How dHow does one know what defines the most significant symbol, theme, character trait or rhetorical device, including evidence from a claim that is essential to writing literary analysis?

Answer 1

✅ 1. Look for Patterns

If a symbol, theme, character trait, or rhetorical device keeps showing up, it’s probably important.

📖 Example: In The Great Gatsby, the color green shows up repeatedly (Gatsby’s light, wealth, hope).

✅ 2. Connect It to the Author’s Message

Ask: “Does this element help reveal the central idea or theme?”

📖 Example: Lennie’s obsession with petting soft things in Of Mice and Men connects to the fragility of dreams.

✅ 3. Ask: Could the Story Exist Without It?

If removing it changes the meaning, it’s significant.

📖 Example: In Macbeth, the motif of blood is essential—it reinforces guilt and consequence.

✅ 4. Find Evidence to Support Your Claim

Look for quotes, imagery, or scenes that prove this element is shaping the story.

📖 Example Claim:

The mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird symbolizes innocence; its repeated mention reinforces the novel’s moral argument that harming the innocent is a sin.

Answer 2

The definition of a literary analysis is the critical interpretation of a narrative work, such as a short story, read in a one sitting, or a longer work, a novel, read as a longer piece of narration that includes theme, background information, including the time and place or setting. An analysis of characterization reveals intent or behavior from the close examination of motivation of external conflict, internal conflict, climax, theme or the main message, which is the theme. The thesis, the point of significance, is a rhetorical element that gives the perspective or the point of view of attitudes of the following elements: the author, the characters themselves, the minor characters, as well as the major characters, the individual character's own self-concept or self-esteem that will reveal one's personal view of gender, social-political, and linguistic problems in order determine the unknown, uncanny, horrific, and unexplainable questions of reality.