1. Sonnet Step #1: read and summarize general message
Step #2: translate lines into your own words
Step #3: learn about sonnets
Step #4: analyze each quatrain
Step #5: analyze the ending couplet
Step #6: final, refined analysis

2. Love Life Death Immortality Youth Beauty
Common Themes
Love
Life
Death
Immortality
Youth
Beauty

3. Sonnet 14 lines Three quatrains (4 lines + 4 lines + 4 lines)
A rhyming couplet (2 lines)
The three quatrains present a topic of argument
Couplet represents a solution

4. Sonnet First quatrain: An explanation of a complex theme or conflict
Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or complicated further
Third quatrain: Volta (a turn), often introduced by a "but"
The rhyming couplet: summarizes and leaves the reader with an epiphany

5. Epiphany A sudden leap in understanding
They are usually unpredictable or sudden
The arrival at some truth that makes everything else clear
Light bulb analogy

6. Volta
Author and historian Paul Fussell calls the volta "indispensable”.
He states further that "the turn is the dramatic and climactic center of the poem, the place where the intellectual or emotional method of release first becomes clear and possible. Surely no sonnet succeeds as a sonnet that does not execute at the turn something analogous to the general kinds of 'release' with which the reader’s muscles and nervous system are familiar”