46 Rhetorical Modes: Literary Analysis (major essay)
Using what you’ve learned, you will complete a literary analysis of a selected work.
Choose a poem, folktale, legend, or myth that shows someone’s personal struggle with wellness, different abilities, or other ideas from our course. Here is a list of suggested titles:
| Bearskin | Mental health, homelessness (access to resources, wellness) |
| Health and body image | |
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Disability |
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| Beauty/body image, food/nutrition, differently abled | |
| Sleeping Beauty | Health and beauty (image) |
| Red Riding Hood | Health and wellness (tending to her sick grandmother) |
| Rapunzel | Beauty/image, fertility |
| Princess and the Pea | Female strength/sensitivity (health) |
| The Little Match Girl | Wellness (access to resources) |
| Hunchback/Humpbacks (various tales) | Disability |
Conduct a close reading of the text. Your notes will show that you’ve asked questions and analyzed carefully. Show me the notes or attach photos, please. Consider questions like these:
- What is the author telling me here?
- Are there any hard or important words?
- What does the author want me to understand?
- How does the author play with language to add to meaning?
Analyze the theme (Links to an external site.).
Create a thesis about theme. Use our pattern:
- When there is love, then there is acceptance.
- When there is anger, then there is distrust.
Support your thesis. Give at least three reasons for your argument.
Example: The theme of Romeo and Juliet is love. Three reasons that this is true are x, x, and x.
Provide textual support as supporting details for each of the reasons. Be sure to discuss the ethos, logos, and pathos of the text. How do they support the theme?
Use at least three sources. One will be the text itself. Cite it once in the beginning paragraph. Other sources will come from other writers who have analyzed the theme.
Click HERE for the template we created.
Click HERE for an example of a literary analysis.
