How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay on a Poem Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Poetry analysis, also sometimes referred to as a poem review, is a reflection on a poem that involves analyzing the poetic instruments, discussing the language and the figures used by the author, as well as sharing ones personal position on the poem. When it comes to poetry analysis, one has to go beyond just reviewing the words and phrases used, but instead see the bigger picture, try to read between the lines and understand what has driven the poet to use a particular word combination. Thus, poetry analysis requires some primary research on the author of the poem, as well as some background and history behind the poem’s creation. When reading through poems, mind their titles: sometimes they can give you a clue into the understanding of a whole poem.

Therefore, even if the poem is difficult to understand, its title can explain a lot. Sometimes you are simply given a poem to analyze without a particular title already assigned. In other cases, you have a thesis statement or an argument to base your poetry analysis on, and you have to argue for, or against, the statement given by your professor. It might seem easier to write about the poem in general, however, this isn’t always the case. Even if you are given the freedom to choose a poem for analysis and write it in your own way, we still suggest that you pick a certain critical question or subject for your poetry analysis, just like you would for a critical or argumentative essay.

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Use the analysis of poetic figures and literary devices, language and rhyme, to make your point and support your argument. When analyzing the theme that the author depicted in the poem, think of the time when it was written, and try to relate the events described by the poet to the general situation at the time. Another tip is to compare how this author described particular events, to the way these same events were described in other literary pieces. Is it to people in general, to their pen pal or colleague, to the reigning crown, to rebels or to nature, etc. Think of how the author feels about the supposed reader, whether he supports, or condemns their readership.

When reading the poem, for the second and third time, highlight or underline the phrases or separate words that are most powerful, colorful or distinctive. You might get a different impression every time, so it is useful to preserve your memories and feelings from every new reading. Sometimes it is more effective to read the poem out loud, using certain voice changes speed, pitch, volume and mood of your voice , depending on how the poem develops. Mostly assigned in a college level english course, the literary analysis essay challenges the student writer to dissect a piece of literature ndash an essay, short story, novella, novel, play, poem, etc. Ndash and determine how and why it was written, or what the author sought to convey in writing the literary work. To successfully analyze literature, the student writer should keep in mind that every author has unlimited opportunities to make choices in their work for certain reasons. Perhaps they are trying to emphasize something through using ample metaphors to alter how their story is told and experienced.

Once the student has determined a piece of literature to analyze for their assignment, they should be sure their essay should point out the author rsquo s choices and attempt to explain why these choices are significant in the telling ndash and understanding ndash of the story. These can be addressing certain elements of a work: its evidence of conflict its point of view and if the narrator is trustworthy the setting, the place or location of the action ndash which provides the historical and cultural context for characters, and can often can symbolize the emotional state of characters. Example ndash in poe rsquo s ldquo the fall of the house of usher, rdquo the crumbling old mansion reflects the decaying state of both the family and the narrator rsquo s mind the student might analyze the character flaw of the tragic hero by tracing how it is revealed through the acts of the play. A student writer may choose to analyze a short story and identify a particular theme like the difficulty of making the transition from adolescence to adulthood and showing how the writer suggests or indicates the theme through the point of view from which the story is told or they might also explain how the main character rsquo s attitude toward women is revealed through his dialogue and/or actions. time: 2016 02 22 1:30 utc 1456140390 reporting this problem: the problem you have encountered is with a project web site hosted by sourceforge.net. This issue should be reported to the sourceforge.net hosted project not to sourceforge.net.

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    contact the project via their designated support resources. Contact the project administrators of this project via email see the upper right hand corner of the project summary page for their usernames at user name @users.sourceforge.net
if you are a maintainer of this web content, please refer to the site documentation regarding web services for further assistance. This option may be re enabled by the project by placing a file with the name .htaccess with this line: home is so sad philip larkin on the surface, a house and a home are interchangeable words. They both describe a place where someone lives, but with a deeper analysis, we find that a house is simply the structure or the building. It is filled with objects and memories, which grow and change along with its residents. Home is a place we come back to after a long day's work, the place where we go to seek shelter and solace. When the world is changing outside, home remains constant, molded to the people who live and breathe inside.

