Text Analysis:

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Text Analysis

• Basics

2005 Spring Graduate Writing II
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Outline Main Points

• Main Argument
• should suggest the scope and structure of your
  paper
• Needs re-consideration
• should comes with a clear definition of terms.
  e.g. the Lost Generation
• should be followed by a response to current
  scholarship.
• Structure Coherence
• use logical transitions to avoid gaps.

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Outline Main Points (2)

• Analysis
• The quote is unrelated to the analysis.
• Be close to the text.
• Straighten out the different semantic levels the
  text involves or categories your analysis works
  with. (e.g. Beloved Beloveds different
  identities different readings of history Lady
  Oracle Joan at different ages )
• Context
• -- avoid sweeping generalization about the social
  background.
• Language local errors, sentence structure,
  professional tone.

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Main Argument-- does not suggest the structure
(1)

• As pieces of memory of African Americans are
  recollected through the process of Beloveds
  retrospect, my analysis here proposes to release
  black peoples traumatic memory from history and
  an infant phantoms nostalgic desires for her
  loss under an assumption that they can get
  rebirth from the images of life and death in this
  sort of feminine writing.
• 1) androgynous figure 2) going back to the
  mother Africa 3) repetition as chorus and
  against linear history

5
Rev. Main Argument and Structure (1)

• As fragmentary memories of African Americans
  experience of the Middle Passage are recollected
  and connected with her personal sense of loss,
  Beloveds soliloquy not only evokes the
  individual and collective trauma of loss, but
  also asserts her and the races right to own
  their identity and origin.
• 1) loss on the individual and collective levels
• 2) assertion on the individual and collective
  levels.
• Other clues I am not dead.

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Main Argument and Structure (2) --scope

• Hamlet, one of Shakespeares most famous
  tragedies, deals not only with young Hamlets
  individual dilemma but also with the nations
  destiny accompanying a series of suspicions
  aroused by the emergences of the ghost. In order
  to present how the play creates an uncertain and
  suspicious atmosphere to intensify Hamlets
  gloominess and his conflict with Claudius and
  also foreshadow the tragic ending, the intention
  of this paper is set to analyze the first Act of
  the play bit by bit so as to see the buildup of
  its atmospheric designation.

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Rev. Main Argument (2) scope broadened

• Hamlet, one of Shakespeares most famous
  tragedies, deals not only with young Hamlets
  individual dilemma in life but also with that of
  his nations. The motivation and justification
  of both his procrastination and final revenge
  have been topics for endless analyses and
  debates. This paper argues that Hamlet is
  conditioned to do both, as is shown first in the
  atmospheric setup in Act I, and then in the
  monologues which embody contemporary social
  discourses. The play, first of all, creates an
  uncertain and suspicious atmosphere to intensify
  Hamlets suspiciousness and desire to choose and
  clarify. Hamlets monologues, on the other hand,
  reveal ideologies of family hierarchy to which he
  firmly subscribes. Both the atmospheric
  designation and the monologues, then, reveal how
  Hamlets tragedy is that of one suffering from
  the conflicting ideologies of identity as a
  social role and as one formed with individual
  choices.

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Main Argument and Structure (3) not supported

• (On Winter Dreams)
• I merely want to present how Fitzgerald presents
  the same theme the loss of dream (?) in a
  shorter length in this story, and Fitzgerald
  almost has completed a mans whole life in
  nineteen pages successfully by using metaphorical
  elements with colors, smiles, names, and seasons
  (?) to convey his hidden criticism(?) that the
  environmental force causes the loss of dreams.

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Main Argument and Analysis (3) Winter Dreams
-ref

• Why-- Nor, when he had seen that it was no use,
  that he did not possess in himself the power to
  move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he
  bear any malice toward her.
• Dexters responses When autumn had come and
  gone again it occurred to him that he could not
  have Judy Jones. He had to beat this into his
  mind but he convinced himself at last. He lay
  awake at night for a while and argued it over. He
  told himself the trouble and the pain she had
  caused him, he enumerated her glaring
  deficiencies as a wife. Then he said to himself
  that he loved her, and after a while he fell
  asleep. . . .
• Judys approach and Dexters response
• "I wish you'd marry me."
• The directness of this confused him. He should
  have told her now that he was going to marry
  another girl, but he could not tell her. He could
  as easily have sworn that he had never loved her.
  . . .

