They show different sides of a problem, and they can raise new questions. They frequently use characters, settings, syntax, formal elements, and actions to illustrate issues that have no easy resolution. Thankfully (or perhaps regrettably, depending on your perspective) the texts 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 literature would not be interesting if the meanings of these texts were clear to everyone who reads them. It’s pretty easy to see how at least some stories, for example, convey clear meanings or morals. How do such texts mean something? If an author wanted to convey a meaning, wouldn’t she be much better off writing an essay just telling us what she meant? First, literary analyses (or papers that offer an interpretation of literary texts) rely on the assumption that stories, poems, and plays must mean something. Writing an analysis of a piece of literature can be a mystifying process. For additional information on writing about drama and poetry specifically, please see the Writing Center’s handouts on writing about drama and on writing poetry explications. This handout describes some steps for planning and writing papers about literary texts.

Good short stories to write a paper on