Critical Analysis of Fiction

1
Critical Analysis of Fiction

• An Explanation and Example

2
Critical Analysis of Fiction

• For Paper 2, you did a literary analysis. You
  fitted a story into a literary movement, and
  discussed how the characteristics of that
  movement were important to the individual story
  you were writing about.
• While the literary analysis you wrote for Paper 2
  involved the same basic process that you will use
  to write your critical analysis for Paper 4, a
  critical analysis is much more involved.
• Rather than looking outside the story, and
  talking about how certain features of the story
  you have chosen match those of other stories (as
  in Paper 2), for Paper 4, you will look intensely
  at how a single story is put together.
• You should focus on one or two of the tools that
  the author has used to make meaning in the story
  (for example theme, setting, imagery, irony,
  symbolism, etc.) and discuss how that single tool
  (or those two tools) is/are important to the
  entire work of fiction.

3
An Explanation of the Assignment

• For Paper 4, you may use the same short story
  that you used for Paper 2. Or you may choose a
  new story from the works contained in pages
  619-808 of the Norton Anthology.
• You will follow the same procedure for writing
  and submitting the Formal Outline for Paper 4,
  and Paper 4 itself, that you used in Unit 6 to
  write and submit the Formal Outline for Paper 2,
  and Paper 2.
• The only real difference here is that you will be
  writing a longer, more thoroughly researched
  paper that deals with the internal workings of
  the story you select, rather than fitting that
  story into a literary movement.
• Since you have been shown the six steps in the
  previous Unit, I will not go back through all
  those steps in this presentation. I will simply
  give you the end product, the actual essay.
• This essay is longer than the one you have to
  write, but it does precisely the same thing. You
  do not need to read the target story that this
  essay analyzes. Instead, you should carefully
  read the sample and pay attention to how it is
  put together. Your essay should be set up
  exactly like the sample.

4
The Six Steps

• In Unit 6, you were given the six steps to doing
  a critical analysis. You should follow those
  same steps in doing your critical analysis for
  Unit 8.
• To begin, you should complete the first three
  steps
• Step 1 Reread the short story
• Step 2 Annotate the short story
• Step 3 Make a formal outline
• Then, once have submittedand had returned marked
  acceptedthe Formal Outline for Paper 4, you
  should complete the next three steps
• Step 4 Select quotations
• Step 5 Expand the formal outline into a critical
  analysis using Formal MLA Style
• Step 6 Do a Works Cited page

5
The Sample Essay

• The story I will use for this sample Paper 4 is
  Hacienda, by Katherine Anne Porter. Much of
  this story takes place on a train ride across
  Mexico. In the essay that follows, I discuss how
  the train itself, and its passengers, are used by
  Porter to comment on her opinion of the failure
  of the Mexican Revolution to bring meaningful
  change to Mexico.
• Katherine Anne Porter was a 20th Century American
  writer. She was born in Indian Creek, Texas, in
  1890. She died in 1980. She lived in the USA,
  Mexico, and Europe.
• Porter spent a good deal of time in Mexico, an
  experience she used in writing many of her best
  stories (like Maria Concepcion and Flowering
  Judas).
• Porters books include collections of short
  stories (Flowering Judas, etc.) and a novel (Ship
  of Fools).
• However, although her novel was critically
  acclaimed, it is for her short fiction that
  Porter has received the most recognition.

6
The Sample Essay, cont.

• A Failed Revolution on Wheels The Train as a
  Microcosm of Mexico in Katherine Anne Porters
  Hacienda
• On 14 June 1965, Katherine Anne Porter wrote a
  preface entitled Go Little Book for her
  collected short stories, in which she calls
  Mexico her much-loved second country (v). It
  must therefore have been extremely difficult for
  Porter, who had known and written about Mexico
  since the 1920s, to witness first-hand the
  appalling shortcomings of the much-ballyhooed
  Mexican Revolution. In Hacienda, Porter uses a
  combination of symbolism and irony to take to
  task those whom she holds responsible for the
  failure of the Mexican Revolution to follow
  through on its glowing promises to the Mexican
  people. Porter makes it clear, through careful
  use of these two powerful literary tools, that
  for her no social or political group can escape
  its share of blame for the state of affairs in
  post-revolutionary Mexico. The rich, the middle
  class, and the poor the Right and the Left the
  artists, and even art itself are held accountable
  for the lack of real progress despite the toll
  the Revolution took on the people of Mexico.

7
The Sample Essay, cont.

• Porter begins the story by using symbolism and
  irony to chastise the rich, the middle class, and
  the poor of Mexico for their respective roles in
  bringing about the current dismal state of
  affairs in the country. Hacienda opens with
  criticism of the Revolution itself, when Porter
  has her first-person narrator observe with biting
  irony in the first paragraph that Now that the
  true revolution of blessed memory has come and
  gone in Mexico, the names of many things are
  changed, nearly always with the view to an
  appearance of heightened well-being for all
  creatures (135). Indeed, appearancesor at
  best, mere triflesseem to be the only concern of
  the people on the train. Porter levels the bulk
  of her irony at the rich. The members of the
  upper class, embodied by Kennerly, view the poor
  with the same contempt with which they have
  always regarded the lower class. After
  complaining at length about the smell of the
  second-class passengers and their belongings,
  Kennerly leads the narrator and Andreyev into the
  first-class coach and proceeds to build a nest
  in which they might curl up facing each other,
  temporarily secure from the appalling situation
  of being three quite superior persons of the
  intellectual caste of the ruling race at large
  and practically defenseless in what a country!

