![]() Usually, repetition of particular aspects of a story (similar events in the plot, similar descriptions, even repetition of particular words) tends to render those elements more conspicuous. What is a pattern or a problem?Ī pattern can be the recurrence of certain kinds of imagery or events. Let’s assume for now that you are choosing your own topic.Īfter reading your story, a topic may just jump out at you, or you may have recognized a pattern or identified a problem that you’d like to think about in more detail. Either way, you’ll need to generate ideas to use in the paper-even with an assigned topic, you’ll have to develop your own interpretation. Perhaps your instructor has given you a list of topics to choose, or perhaps you have been asked to create your own. Flip back through the book and consider what interests you about this piece of writing-what seemed strange, new, or important? 2. It’s even a good idea to spend some time just thinking about the story. Being able to have the whole book, short story, or play in your head-at least in a general way-when you begin thinking through ideas will be a great help and will actually allow you to write the paper more quickly in the long run. A good paper inevitably begins with the writer having a solid understanding of the work that he or she interprets. There’s no substitute for a good general knowledge of your story. Writing tends to be a highly individual task, so adapt these suggestions to fit your own habits and inclinations. The following steps are intended as a guide through the difficult process of writing an interpretive paper that meets these criteria. use careful reasoning to explain how that evidence relates to the main points of the interpretation.support its main points with strong evidence from the story.avoid the obvious (in other words, it won’t argue a conclusion that most readers could reach on their own from a general knowledge of the story).So what makes a valid and interesting opinion? A good interpretation of fiction will: Interpretations of fiction are often opinions, but not all opinions are equal. To say that there is no one answer is not to say that anything we decide to say about a novel or short story is valid, interesting, or valuable. ![]() In fact, most professors are aware that their interpretations are debatable and actually love a good argument. Even so, the most well-informed professor rarely arrives at conclusions that someone else wouldn’t disagree with. ![]() ![]() Instructors can be pretty dazzling (or mystifying) with their interpretations, but that’s because they have a lot of practice with stories and have developed a sense of the kinds of things to look for. It might seem that the stories do have specific meanings, and the instructor has already decided what those meanings are. In short, the stories we read in class have meanings that are arguable and complicated, and it’s our job to sort them out. They show different sides of a problem, and they can raise new questions. They use characters, settings, and actions to illustrate issues that have no easy resolution. Thankfully (or perhaps regrettably, depending on your perspective) the stories we’re asked to interpret in our classes are a good bit more complicated than most parables. Just think about a parable like the prodigal son or a nursery tale about “crying wolf.” Stories like these are reduced down to the bare elements, giving us just enough detail to lead us to their main points, and because they are relatively easy to understand and tend to stick in our memories, they’re often used in some kinds of education.īut if the meanings were always as clear as they are in parables, who would really need to write a paper analyzing them? Interpretations of fiction would not be interesting if the meanings of the stories were clear to everyone who reads them. It’s pretty easy to see how at least some stories convey clear meanings or morals. How does a story mean something? Isn’t a story just an arrangement of characters and events? And if the author wanted to convey a meaning, wouldn’t he or she be much better off writing an essay just telling us what he or she meant? First, literary analyses (or papers that offer an interpretation of a story) rely on the assumption that stories must mean something. Writing an analysis of a piece of fiction can be a mystifying process. Literature (Fiction) Demystifying the process
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