Piece by Piece…

1. Piece by Piece… The Specifics of Analysis

2. Analysis Defined…. • Tears a text down into its parts and explains how those parts work together • Examines a subject part by part • The activity we engage in every time we listen, read, or take in sensorial impressions

3. The Act of Analysis… Analysis = SpecificsInduction = SectionsHypothesis = Focus

4. Types of Analysis… • Textual • Sociological • Psychological • Mythological • Deconstruction

5. Textual Analysis… The play’s the thing. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet

6. The Textual Method…. • Examines the following…. • Work’s structure • Rhetorical techniques (irony, tone, etc…) • Figures of speech • Sound devices • Other literary stylings

7. Specifics of Textual Analysis…. • Visual Traits: Look at the length of the paragraphs and the arrangement of lines and stanzas. • Syntax: Grammatical constructions. Consider the use of pronouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Note the order of the subject, predicate, complements and modifiers • Sentences: Length and structure. Look at the number of words, kinds of sentences (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex), and sentence patterns. In poetry check out the line(meter) and stanza length. • Point of view: Speaker. Determine how the author chooses to tell the story. Does the point of view shift?

8. Continue Textual Analysis… • Diction: Choice of words. Determine whether the words are formal or informal, concrete or abstract, connotative or denotative. • Sound Devices: Look for sound devices: assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia. • Imagery: Word pictures. What mood does the imagery evoke? Examine the images for connotative or symbolic overtones. • Figures of speech: Literary devices: simile, metaphor, symbol, personification

9. Continue Textual Analysis… • Structure: Arrangement of ideas: Look for chronological presentation, flashback, stream of consciousness, connection by suggestion, contrasts or comparisons. Is the piece primarily narrative, descriptive, or expository. If the piece is a poem, is it arranged in traditional structures, or is it free verse? • Tone: Tone is the attitude the speaker takes toward the subject matter, the emotional coloring of the work. If, for instance, a friend tells you, “I’m going to get married today,” the facts of his statement are clear. But the emotional meaning may vary according to the tone of voice with which the statement is made. He may be ecstatic (“I’m getting married today!”); he may be incredulous (“I can’t believe it. I’m getting married today.”); he may be resigned (“Might as well face it: I’m getting married today.”); he may be in despair (“Horrors! I’m getting married today.”).

10. Practice Time….. Design I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,On a white heal-all, holding up a mothLike a white piece of rigid satin cloth --Assorted characters of death and blightMixed ready to begin the morning right,Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,And dead wings carried like a paper kite.What had that flower to do with being white,The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?What brought the kindred spider to that height,Then steered the white moth thither in the night?What but design of darkness to appall?--If design govern in a thing so small. ~Robert Frost

11. Sociological Analysis Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ~Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

12. Sociological Analysis Defined…. • Concerned with the way social groups operate • Examine the nature of power inherent in all relationships • Targets groups of characters, isolating the conflicts and inadequacies in the arrangement and between individuals within and without those groups • Examine interactions within cultures • Isolates the forces that create conditions under which the characters operate

13. Practice time… • SOLDIER'S HOME, by Ernest Hemingway Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919. There is a picture which shows him on the Rhine with two German girls and another corporal. Krebs and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are not beautiful. The Rhine does not show in the picture. By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.

14. Psychological Analysis Why then will you say that I am mad? ~Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

15. Psychological Analysis defined… • An analysis of a character’s personality could be applied to characters and their motivations • Deals with the conflict between what a character unconsciously desires and a contrary desire on the part of the same character that violates social norms

16. One Theory of Psychological Analysis… • Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development • Pre conventional stages-behavior motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain • Punishment and obedience • Bartering and exchange • Conventional Morality • Interpersonal Conformity • Law and Order • Post conventional or principled morality • Prior Rights and Social Contract • Universal Ethical Principles

17. Practice Time… •    TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.    It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever. ~THE TELL-TALE HEART by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

18. Mythological Analysis “Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?” ~Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

19. Mythological Archetypes… • Hero • The innocent • The trickster • The warrior • The teacher/prophet • Wise fool/saint • Journey • Innocence • Initiation • Chaos • Resolution

20. Hero… • The Innocent • Possess an innate understanding that has little basis in wisdom or knowledge • Child/Childlike • The Trickster • Deception and playfulness • Young teen/challenges the status quo • Charms but teaches us

21. Hero… • The Warrior • Faces the system straight on • Acknowledges the rules and matches his strength against established boundaries • The Teacher/Prophet • Matured Hero • Uses experience and wisdom to guide others

22. Hero… • Wise/Fool/Saint • Returns to the state of innocence • Lifetime of experience ****************************************************** These archetypes appeal to our need to find means by which we might recapture some sense of paradise that we can no longer apprehend in our state of ignorance or prepare us for a future paradise.

23. The Stages of the Journey… Innocence • In the stage of innocence, the world and we are one. • We feel no division or separation from others, believing we are the center of the universe. • Suffering is minimal and short-lived, and death is a foreign concept. • For the most part, our lives are happy.

24. The Stages of the Journey… Initiation • Three kinds of events can cause our fall from innocence: • Death-Death tells us that someone we love dearly can be separated from us; it tells us that no one, including ourselves, is immune. Our awareness of death is an awareness of our own mortality. • An Awareness of Evil- violates our belief in the fairness and justice of the world. We are left wondering what the good of good behavior is. • An awakening- creates intense desire within us, a desire that can either be frustrating or, in the event of a failed relationship, fulfilled and then retracted.

25. The Stages of the Journey…Chaos • The state of chaos is where all art is created. • It is the struggle of our existence to reconcile the information revealed to us through the initiatory experience and move on despite our belief that the future holds only more pain and unrelieved suffering. • For many, the desire is to move backwards, to return to a state of innocence, to employ denial against what we do not want to acknowledge. • The true hero is not defeated by this knowledge, instead transforms it into wisdom.

26. The Stages of the Journey…Resolution • The hero who advances to this stage does so with open eyes. • The hero is not that person who has learned how to evade the knowledge of the fall, but has instead integrated it into a wider, fuller, and truer vision of the world. • In literature, some heroes who fail to achieve the resolution of the final stage are: Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby • By contrast the heroes and, mostly, heroines of feminist and ethnic literature tend to find a way through the darkness to a kind of peace, usually finding aid through community.

27. Textual Deconstruction Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. ~The Wizard of Oz

28. Deconstruction defined… • Meaning behind the meaning • Dismantles the text into its component parts, deconstruction examines the parts themselves-not what they mean but why were they selected • Why does the text exists at all and what the motive is behind its creation? • Staple of media studies • Analysis = what does it mean? • Deconstruct = what is its intent?

29. Practice… • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJWA3Vo6TU&feature=player_detailpage

30. Lesson Wrap-Up Two Poems: You’re Missing and My Way Home

31. What to do???? • First Step- complete a textual analysis on each poem. • Second Step- complete a sociological analysis on each poem. • Third Step- complete a psychological analysis on each poem. • Fourth Step- complete a mythological analysis on each poem. • Second Step- complete a deconstruction analysis on each poem.

32. Standards…(See Notes)