First Critical: characterized by careful analysis and judgment

& Analysis: a separating or breaking up of any whole into its parts and consideration of the significance of those parts and how they function to form the whole.

Here's a brief list of terms you might find useful:

Analyze: divide into parts and discuss each part

Argue: make a claim and point out your reasons

Classify: organize people, objects, or concepts into groups

Compare & Contrast: point out similarities and differences

Discuss: state the important characteristics and main points

Evaluate: define criteria for judgment and examine good and bad points, strengths and weaknesses

Explain: give reasons or make clear by analyzing, defining, contrasting, illustrating, and so on

Illustrate: give examples from experience and reading

Relate: point out and discuss connections.

(While you might never use all of the preceding elements in any one paper, if you are attempting to apply this kind of thinking to what you read and incorporate that thought into your papers then you're on the right track.)

Author: relationship to the narrator (same or different person?); relevant facts of author's life

Then extend your inquiry by considering some or all of the following:

Style: word choice, sentence length and structure, significant features

Narrative Devices: foreshadowing, flashback, leitmotif (a recurring theme), alternating points of view, turning point, and denouement (outcome of plot)

Consider the basic questions: What happened? Who did what? when and where did it happen? how were things done? Why?

Some topics in this essay:
Literature Pay, Narrative Devices, Prose Consider, Compare Contrast, Formulate Thesis, , Jerome Metaphor, Writing Literature, Evidence--and Offer, Questions Narrow, rhyme scheme, metric feet, stressed unstressed, metric feet line, 1 consider, writing literature, feet line, significant passages, narrator person, stressed unstressed syllables, / /, short story,