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Rev. Main Argument and Analysis (3) Winter
Dreams

• Why does Dexter love Judy Joans without marrying
  her? If he does not want to marry her, why does
  he then break the engagement with his fiancée?
  What makes him, in other words, lose his dream?
  In this paper, I argue that the dream of marrying
  a beautiful upper-class woman gets broken not
  only because Judy is superficial and insincere,
  but also because Dexter does not have the power
  to move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones.
  The power, I think, is more emotional than
  economic. In this materialistic society, Dexter
  loses his dreams because neither the target nor
  the dreamer is capable of realizing it.
• Structure 1) Dexters dream (colors) 2) Judys
  superficiality 3)Dexters self-adjustment and
  subsequent coldness 4) societys indifference
  and focus on appearance and pleasure-seeking.

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Main Argument(4) need re-consideration

• As a result, I would like to argue that his
  conventional images of a woman and economic power
  interfere her path to search for freedom. (Jane
  Eyre) ? a bit one-sided (Rochester conventional
  and Jane independent.)

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Main Argument (4) --ref

• Jane Erye
• While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in
  the glass, and felt it was no longer plain there
  was hope in its aspect and life in its colour
  and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the
  fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the
  lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to
  look at my master, because I feared he could not
  be pleased at my look but I was sure I might
  lift my face to his now, and not cool his
  affection by its expression.

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Main Argument (4) ref 2

• Jane Erye
• Chap 2 Janeaware of her plain appearance--"had
  I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting,
  handsome, romping childthough equally dependent
  and friendlessMrs Reed would have endured my
  presence more complacently her children would
  have entertained for me more of the cordiality of
  fellow-feeling the servants would have been less
  prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery"

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Main Argument (4) ref 3

• Jane Erye
• Chap 23 Jane "Do you think, because I am poor,
  obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and
  heartless? You think wrong -- I have as much soul
  as you, -- and full as much heart...
• Rochester Youpoor and obscure, and small and
  plain as you areI entreat to accept me as a
  husband" ? and she does accept him.
• Chap 24 --"Do you remember what you said of his
  French mistress Céline Varens?of the diamonds,
  the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your
  English Céline Varens"

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Main Argument (4) ref 4

• Jane Erye
• Chap 38
• Reader, I married him. . . . Mary, I have been
  married to Mr. Rochester this morning.
• I meant to become herAdels governess once
  more, but I soon found this impracticable my
  time and cares were now required by another--my
  husband needed them all.

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Rev. Main Argument (4)

• The story of Jane as a poor, obscure, plain and
  little orphan, I argue, is one of insistent but
  uncertain self-assertion as well as ultimate
  domestication. On the one hand, Jane Erye seeks
  to assert her economic independence and maintain
  her equality with Rochester in love, while the
  latter insists on his masculine authority. On
  the other, although the story ends with humbling
  of Rochester and their happy marriage, altogether
  Janes growth is not a growth beyond the
  19th-century ideologies of beauty but rather
  that into wifely responsibilities.
• Structure 1) Janes obscure background
  plainness 2) Janes pursuit of economic
  independence 3) tug-of-war Jane assertion vs.
  Rochesters domination 4) Red Room, Bertha, and
  Janes ultimate submission to social ideology of
  marriage and beauty.

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Definition

• Briefly speaking, if the meaning of life can be
  measured by two mediums, the process, or the
  outcome, the idea existence is prior to essence
  focuses on the process rather than the outcome
  In the epigraph on The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
  quotes from Ecclesiastes, One generation passeth
  away, and another generation cometh but the
  earth abideth foreverThe sun also ariseth, and
  the sun goesth down, and hasteth to the place
  where he aroseaccording to his circuits (1).
  The quote cannot explicate the concept of life
  more life is a circle, where there is no ending
  and no beginning since every point in a circle
  can be a start and can be an end, counting on the
  outcome (vague) becomes useless.

