How to write a key passage analysis

Solomon, the son of David, King of Israel, hath said that the beginning of our Key is to fear God, to adore him, to honour him with contrition of heart, to invoke him1 in all matters which we wish to undertake, and to operate with very great devotion, for thus God will lead us in the right way. When, therefore, thou shalt wish to acquire the knowledge of magical arts and sciences, it is necessary to have prepared the order of hours and of days, and of the position of the Moon, without the operation of which thou canst effect nothing; but if thou observest them with diligence thou mayest easily and thoroughly arrive at the effect and end which thou desirest to attain. When1 thou wishest to make any experiment or operation, thou must first prepare, beforehand, all the requisites which thou wilt find described in the following chapters: This first paragraph is omitted in Sloane MSS.

Overview When your teachers or professors ask you to analyze a literary text, they often look for something frequently called close reading. Close reading is deep analysis of how a literary text works; it is both a reading process and something you include in a literary analysis paper, though in a refined form.

Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject, form, and specific word choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to find in small parts of the text clues to help us understand the whole.

For example, if an author writes a novel in the form of a personal journal about a character's daily life, but that journal reads like a series of lab reports, what do we learn about that character? What is the effect of picking a word like "tome" instead of "book"? In effect, you are putting the author's choices under a microscope.

The process of close reading should produce a lot of questions. It is when you begin to answer these questions that you are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary analysis paper that makes the most of your close reading work.

Close reading sometimes feels like over-analyzing, but don't worry. Close reading is a process of finding as much information as you can in order form to as many questions as you can.

When it is time to write your paper and formalize your close reading, you will sort through your work to figure out what is most convincing and helpful to the argument you hope to make and, conversely, what seems like a stretch.

This guide imagines you are sitting down to read a text for the first time on your way to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper. To give one example of how to do this, we will read the poem "Design" by famous American poet Robert Frost and attend to four major components of literary texts: If you want even more information about approaching poems specifically, take a look at our guide: How to Read a Poem.

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Make notes in the margins, underline important words, place question marks where you are confused by something. Of course, if you are reading in a library book, you should keep all your notes on a separate piece of paper.

If you are not making marks directly on, in, and beside the text, be sure to note line numbers or even quote portions of the text so you have enough context to remember what you found interesting.

Design I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth— Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth— A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?

What is its plot? What is its most important topic? What image does it describe? It's easy to think of novels and stories as having plots, but sometimes it helps to think of poetry as having a kind of plot as well.

Close Reading of a Literary Passage

When you examine the subject of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you understand its major concerns before you dig deeper. Observations In "Design," the speaker describes a scene: The flower is a heal-all, the blooms of which are usually violet-blue.

This heal-all is unusual. The speaker then poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of blue and how the spider and moth found this particular flower. How did this situation arise?

Questions The speaker's questions seem simple, but they are actually fairly nuanced. We can use them as a guide for our own as we go forward with our close reading.

Furthering the speaker's simple "how did this happen," we might ask, is the scene in this poem a manufactured situation?A critical analysis is subjective writing because it expresses the writer's opinion or evaluation of a text.

Analysis means to break down and study the parts. Writing a critical paper requires two steps: critical reading and critical writing. Use your knowledge following the principles of analyzing a passage described below: test, essay, research, presentation, discussion, enjoyment. Principles of analyzing a passage.

Offer a thesis or topic sentence indicating a basic observation or assertion about the text or passage. Offer a context for the passage without offering too much summary.

Literary Analysis Guide | English Major & Minor | Goshen College

Mar 21,  · Edit Article How to Write a Critical Analysis. In this Article: Article Summary Conducting a Critical Reading Writing an Effective Analysis Organizing the Review Sample Analyses Community Q&A A critical analysis examines an article or other work to determine how effective the piece is at making an argument or point%().

Macbeth, set primarily in Scotland, mixes witchcraft, prophecy, and lausannecongress2018.com “Weïrd Sisters” appear to Macbeth and his comrade Banquo after a battle and prophesy that Macbeth will be king and that the descendants of Banquo will also reign.

A Guide to Writing the Literary Analysis Essay. I.

INTRODUCTION: the first paragraph in your essay. It begins creatively in order to catch your reader’s interest, provides essential background about the literary work, and well as repeating key words or using synonyms. In music theory, the recapitulation is one of the sections of a movement written in sonata lausannecongress2018.com recapitulation occurs after the movement's development section, and typically presents once more the musical themes from the movement's lausannecongress2018.com material is most often recapitulated in the tonic key of the movement, in such a way that it reaffirms that key as the movement's home key.