved. Writers create suspense by rising questions in the reader’s mind about what will happen next.
4. Surprise ending: an unexpected turn of events at the resolution.