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Rev. Definition

• The Sun Also Rises opens with two epigraphs
  Gertrude Steins Youre all a lost generation,
  and the lines from Ecclesiastes, One generation
  passeth away, and another generation cometh but
  the earth abideth foreverThe sun also ariseth,
  and the sun goesth down, and hasteth to the place
  where he aroseaccording to his circuits (1).
  Is it true that nothing is new under the sun and
  all human lives run in their definite route?
  That the characters, being part of these circles
  of life and death, are completely lost to the
  meaning of life? The meaning of life, I argue,
  is not pre-given rather, ones existence itself
  determines ones meanings. This paper examines
  the choices the protagonists make in the novel
  and argues that its meanings reside not in the
  ending, but rather in the process of
  choice-making, and, more importantly, the human
  concern and grace maintained in the process.

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Argument --a response to current scholarship.

• The Sun Also Rises
• not all the characters are Hemingways heroes
• agreeing with Hemingway?
• the controversies around Brett

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II. Structure and Coherence

• Buried Child
• Thesis Through the subtle exchanges in dialogue
  and the characters use of symbols, the family is
  shown to be imprisoning, rife with power struggle
  which ultimately leads to a possibility of
  regeneration. (end of one paragraph)
• (next par.) Shepard sets the setting in Midwest,
  Illinois. From the beginning of the play, the
  setting is dark and a little weird. The family
  and the house seem to be isolated from the
  outside world and fragmentary inside.

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Rev. Structure and Coherence

• Buried Child -- Thesis Through the subtle
  exchanges in dialogue and the characters use of
  symbols, the family is shown to be imprisoning,
  rife with power struggle which ultimately leads
  to a possibility of regeneration. (end of one )
• (next ) In the dark and gloomy background of the
  Midwest, the family and the house look lifeless
  and isolated, with dialogue suggesting hidden
  conflicts and a buried secret.
• (next )(transition from the gaps in dialogue to
  the secret hidden beneath. How it is revealed.)
• (new Symbols of covering and constraints get
  used differently and suggest different meanings.)

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Structure Coherence Buried Child

• . . .. This means that, in his mind, Dodge is
  covered with dark cloud, because of his wife and
  sons betrayal.
• () However, in Act III, the sun comes out. It
  represents the truth comes out (mechanical
  transition loose sentence structure
  repetition). (Suggestion which represents the
  disclosure of truth.) When the sun comes out,
  Halie is the one feels delightful. She can see a
  hope and a bright future. Here, sun is the symbol
  of hope and new life. Consequently, rain and sun
  provides a contrary symbolic meaning to produce
  effects and mental states for characters.
• ()(Gap)Corn and corn field are also important
  symbols in the play. In first act, when Tilden
  brings plenty of corn into the house, no one
  believes that is from their own corn field.
  Nobody can see the field, except Tilden. Corn
  field can be the symbol of their past and their
  family duty.

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Rev. Analysis Buried Child

• . . .. This means that, in his mind, Dodge is
  covered with dark cloud, because of his wife and
  sons betrayal.
• () Besides the dark cloud, the other symbols are
  used and interpreted differently by different
  characters. Corn and the corn field, for one
  thing, can mean secrecy, family tradition as well
  as power of regeneration. In the first act, when
  Tilden brings plenty of corn into the house, no
  one believes that is from their own corn field
  since it has been neglected. This miraculous
  growth of the corns in the field suggests the
  regenerating power of Nature, which neither human
  neglect nor meddling can stop. In Tildens hand,
  the corn, on the other hand, becomes a means of
  disclosure as he husks the corn and throws the
  husks at his father, just as from the field he
  finds the corpse of the buried child. (next page)

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Rev. Coherence Buried Child (2)

• (). Finally, if the sun are life-giving, the
  rain that comes with dark cloud is, too, in an
  indirect way. When the sun comes out in Act III,
  Halie feels delightful and sees a hope and a
  bright future. Here, the sun is the symbol of
  hope and new life. Towards the end and after
  Dodge dies, however, she says to Dodge that it
  must be the rain that causes the growth of the
  crops, the rain that apparently hides and
  constrains, but takes everything straight down
  deep to the roots to allow growth and
  regeneration.

