We know that writing papers about literature can be hard. Sometimes you may be so stressed that you don鈥檛 know where to begin. Sometimes you may not know what your teachers are even talking about when they say to write a literary analysis.聽Sometimes you may HATE the story you鈥檙e supposed to write about and despise reading in general.聽We get it.

We鈥檝e developed this site with those and many other student concerns in mind.聽We want to help you write a great literary analysis paper, an essay where you argue for how an author delivers a particular idea or message (most teachers call this a theme) using particular strategies (teachers often call these devices or elements鈥攕ymbols, characters, metaphors, etc.). Writing about literature isn鈥檛 easy, and it will take time and hard work, but we鈥檝e come up with a doable process that will help you write a successful essay.

Writing a literary analysis essay is important;聽understanding this point聽will help you write a better聽paper.聽We believe the process of writing about literature will not only help you understand literature better, but it will help you understand yourself and important issues in the world better (things like love, death, racism, war, sexism, family, friendship, power).聽We believe that thinking about these issues will also make reading and writing about literature more enjoyable and maybe even fun – we鈥檙e geeky that way.聽But even if you鈥檙e not a geek, there are practical reasons why writing about literature will help you鈥攜ou will develop critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills that will transfer to other classes and also jobs once you鈥檙e out of school.

Finally, we should mention that we鈥檝e created this site to be flexible.聽We have a process, but you don鈥檛 necessarily have to follow every step as we describe it鈥攖here may be parts you find helpful, and parts that you don鈥檛.聽Let us know the parts that help and just ignore the parts that don鈥檛 and if you have any suggestions on what would make this site more helpful, please let us know.聽Good luck!