1. A quick guide to surviving Mr. Kelliher’s writing assignments*
Explication and YOU!
A quick guide to surviving Mr. Kelliher’s writing assignments*
*Results may vary

2. Table o’ Contents Understanding the question What is a theme? (Review)
Explicating and Close Reading
Things to avoid
Remember to TAG!
The “Bottom Up” Approach
BREAK!
Paraphrasing vs. using a Quotation
Explication Step 1: Identify Literary Element
Explication Step 2: Explain Lit. Element’s Purpose
Explication Step 3: Connect Back To Your Claim
STRONG Example
WEAK Example

3. Understanding the Question
Define new words
Identify key words
Summarize the question!

4. What is a Theme?
A theme is the author’s central assertion about human nature or the human experience
Themes are conveyed through the author’s discussion of various subjects:
Mortality
Faith
War
Humanity’s Purpose
Love
Fear

5. Explication and Close Reading
To explicate means to unfold the layers of meaning in a text
The purpose of explicating is to reveal themes
Explication requires concentrating on the language of a text, or “close reading”

6. Things to Avoid
Making free associations with no supporting evidence
Restating the plot

7. T.itle A.uthor G.engre Remember to…
In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, setting is used to examine the nature of social mobility and highlight Gatsby’s struggle to join the moneyed elite.

8. The “Bottom Up” Approach
Thesis
Statement
Topic
Sentences
Supporting
Evidence

9. Take a break!
See you in 2!

10. Paraphrasing vs. Using a Quotation
Quotations are word for word transcriptions of the author’s words:
Hawthorne describes the prison as “the black flower of civilized society…” (42).
Paraphrases are faithful summaries of the author’s ideas as he or she intended:
Collectively, the Autumnal women, with their obese frames and loud speech, are an allegory for moral corruption (45-46).

11. Metaphor Allegory Allusion Foil Mood Irony OTHERS???
Explication Step 1: Identify Literary Element

12. Explication Step 2: Explain Literary Element’s Purpose
Invoke the definition of the literary element:
The metaphor compares A to B…
Irony is shown when the meaning of A is thought to be B but is actually C…
Character A highlights several attributes of his foil, Character B…
Explain why the literary element was used

13. Explication Step 3: Connect Back to Your Claim
Identify the point the author is trying to make with the literary device
Explain how the author’s point in this specific example supports your topic sentence and/or thesis as a whole

14. This student used steps 1-3. Can you find them?
STRONG Example
Student’s Topic Sentence: Hawthorne depicts the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s prison as the very representation of society’s cruel judgment, which he deems unnatural.
Explication of Supporting Evidence: Hawthorne’s metaphor compares the “black flower of civilization” to a prison in order to establish his ethical argument that society’s cruel judgement is unnatural (42).
This student used steps 1-3. Can you find them?

15. WEAK Example What went wrong?
Student’s Topic Sentence: Hawthorne depicts the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s prison as the very representation of society’s cruel judgment, which he deems unnatural.
Explication of Supporting Evidence: In front of the prison door is “a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison” (Hawthorne 42). Hawthorne compares society’s prison to a flower, the black color of which serves as a motif that signifies evil throughout the novel.
What went wrong?