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Buried Child Ref.

• I've never seen such corn.... Tall as a man
  already. This early in the year. Carrots too.
  Potatoes. Peas. It's like a paradise out there. .
  . . A miracle. Maybe it was the rain. . . . I've
  never seen a crop like this in my whole life.
  Maybe it's the sun. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's
  the sun. (BC 64-65)

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Analysis (1) quote unrelated to the analysis.

• He concludes that Dexter breaks his fiancées
  heart and leaves alone away. He loves Judy, but
  he does not marry her, because he realizes that
  he cannot possess her. It is only a matter about
  his life attitude rather than a matter about love
  affair. Fitzgerald decpicts, Dexter was at
  bottom hard-minded. The attitude of the city on
  his action was of no importance to him, not
  because he was going to leave the city, but
  because any outside attitude on the situation
  seemed superficial (233). By this conclusion,
  readers realize that Dexter decides to keep the
  loss of dream in his mind to replace keeping
  after to the dream.

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Rev. Analysis (1) an analysis built around the
quote.

• Winter, at the end, is symbolic of the hardened
  heart of Dexter. Dexter not only breaks his
  fiancées heart, but also protects himself
  against being hurt by Judy, one he loves but
  cannot possess. He is also indifferent to what
  others would think of him, and, as he is leaving
  the city, any outside attitude on the situation
  seemed superficial (233). Only the knowledge of
  Judys becoming an unattractive housewife brings
  tears to his eyes, and the memory that "long ago,
  there was something in him, but now that thing
  is gone.

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Analysis (2) Be close to the text

• And do not ignore related aspects (which can be
  mentioned briefly it were not your focus).
• 1. Since darkness is an image analyzed as part of
  the uncertain and gloomy background, darkness as
  Hamlets (external and internal) color of
  mourning should not be ignored.

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Analysis (2) Be close to the text

• 2. Hamlet When Claudius claims young Hamlet to
  be his cousin and his son, and ask him to cheer
  up, we can notice that he is reluctant to be in
  the position of a son as he states that he has
  been too much in the sun/son. (Act I, ii, 63
  67) (see next page)

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Analysis (2) Hamlet ref.

• 2. Hamlet But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my
  son, -- HAMLET    AsideA little more than
  kin, and less than kind.KING CLAUDIUS   How is
  it that the clouds still hang on
  you?HAMLET   Not so, my lord I am too much i'
  the sun. (see next page)

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Analysis (2) Be close to the text

• 2. Hamlet When Claudius claims young Hamlet to
  be his cousin and his son, and ask him to cheer
  up, Hamlet is reluctant take it as he first says
  in an aside that being called a son is a little
  more than kin, and less than kind. Further, he
  puns on the word sun to say that he is not
  beclouded but is too much in the sun,
  suggesting both his unwillingness to be
  Claudiuss son and his knowing the crime (Act I,
  ii, 63 67).

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Analysis (3) analysis without support quick
switching between different levels.

• Beloved
• The sun forcing Beloved to close her eyes is
  not just to blind her but to burn her in the
  drought of the land as a tyrant (249). The sun is
  also related to the feeling, heat, in fever or
  disease which externalizes psychological and
  historical traumatic anxiety of African
  Americans. Although the sun might burn her to
  death, Beloveds crying out her desires is a
  speaking out on the one hand and a resistance
  to death, even a search for life on the other.

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Rev 1. Analysis (3) clarification of semantic
levels

• The sun forcing Beloved to close her eyes is
  not just to blind her but to burn her as she,
  like the other slaves, stands there as
  commodities to be bought (249). Amidst the
  description of the hardship the slaves go through
  in the Middle Passage and afterwards, including
  hunger, death and rape, Beloved, on the other
  hand, inscribes a story of love and origin. She
  said that she cannot find her man the one
  whose teeth she have loved a hot thing.
  Whether the man is the one who is on top of her
  dead, or raping her, she loves him as they are
  companies in the Middle Passage. The sun here,
  then, is related to love. Moreover, Beloved
  re-tells the story of a beginning In the
  beginning I could see her I could not help her
  because the clouds were in the way. Through
  this re-telling, she makes visible or present the
  lineage from Sethes mother, to Sethe and then to
  her.

