Literary Interpretation

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Literary
Interpretation
Finding meaning . . .
From Reading to Writing After reading a
powerful work of literature like Ambrose Bierce’s
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” or
Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism,” you
may be filled with questions about its meaning.

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Literary
Interpretation
Finding meaning . . .
Writing a literary interpretation is a good way
to explore your own ideas about the meaning of
a literary work and to analyze the elements in
the work that communicate the meaning.

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Basics in a Box
Literary Interpretation at a Glance
Introduction
Introduces the literary work
and includes a clear thesis
statement that summarizes
the interpretation
RUBRIC Standards for
Writing
A successful literary
interpretation should
• clearly identify the title and
author of the literary work
• give a clearly stated
interpretation at or near the
beginning of the essay
• present evidence and
quotations from the text to
support the interpretation
• take into account other
interpretations and
contradictory evidence
Conclusion
Summarizes the interpretation

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
1 Prewriting
Begin by choosing a work of literature to
write about. You might select a work that
you especially liked or one that you had
problems with in some way.

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Planning Your Literary Interpretation
1. Develop an interpretation. Read the story more
than once, taking notes. Freewrite about the literary
elements in the work. What are the main character’s
most significant thoughts or actions? What is the
central conflict? What is the theme? Write your
interpretation of the story as a tentative thesis
statement.

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Planning Your Literary Interpretation
2. Gather evidence to support your interpretation.
Use a chart to list significant passages from the text
and how they support your interpretation.
3. Test your interpretation. Does the evidence
support your interpretation? What contradictory
evidence did you find? How can you revise your
interpretation to account for more of the evidence?
Evidence from the text
How it supports interpretation

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
2 Drafting
If everybody is thinking alike then
somebody isn’t thinking.
General George S. Patton, U.S. Army

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
2 Drafting
Try out your interpretation by writing down
your ideas. A good way to start is to try to
get through an entire first draft without
stopping. You can revise form and style
later. Eventually, you should organize your
writing into the following parts:

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
2 Drafting
Introduction—identifies the author
and title of the work and briefly states
the main point of the interpretation
Body—presents evidence from the
text to support the interpretation
Conclusion—restates the
interpretation and summarizes the
evidence

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
3 Revising
TARGET SKILL
CONCLUSIONS
A good conclusion in literary interpretations
summarizes what was presented in the body
of the paper, does not introduce anything
new, and leaves the reader with a sense of
closure and something to think about.

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Writing Your Literary Interpretation
4 Editing and Proofreading
TARGET SKILL
VERB TENSE
When writing about a literary work, use the
present tense (called the historical present);
that is, write about a past action as if it were
happening now. However, keep the verbs in
quotations in the tense in which they were
written.