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This popular clich sheds a warm and comforting light on a home, giving it personality and feeling, the main factors that distinguish it from a house. However, in philip larkin's poem home is so sad , the speaker describes a home with a personality different from the sweet stereotype, portraying it as a place of loneliness and longing after its inhabitants have long deserted their dwellings. Ironically, even without its family, the house still remains a home, which is yearning and waiting for its family to return. The speaker personifies the house and its objects, using a melancholy and detached tone, and a crumbling structure to illustrate the breaking down of universal hope and the emptiness that results when a home is abandoned by its family. To emphasize the feeling of loneliness, the speaker personifies the empty home and its contents as objects that miss and long for their owners.

This gives emotion and personality to the house, helping readers better understand its situation. Instead of saying the home remains as it was left , the speaker states clearly h ome is so sad / i t stays as it was left. The narrative gives the home emotion and sentiment, which decreases the distance between man and object. Readers begin to mourn for the home in the same way that the home grieves for the missing family. The speaker shows the home wanting to win back its inhabitants because it is bereft/ o f anyone to please, it withers so 3 4. One would not normally think of a home trying to win over anything or anyone, but this personification creates such a sensation of longing that, we too, feel a loss. A loss that, without this description and personification, humans are apt to overlook.

Inside the home there are memories and nostalgia that the residents leave behind, and from these memories, the home is s haped to the comfort of the last to go. We are able to understand that the feelings the home is experiencing are quite parallel to the sad emotions people have when leaving their own home. Because the emotions the speaker gives the home are so close to what a human's would be in reverse situation, we are able to recognize the similar emotions the home is dealing with.

The tragic loss and helplessness is also exemplified through a removed and nostalgic tone. This mid sentence pause seems almost as if the home is sighing in pain or suffering. When read aloud, it sounds as if the home is talking, and stops mid sentence to reminisce about the times when it still had its family. It does not have the courage and ability to forget about its loss and become only a building, a structure, a house, and turn again to what it started as.

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The home cannot bear to face the fact that it no longer has the means to stay alive, stay a home. Something as simple as the white space dividing the beginning and end of the sentence creates hesitation, the same hesitation the home feels about accepting its loss. It establishes an empty and lacking tone, which is similar to how the home is portrayed to feel. Similarly, simple and short lines, consisting of sentences broken up often by commas also work together to create this reflective and distant tone. The simple diction tone shows that the home is genuine rather than pompous or selfish. If, perhaps, the home were more concerned about itself rather than its inhabitants, we would see more of a lavish extravagant tone, instead of one that is plain and distant. The detachment also helps with the speaker's apparent view that the distance between what one originally plans and what one ends up achieving can be greater than expected.

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The family came into this house, and the house welcomed the family with a joyous shot at how things ought to be 6. Unfortunately, those joyous shots do not materialize and the home is left mourning their evaporation. The detached tone of the poem illustrates how the home becomes more and more hopeless with the passing of time by wishing for a shot at hope that has l ong fallen wide 8. Furthermore, the deterioration of the home's hope can also be seen in the deterioration of the structure and syntax of the last stanza. The crumbling and falling apart of the poem's ending shows the hopelessness from the loss of a family or heart.

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Near the end of the second stanza the sentences begin to fall apart as the home realizes that it is truly empty and that its family is not going to return. They are short and fragmented, very different from the flowing and continuous form of the previous eight lines. One reason the sentences become so brief is to capture the stillness of the inanimate objects. These specific objects are very important in themselves, and without the short and succinct lines, they may be overlooked. The ending is also the first time that the speaker addresses the audience in the poem, telling us to see how it was 8. The inclusion of the audience also shows the break down of hope, as the you is used almost like an order.

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