Analyzing Literature

The theme of a piece of literature is simply what it's about. This doesn't mean plot or characters; instead, the theme is a description of what ideas or concepts the author is discussing in the work. For example, one of the main themes of Shakespeare's play Macbeth is that unchecked ambition is corrupting: Macbeth starts the play as a noble man, but quickly spirals into murder in his attempt to take the crown of Scotland.

Sometimes the author of a novel, play, or poem is trying to teach the reader a specific lesson. This lesson is what's known as the moral of the story. It's slightly different from the theme in that the moral is a lesson that the reader is supposed to take away from the book, ideally in order to apply it to his or her own life. Themes, on the other hand, are more nuanced and present only the author's viewpoint on a topic. For example, the moral of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is that you should always try to be kind and generous to those around you, while one possible theme might be "Generosity is an important part of living a good life." While all texts will have a theme, not all with have a moral.

At its most basic, a symbol is simply something that represents something else. We use symbols often in our everyday lives: traffic signs are symbols that tell us to do things like stop, yield, or turn, and black is a color that in American culture represents death or mourning. In their writing, authors will often use specific objects or people to stand in for larger, more complex ideas. For example, in William Butler Yeats's poem "The Wild Swans at Coole," the swans represent a flawless, idealized version of nature.

Motifs are literary devices that occur repeatedly throughout a work. Often they are symbols that appear in several version in the story, but they are usually more complex and layered than a simple "X stands for Y." Instead, authors weave together several symbols into elements like plots and characterization in order to build a more nuanced story. For example, blood is a symbol in Macbeth (e.g., when Lady Macbeth has blood on her hands, it symbolizes her guilt), but blood is also a motif. It's referenced many times throughout the play and represents several different ideas in difference scenes. Shakespeare uses all this imagery of blood to build character and create suspense.

Sometimes it seems easiest to start your analysis with a straightforward reading of the plot, but plot is actually more complicated that just saying "First A happened, then B, then C..." The first step in analyzing plot is to identify all the major elements.

Building a complex character in a novel or play is a difficult task. Unlike in movies or television, the author can't use any visual clues to tell the reader what kind of person he or she is encountering. Instead, the author has to build the characters using descriptions as well as the character's own words, thoughts, and actions, a process called characterization. There are two main ways an author can present information about a character. The first is explicit characterization, which is when either the narrator or the characters directly tell the reader what a character is like. For instance, when a person is described by the narrator as "timid and quiet," that's explicit characterization. The author can also indirectly tell the reader something about character by showing how they interact with other figures and by the choices that character makes. This method is called implicit characterization. For example, in order to show that a character was timid and quiet, instead of just stating that, the author might describe how she makes up an excuse to avoid going to party.