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In this chapter, we ask you to write an analysis of a story. Analyzing the selections in the Guide to Reading that follows will help you learn the basic features and strategies writers typically use when writing about stories. The readings, as well as the questions and discussion surrounding them, will help you consider strategies you might want to try out when writing your own analysis.

As you read the essays in this chapter, you will see how two students have analyzed the short story “The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams.

Examining how these writers present an arguable thesis about the story, support this thesis, and guide readers through their argument will help you write an insightful literary analysis of your own. The example passages in the sections that follow are drawn from these two essays.

Determine the writer’s purpose and audience.

When reading the short story analysis essays that appear in this chapter, ask yourself the following questions:

What seems to be the writer’s main purpose?

What does the writer assume about the audience? The short story analyses from this chapter were written by students in a college course in which the entire class had read the same story. These writers assumed that their primary reader, the instructor, not only had read the story but also knew a fair amount about its context and the conversation surrounding it — enough, at least, to be able to judge whether the essayist had read the story with sufficient care and thought. In cases such as these, plot summaries and recitals of well-known facts about the short story and its author are not necessary.

Assess the genre’s basic features.

As you read the essays that analyze stories in this chapter, you will see how different writers incorporate the basic features of the genre. The following discussions of these features include examples from the essays as well as sentence strategies you can experiment with later, as you write your own analysis of a story.

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A CLEAR, ARGUABLE THESIS

Read first to find the thesis statement, which is often one or two sentences long but that may run to several paragraphs. A good thesis statement in an essay analyzing a story

Often, the thesis is part of an introduction that is at least a paragraph in length. In most cases, this introduction identifies the story being analyzed by giving the title and author, and it may also provide some historical, biographical, or cultural context. In effective writing, the thesis and other sentences in the opening paragraph (or paragraphs) introduce key terms for ideas that are echoed and further developed later in the essay. In this way, the introductory sentences and thesis forecast how the argument will be developed.

Inexperienced writers are sometimes afraid to ruin the surprise by forecasting their argument at the beginning of their essays. But explicit forecasting is a convention of literary analysis, similar in purpose to the abstract that precedes many articles in academic journals.

Take a look at Iris Lee’s lead-up to the thesis in her essay on “The Use of Force.” In it, she introduces key terms that are repeated (exactly, closely, or through synonyms) and underscored in her thesis:

The Hippocratic Oath binds doctors to practice ethically and, above all, to “do no harm.” The doctor narrating William Carlos Williams’s short story “The Use of Force” comes dangerously close to breaking that oath, yet ironically is able to justify his actions by invoking his professional image and the pretense of preserving his patient’s well-being. As an account of a professional doing harm under the pretense of healing, the story uncovers how a doctor can take advantage of the intimate nature of his work and his professional status to overstep common forms of conduct, to the extent that his actions actually hurt rather than help a patient. In this way, the doctor-narrator actually performs a valuable service by warning readers, indirectly through his story, that blindly trusting members of his profession can have negative consequences. (par. 1)

Sometimes, the thesis of a literary analysis contradicts or complicates a surface reading of a work. Look for sentence strategies like this one:

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In Isabella Wright’s essay on “The Use of Force,” the surface reading actually appears in the sentences leading up to the thesis. A transitional sentence and a transitional word introduce the contradiction/complication that constitutes the thesis:

By any reasonable standards, the story of a doctor prying a little girl’s mouth open as she screams in pain and fear should leave readers feeling nothing but horror and disgust at the doctor’s actions. William Carlos Williams’s story “The Use of Force” is surprising in that it does not completely condemn the doctor for doing just that. Instead, through his actions and words (uttered or thought), readers are able to see the freeing, transformative power of breaking with social conventions. (par. 1)

A WELL-SUPPORTED ARGUMENT

Consider how the writer provides support for the argument. Because essays analyzing stories usually present new ideas that are not obvious and that readers may disagree with, writers need to make an argument that includes

In addition, writers may provide other kinds of support — for example, quotations from experts or historical, biographical, or cultural evidence. But textual evidence from the work of literature is the primary support readers expect in literary analysis essays.

Evidence from the text often takes the form of quotation of words, phrases, sentences, and, occasionally, even paragraphs. Quoting is the most important method of providing support for essays that analyze short stories, but effective writers do not expect a quotation to do the work by itself. Instead, they analyze the language of the story to show how particular words’ connotations (cultural and emotional associations), their figurative use in images and metaphors, or their symbolism (ideas or qualities they suggest) enrich the story’s meanings.

When reading a literary analysis, look for sentence strategies like this one:

Now look at the extended example from paragraph 4 of Iris Lee’s essay. In this excerpt, Lee supports an assertion about the author’s use of “militaristic diction” by quoting from several parts of the story:

Examples of militaristic diction include calling his struggle with the girl a “battle” (502), the tongue depressor a “wooden blade” (503), his bodily effort an “assault” (503). She too is a party in this war, moving from fighting “on the defensive” to surging forward in an attack (503). Such metaphors of fighting and warfare, especially those associated with the doctor and his actions, figuratively convey that his character crosses a crucial boundary. They present the argument that, despite his honorable pretentions, his actions — at least during the height of his conflict with the girl — align more with violence than with healing. The doctor’s thoughts even turn more obviously (and more consciously) violent at times, such as when, in a bout of frustration, he wants “to kill” the girl’s father, (502) or when he says, “I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it” (503). Although these statements are arguably exaggerated, they, like the metaphors of war, imply a tendency to do harm that goes directly against the narrator’s duty as a doctor. While the story’s opening introduces him as a person whose occupation is reason to overcome the parents’ distrust, by the end of the story he leaves his readers thoroughly horrified by his forceful handling of the little girl. By investigating the calculated artifice and military metaphors, we might conclude that the narrator is conscious both of his deceptive rhetoric and of the harm it allows him to inflict upon his patient.

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In addition to quoting, evidence can also take the form of summary or paraphrase. Writers can use this type of evidence to set up an extended close textual analysis like that shown above. Or they might use summary or paraphrase in brief snippets of analysis, as in sentence strategies like the following:

For example, to support her thesis, Isabella Wright summarizes the doctor’s conflict with the girl instead of describing it in detail. The summary is introduced by repeating key terms from the thesis statement:

The doctor also breaks with social conventions by willingly engaging in a physical struggle with the little girl. (par. 5)

A CLEAR, LOGICAL ORGANIZATION

To make the argument in a literary analysis easy to follow, writers usually include some or all of the following:

Writers tend to place topic sentences at or near the beginning of a paragraph because these sentences help readers make sense of the details, examples, and explanations that follow. Often, topic sentences repeat key terms from the thesis or other introductory text. Look, for example, at the first topic sentence of Iris Lee’s essay, which repeats key terms from the introduction in paragraph 1.

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In the way the story and its characters introduce us to the narrator, we see how people automatically grant a doctor status and privilege based on his profession alone, creating an odd sort of intimacy that is uncommon in ordinary social relations. (par. 2)

The paragraph then gives examples of the extreme politeness the young patient’s parents show to the doctor, and in describing and analyzing the scene, Lee repeats the words “privilege” and “intimacy.”

Topic sentences can also serve as transitions from one paragraph to the next. In reading literary analyses, look for sentence strategies like the following:

In her analysis of “The Use of Force,” Isabella Wright uses this strategy:

Notice that Wright repeats the phrase “social conventions,” which she introduces in her thesis.