Expert tips to improve your literary analysis essay writing to get an A in English. All example quotes are from my essay entitled “The Psyches of Orestes and Electra: Cups of Light and Shadow” that I wrote in 2008 in graduate school (Pacifica Graduate Institute) for my Greek and Roman Mythologies class.
1. Use literary terms in your thesis. Here’s a formula for one way to write a literary analysis thesis:
A subject (theme, characterization, symbol)
Literary devices that back up your assertion about the subject
Your opinion about the subject (your claim)
Example: In the three extant dramatic versions of the Electra story by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Orestes and Electra struggle with dark forces within themselves. By tracing the dark imagery in the three tragedies, paying special attention to the symbolic vessels that contain and hide darkness, one can track the inner journeys of the two protagonists to find that Dionysus’ dualistic psyche acts as an archetype for the protagonists’ inner selves.
2. Write interpretive topic sentences. Each body paragraph should start with your point for that paragraph, not a quote or plot summary. Don’t save your point for the end of the paragraph—give it upfront.
Ex: The two siblings are ambivalently connected to each other in Sophocles’ version of Electra, joined by a yoke of mutual injustice and hatred for their mother.
3. Use literary terms throughout your essay! 1 bonus point per literary device! You need to view the text as a work of art that performs in certain ways to deliver themes and insights to the reader.
Ex: Yet the urn symbol corresponds with the theme of duality, found in all three plays, specifically relating to disguise versus recognition and messengers who convey both lies and truth.
Ex: Electra and Orestes take over the hut, and it becomes a kind of crucible for the two of them, a frame for the changes that take place physically inside the hut and metaphorically inside their psyches.
4. Closely analyze quotes—dig in there! Examine the individual words and phrases that the author chooses and explain your ideas about the meaning in detail. Get creative with your word choices—emphasize the theme you’re exploring.
Ex: Orestes asks Electra, “But tell me what we need for the present moment, how openly or hidden we may make this coming of ours a check for mocking foes?” (Sophocles 1293-5). Concealment and revelation are again joined here. The question is about how much to reveal. What is safe to show to others? How much of myself should I expose? Who sees me for who I really am? Our psyches ask these questions constantly. In this case, the answer is to keep as much as possible secret in the dark. They must continue to harbor the darkness until the murders are completed, so the plan will work and also so that Orestes will have the will to commit them.
5. Choose strong analytical verbs to express your analysis (NOT being verbs—is, am, are, was, were—NO!).
Ex: The chorus twice invokes Hermes, the divine messenger and traveler across boundaries…. In Aeschylus’s work the chorus often recalls the gods and ancient myths to reflect on the plot’s action. … The chorus also associates Hermes with dark and light imagery, and secrets and revelations, like Orestes.
6. Emphasize your points with specifically targeted word choices that reflect your meaning.
Ex: After Orestes tells her that “this urn contains his [Orestes’s] body,” Electra laments, “Now all I hold is nothingness” (1118, 1129). The urn is an empty vessel because there are no ashes inside, but also because Orestes, who is directly identified with the urn, is a hollow man, lonely and hopeless, isolated from his family and his city. The darkness inside the closed vessel shares the shadow across his heart.
7. BONUS POINTS: Think about performative texts and meta-analysis. Does the text DO what it’s TALKING ABOUT? Does it make you feel anxious and uncomfortable and that’s also one of its themes? Does it reveal and hide, while that is also a theme? If so, definitely explore that in your essay.
Ex: In The Libation Bearers the urn is a vehicle of deception; it “holds” Orestes’s secrets, the lie of his fake death and the secret of his true identity. Disguised as a “Daulian stranger out of Phocis,” Orestes pretends to quote a Phocian, Strophius, as he lies to his mother about his death, “For as it is the bronze walls of an urn close in the ashes of a man who has been deeply mourned” (674, 686-7). Orestes plays a messenger carrying another messenger’s story back to the source, a doubly duplicitous role. The urn is a tool to prove his story, which is a “something,” but the urn is really full of nothing but darkness and emptiness. Urn and messenger go hand in hand: the messenger carries the urn to the recipients, who receive the tale, just as the audience receives the tale in the form of the play. The play is also both urn and messenger, as it holds the action and themes as well as transmitting them. The story is a cup of light and shadow, alternately revealing and concealing as it plays with the duplicitous natures of the characters and their underlying archetype, Dionysus.