Paper 2  Cultural or literary option?  How to approach paper 2: analytical essay  Academic essay: reflective or persuasive?  Cultural options: arguing a clear response  Literary options: comparing and contrasting a concept’s relevance to literary meaning (theme)  Structuring your response

Focusing your response  Respond to the specific instruction within the title (not the quote/introduction)  Respond to the title in every paragraph  Refer explicitly to the title  “Another way that the theme of a quest is dealt with in... is...”  “..., thus demonstrating that minor characters can, indeed, play major roles”

Analytical content  Analyse, don't describe  Interpret meaning in terms of character/theme  Use examples to back up analysis  No descriptions of plot  Link discussion to theme

Examples  Examples can take many forms  Direct quotes (unlikely)  References to events from the work  “When Marlene dismisses Angie's chances of success in life, she...”  “Jeanette's refusal to renounce her sexuality demonstrates that...”  References to specific stylistic devices

Structuring your response  2 possible approaches:  Text-by-text discussion  Works ok with paper 2  Short transition paragraph, e.g.: “While Catcher in the Rye presents a protagonist who rejects his immediate society, Oranges Is Not the Only Fruit portrays a protagonist who is herself rejected by her immediate society.”  Point-by-point discussion  Trickier, but potentially very effective

Conventions  Underline titles of works, every time  Probably best not to abbreviate titles  Introduce works early on, giving author's name (and brief contextualisation?)  No need for year of publication  Quotation marks are only for quotations