1. Process of Analysis
Junior Composition

2. Answer the following:
How do you decide with whom you associate? When choosing a friend, at what traits do you specifically look?

3. Possible Answers Their appearance Their actions Their comments
Others’ reactions and comments

4. Political Figures How do you choose a candidate for which to vote?
Where do you get your information?

5. Possible Answers
The same criteria as before, yet we get most of our information from various news sources (Press agents, newspapers, TV news, online, etc.)
When evaluating friends and political figures, we make inferences, which is a critical skill needed for analysis.

6. Inferences To conclude by reasoning from something known or assumed.
Example: A person’s having dark circles under their eyes leads one to infer that the person did not sleep much.
Example: A person’s having body odor leads one to conclude that the person did not bathe.

7. Analysis
The method of examining parts of the whole, such as examining one aspect of literature, in order to arrive at a fuller meaning of the whole.
Write definition at the top of Handout
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8. Interpretation of Poetry
Involves 4 processes:
Observing: Details of description and action, of language and form. Key words, phrases, and images
Connecting: Details and begin to establish a sense of the poem’s coherence.
Inferring: Significance of the connected details of the poem.
Concluding: A provisional conclusion about the poem’s meaning based on our observations, connections, and inferences.

9. Interpretation of Poetry
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer; 
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; 
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; 
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;  
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

10. Interpretation of Poetry
Identify some key words, phrases, and images.
Connect the identified key terms.
Make an inference concerning the poem’s tone.

11. Interpretation of Poetry
Where is the speaker in the beginning of the poem?
To what other setting does the speaker appear to move?
Why begin the first 4 lines the same way?
Are these lines the same length?

12. Process of Analysis
Develop an impression through reading and/or observation.
Verify the accuracy of the impression (inference) by checking specifics. If the impression is not verified, the writer must either refine, revise, or change the impression.
Collect the data once the impression has been verified.
Formulate the thesis statement and organize the data to support it.
Write the rough draft of the analysis

13. “l(a” by: e e cummings
l(a le af fa ll s)
one l
iness

14. “The Road Not Taken” Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
“The Road Not Taken”
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

15. Poem Analysis
Complete handout
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16. Literary Analysis
In character analysis, we know characters by what the author tells us about them.
Methods of Characterization
We must also go beyond what the author says and make inferences based on observing similarities, differences, and causes and their effects.