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Rev 2. Analysis (3) clarification of semantic
levels (2)

• The sun forcing Beloved to close her eyes is
  not just to blind her but to burn her as she,
  like the other slaves, stands there as
  commodities to be bought by their white masters
  (249). Amidst the description of the hardship
  the slaves go through in the Middle Passage and
  afterwards, including hunger, death and rape,
  Beloved, on the other hand, inscribes a story of
  love and origin. She said that she cannot find
  her man the one whose teeth she have loved
  a hot thing. Here a hot thing can refer back
  to the sun, but it also connotes a loving heart
  that is associated with the man and later the
  woman who jumps off the ship. Whether the man is
  a dead corpse or a rapist, whether the woman is
  Sethe or another unknown woman, she loves them
  all the same as they are companies in the Middle
  Passage and they form a community of African
  American slaves.
• The other way Beloved re-tells the story is to
  re-inscribe an origin, a beginning, when she
  can see her--the mother. Through this
  re-telling, she makes visible or present the
  genealogy from Sethes mother, to Sethe and then
  to her. This genealogy is not just of Sethes
  family, but also that of Black female slaves.

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Analysis (3) -ref

• I am not dead the bread is sea-colored I am too
  hungry to eat it the sun closes my eyes those
  able to die are in a pile I cannot find my man
  the one whose teeth I have loved a hot thing . .
  .
• In the beginning I could see her I could not
  help her because the clouds were in the way

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Analysis (3) classification (2)

• Analysis of mother-daughter relations in Lady
  Oracle
• Joan -- possible categories
• symbiotic relations in early childhood e.g. the
  mothers makeup scene
• Childhood and Teenage Socialization with an
  extended schizoid-paranoid stage
• -- early failure in socialization ballet
• -- her failure in synthesizing her feelings of
  love/need and narcissism/destructiveness
• -- e.g. the dream,
• -- Battling with Mother on eating taking on a
  mother-role outside
• Gradual Separation from the Mother
• Simultaneously, she distracts herself with
  fantasies and surrogate mothers, e.g. fat lady
  and ---.
• Turning point (1) breakup with the mother ?
  fantasies ? creativity
• Turning point (2) the mothers death a delayed
  depressive stage.

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IV. Context

• -- avoid sweeping generalization about the social
  background
• -- e.g. discussion of Jane Eyre in relation to
  the images of Nineteenth-century women
• -- e.g. discussion of Ernestina in The French
  Lieutenants Woman in relation to the typical
  images of Victorian women.

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V. Language local errors

• (Article) e.g. the first act the Lost
  Generation
• Wrong expression Metaphoric study
• (WORD FORM) in retrospect retrospection

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Language usage Sentence Structure

• The different social positions are also barriers
  to interfere her to voice herself freely in front
  of Rochester, because a governess, an ambiguous
  position in society (wrong apposite), is required
  to be equipped with abundant learning, but
  ironically her status is merely regarded as a
  servant. (parallelism)
• Correction The discrepancy between Rochesters
  and Janes social positions make it hard for Jane
  to voice her opinions in front of Rochester. As
  a governess in her ambiguous social position,
  Jane is required to be learned as a teacher as
  well as humble as a servant. (parallelism)

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Language Professional Tone

• I am especially interested in . . .
• Through the description of her appearance, the
  reader will have no difficulty to associate her
  image with stereotypical Victorian women. When
  the reader appreciates the portraits of the
  nineteenth-century ladies, he or she will
  discover easily that Ernestinas features are
  very similar to theirs.
• (Either avoid such kind of general description or
  give examples. To find examples, you can either
  use Thomas Sullys portraits--http//www.artcyclop
  edia.com/artists/sully_thomas.html -- or start
  from here Women as Subject in Victorian Art --
  Representations of Women http//www.victorianweb.o
  rg/gender/arts2.html. This page, however, does
  not include images of Victorian ladies.)