Story Analysis

    A good short story can be analyzed in many different ways, and you cannot possibly cover all of them in 750-1000 words. So you must narrow your topic as you would for any paper. Some of the elements you might wish to analyze include the use of imagery, central motifs, setting, characterization, symbol, structure, and theme.

    Analyzing the theme is probably the most fruitful approach. The theme is what the story is about: what it says about human life, specifically, what it says about its subject. For example, "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is about testing one's faith (whether literally or symbolically is a question you'd probably have to consider): that is the subject. The theme is what Hawthorne says about the subject. He seems to say that testing one's faith can be extremely dangerous. Doing it might change a potentially happy life into a sodden, cynical, unhappy one. The body of a paper with such a thesis would give examples from the story which show young Brown deliberately testing his faith and the consequences.

    Another story, Virginia Woolf's "Kew Gardens," might invite a different kind of analysis. You might write about the setting or Woolf's use of images and ideas to unify her story. Such images and ideas include the flower bed, the snail, the human couples, words, and light.

    Another element you could analyze is the use of archetype. For example, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" shows a contemporary enactment of an ancient archetypal ritual--that of the scapegoat. One student used the following thesis to analyze the story: "The symbolism of the scapegoat ritual is very clear in the setting, the characters, and in the ritual of the lottery itself." The method you use should be the one you think is most appropriate for the story.

    I am also open to other approaches you may have learned in, for example, English 184 or 384 (see Charter, The Story and Its Writer, 5th edition, pp. 1711-14 and Cassill and Bausch, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, shorter 6th edition, pp. 944-60).  Such approaches include, but are not limited to, new historicism, gender and/or gay and lesbian criticism, feminist criticism, and reader response.  For an example of the latter, see my essay on Cheever's "The Enormous Radio."  There you will also find other requirements for the paper analysis for English 385.