8
The Sample Essay, cont.

• (136). Although Kennerly is an American, his
  attitudes are identical to those of the native
  ruling class, as is shown later in the story when
  the little party reaches the hacienda on the
  pulque plantation, and Kennerlys views are
  echoed by doña Julia and don Genaro. Indeed,
  Kennerlys nest and don Genaros hacienda perform
  the same function they insulate the superior
  rich from contact with the inferior and degraded
  poor. Porter employs this same type of nesting
  symbolism to criticize the middle class, whom she
  portrays as being envious of the wealth and
  isolation of the rich. Immediately following her
  statement about the use of Pullman cars by the
  very rich when traveling on Mexican trains,
  Porter has the narrator observe that the
  compliment a middle class Mexican always utters,
  when he wishes truly to praise anything, is
  that it is as beautiful as a pulman! (135).
  The word anything makes it clear that the
  symbol of the Pullman applies to attitude of
  middle class citizens toward the whole of
  society, as well as to their notion of ideal
  railroad travel. The fact that the author never
  once mentions the middle class again strongly
  implies that, for Porter, there is nothing more
  to be said for the middle class in Mexico than
  that they would give anything to become like the
  rich.

9
The Sample Essay, cont.

• While the author is less savagely ironic when
  it comes to her portrayal of the poor, the
  economically disadvantaged are still taken to
  task. Porter depicts the denizens of the
  second-class car as having settled for mere
  surface conveniences, rather than holding out for
  real social change after the revolution. She
  makes clear her belief that the poor have been
  bought off all too cheaply by those in power. As
  the narrator observes with gentle and yet telling
  irony, Almost nothing can disturb the poor
  peoples quiet ecstasy when they are finally
  settled among their plunder, and the engine,
  mysteriously and powerfully animated, draws them
  lightly over the miles they have so often counted
  step by step (136). Porters use of the word
  plunder strongly implies a connection to the
  Mexican Revolution, whose leaders she later
  portrays as plunderers who have not shared their
  wealth with the common man. That the narrators
  observation regarding the poor people on the
  train is meant to include the entire country is
  shown later on when Porter recounts the story of
  an old Spanish gentleman who, having revisited
  the hacienda after an absence of fifty years,
  says that Nothing has changed (142). At
  least in Porters eyes, nothing has changed that
  really matters.

10
The Sample Essay, cont.

• In addition to her social criticism, Porter
  also uses symbolism and irony to engage in
  political criticism of post-revolutionary Mexico.
  She chastises both the Right and the Left for
  their joint failure to bring real unity to the
  Mexican people. Like the first-class and
  second-class cars that divide the passengers on
  the train, the country is split between the twin
  poles of the Left and the Right. Porter uses the
  character of Kennerly to personify all the
  negative qualities of the rich and powerful
  conservatives on both sides of the border. His
  main concern in life is making money. The irony
  Porter directs against the Right, as embodied in
  the person of Kennerly, is savage. Kennerlys
  first comment, upon hearing that Justino has
  killed his sister is, On the set? My God! We
  are ruined! (147). When he hears that Justino
  has been jailed, Kennerlys response is that
  This is going to hold up everything, and that
  it just means more time wasted (148). The
  fact that the greatest profits are to be gained
  by graft, and by denying basic human rights to
  the poor, is not lost on Kennerlywho, like don
  Genaro, lives in a world of big money, nepotism,
  and insider connections. By linking the

11
The Sample Essay, cont.

• negative characteristics of Kennerly and don
  Genaro, Porter is able to extend her criticism of
  conservative values throughout most of North
  America. Don Genaro, the sole inevitable heir
  (153), has inherited the pulque plantation from
  his grandfather Kennerly owes his chance to make
  big money on the film to his brother-in-law, who
  raised most of the money among his friends for
  the expedition (141). That Porter means to
  equate the conservative practices of Kennerly
  with those of don Genarowho treats the workers
  on his plantation as virtual slaves, and who does
  not believe that Justinos life is worth two
  thousand pesosis shown by the similar way in
  which she employs irony to skewer both men, and
  by the fact that they share a car to the capital
  at the end of the story, on errands that are
  either illegal, immoral, or both.
• Porter also uses symbolism in her critique of
  Mexican liberals. As Jane Krause DeMouy has
  written of Porters use of symbols, students of
  Porter would do well to remember the Jamesian
  principle that art is selection. When Porter,
  like other artists, chooses certain subjects, she
  is not only shaping an entity but saying what she
  considers important, so it is essential to know
  what

