L1: Reading to form an interpretation
L1Reading to form an interpretation
All good writing about literature attempts to answer a question, spoken or unspoken, about the text:
- Why does Hamlet hesitate for so long before killing his uncle, King Claudius?
- How does street language function in Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool”?
- What does George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” imply about the role the British played in colonial India?
- What does the relationship between Hana and Kip in Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient suggest about love and nationality?
- How does Suzanne Collins critique modern society in her depiction of a post-apocalyptic world in The Hunger Games?
- Why does Margaret Atwood make so many biblical allusions in The Handmaid’s Tale?
- In what ways does Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine draw on oral narrative traditions?
- Why does it matter that Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” is about winter Sundays (as opposed to, say, winter Tuesdays)?
The goal of a literature analysis should be to answer such questions with a meaningful and persuasive interpretation.