Writing a Literary Analysis
The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to demonstrate thoughtful understanding of a literary text or set of literary texts. The writer analyzes the text and the author’s stylistic technique and supports the analysis with textual evidence (SpringBoard Writing Workshop English II). This kind of writing requires you to go beyond the obvious observations in a text to analyze the deeper meaning. Literary analysis does not simply summarize the text but rather offers interpretations that can be backed with direct quotations.