12
The Sample Essay, cont.

• she is writing about (par. 2). It is entirely
  fitting that since Porter uses an American to
  symbolize the shortcomings of the conservatives
  in Mexico, she uses a Russian to symbolize the
  failings of Mexican liberals. The weaknesses of
  the Left are embodied by Andreyev. First and
  foremost, Porter paints Andreyev as a hypocrite.
  Although he casts a lot of disapproving glances
  at Kennerly in response to the latters bigoted
  commentary, Andreyev allows Kennerly to pay his
  way on the train. And it is not just Andreyevs
  train ticket that Kennerly pays for. As Andreyev
  says flatly to the narrator, We none of us
  should throw away our money when Kennerly is so
  rich and charitable (137). The irony here cuts
  both ways. While Andreyev is obviously poking
  fun at the idea of Kennerly being charitable, the
  fact that he is taking Kennerlys money remains.
  Porter turns Andreyevs own irony against him,
  leaving the reader with the clear impression that
  the party on the Left in Mexico has been bought
  and paid for by party on the Right. The fact
  that Andreyev sits in a first-class coach with
  Kennerly, rather than in a second-class car with
  the common people, is a symbolic indictment in
  itself. Porters

13
The Sample Essay, cont.

• belief that the Left in Mexicolike the
  government installed by the revolutionhas
  separated itself from the common people is shown
  by her portrayal of Betancourt. Like Andreyev in
  his first-class coach on the train, the
  Mexican-born Betancourt lives in luxury in don
  Genaros hacienda, rather than among the
  impoverished workers. Porter describes
  Betancourt as being completely at the mercy of
  an ideal of elegance and detachment perpetually
  at war with a kind of Mexican nationalism which
  afflicted him like an inherited weakness of the
  nervous system (152). In addition to its
  hypocrisy, the liberal intelligentsia is shown as
  being preoccupied with other things than the
  welfare of the Mexican people.
• Finally, Porter uses symbolism and irony to
  point out the failure of the artists, and even of
  art itself, to improve the lives of the common
  people of Mexico. While the wealthy are shown as
  being consumed merely with making and spending
  money, the artistsmembers of the liberal
  intelligentsia, again personified by Andreyevare
  portrayed as being consumed merely with making
  art. All too often, as is the case with the film
  that the Russians and

14
The Sample Essay, cont.

• Kennerly are making together, this art takes the
  form of empty propaganda which is useless to the
  exploited and disenfranchised poor. Porter makes
  this clear by employing the symbol of Andreyevs
  pictures. Rather than taking some kind of action
  to help the downtrodden Indians whose plight he
  is filming, Andreyev takes pictures. Porter
  levels bitter irony at Andreyevand by extension,
  Mexican artists as wellby having him say to the
  narrator, after showing her photographs of
  Indians with closed dark facesfull of
  instinctive sufferingwomen kneeling at washing
  stones, their blouses slipping from their
  shoulders, that the Indians are so
  picturesquewe shall be accused of dressing them
  up (142). Even art itself does not escape
  blame. Like the artists who make it, Mexican art
  has done nothing to alleviate the suffering of
  the Mexican poor. Indeed, in the case of the
  film, it has actually caused suffering. Justino
  shoots his sister with a pistol that is being
  used as a prop in the film. If not for the film,
  she would still be alive. At its best, art is
  ineffectual. Art, like the artists who make it,
  proves in the end to be merely another passenger
  on the train of the Mexican statelooking out of
  first-class windows at people in need and taking
  pictures.

15
The Sample Essay, cont.

• Porters story, with all its beautiful
  symbolism and its deft use of irony, shows that
  art is powerless against the status quo, both on
  the train and in the country at large. Indeed,
  although Porter depicted Mexico in a positive
  light in her earliest stories, in her more mature
  work, she depicts Mexico as a place of hopeless
  oppression for the native peoples (Porter,
  Katherine Anne 1890-1980). This is certainly
  the case in Hacienda. The narrators ironic
  observations about the rich, the middle class,
  and the poor about the Right and the Left and
  about the artists and even art itself cannot
  change the attitudes of those it seeks to
  chastise. And mere words cannot feed the hungry
  people of Mexico. In the end, the plight of
  Porters beloved country puts her narrator to
  flight. Literally, all she can do is flee. The
  last words in the story, ironically, are spoken
  by the Indian driver, looking forward to a time
  when the green corn will be ready, and ah, there
  will be enough to eat again (170).

16
The Sample Essay, cont.

• Works Cited
• DeMouy, Jane Krause. Katherine Anne Porter
  (1890-1980). Houghton MifflinCollege Division.
  2003. (29 July 2003) lish/heath/syllabuild/iguide/porter.html.
• Porter, Katherine Anne 1890-1980. Books and
  Writers. 2000. (29 July 2003)
  .
• Porter, Katherine Anne. Go Little Book The
  Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. New
  York Harcourt Brace Company, 1979. v-vi.
• Porter, Katherine Anne. Hacienda. The
  Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. New
  York Harcourt Brace Company, 1979. 135-170.