lesson
Updated 6 days ago · 2 views
If you tell your friend a dog ate your homework, they might laugh and say, "Yeah, right!" But if you pull out a paper covered in slobbery bite marks, they have to believe you.
In reading and writing, those bite marks are called text evidence—the exact words, actions, and details from a story that prove your ideas are true.
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Using evidence to closely examine a story is called literary analysis. It requires you to make a claim or inference about a story element—such as a character, setting, or event—and prove it with explicit text evidence.
How do you dig into a story and pull out proof for what a character is really like?
This process is the core of literary analysis. In a literary analysis, you make a claim or inference about a story element—such as a character, setting, or event—and prove it using explicit text evidence.
Finding Clues About Characters
Authors rarely say "Leo was unselfish." Instead, they show us his personality through his thoughts, words, and actions.
Read this short scene: Leo's stomach growled loudly. He looked at the last warm biscuit on the plate, then looked at his little sister crying in the corner. He wrapped the biscuit in a napkin and gently placed it in her hands.
To analyze Leo, we make a claim and back it up by quoting the text directly inside quotation marks.
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A common mistake is quote dropping—dropping a quote into your paragraph without explaining what it means. Always add one sentence showing how that quote proves your point!
Characters are only part of the story, so how do you prove something about the world they are standing in?