• Analyze a theme in the work.

  • Is there a recurring or significant object or idea?

• Analyze the plot.

  • What are the conflicts?

  • How do events connect to each other?

  • Do some events foreshadow others?

  • Does the writer offer a lesson to be learned or a way of looking at life or the world?

  • Is this personal to the author? Is the author responding to some event he or she experienced or recalling some past moment?

• Analyze characters.

  • Who is the protagonist?

  • Who is the antagonist?

  • Consider their behavior, how they are described, what they say, and how all this fits into the plot or theme of the work or its setting.

  • Do the characters change or stay the same?

• Analyze the structure of the work.

  • Is it chronological?

  • Is there foreshadowing?

  • Is there symmetry? If so what is the purpose of the symmetry.

• Analyze the narrator.

  • Who is telling the story?

  • What is the narrator’s tone or attitude?

• Look at the genre of the work.

  • Is it a play (tragedy or comedy), a short story, a novel, or a poem?

  • How does this work compare to others of its type?

  • Does it blend several genres of literature?

• Analyze the work in terms of gender.

  • How does the work portray women or men?

  • Is the author exploiting or exploring gender stereotypes?

  • How does it define their roles in the family? in society? in the workplace?

• Analyze the work in terms of class or social hierarchies.

  • To what social class or classes do the characters belong?

  • Is the author exploiting or exploring  social or racial stereotypes?

Adapted from: Harris, Muriel. Prentice Hall Reference Guide. 6^th ed. Upper Saddler River, NJ: Purdue University, 2006.