00:00 HACC Tutoring presents, "How to Analyze Literature." 00:04 Literary analysis can be intimidating to a lot of students, 00:07 and it does take some critical thinking. 00:09 However, it doesn't have to be a mystery. 00:12 First, let's define literary analysis. 00:15 Analysis in general means that you are examining something critically by looking at its separate parts. 00:20 So, if you are analyzing a football team's chance of winning a game, you wouldn't just consider their record. 00:26 You'd also consider the strengths and weaknesses of the players, 00:29 the skills of the coaches, possibly the weather conditions 00:32 or the type of turf, even their motivation 00:35 like with rivalries or home field advantage. 00:37 All of these come together to show a bigger meaning. 00:40 That's exactly what literary analysis is doing, 00:43 only instead of a sports team, you're analyzing a literary text, like a short story, novel, poem, or movie. 00:51 Let's work on an example. 00:52 If we choose to analyze the movie Cinderella, 00:55 our 1st step would be to consider what is a bigger meaning of the story? 00:59 This is called the THEME. 01:01 A theme is a recurring idea or insight found in the text, 01:04 so it's a hidden meaning within the story. 01:07 To come up with a theme for a story it might help to consider a broad topic, like love, 01:13 friendship, or good vs. evil, and then describe what the story is saying about that topic. 01:19 In our example of Cinderella, one of the maintopics is dreams. 01:23 So, now we have to decide what the story is saying ABOUT dreams.... 01:28 One answer could be that it's saying "Dreams can come true if you don't give up." 01:34 So, that's our theme. Now that we've chosen it, let's begin our analysis. 01:39 Remember, analyzing means critically examining a text by looking at its separate parts. 01:44 NOT a summary. 01:46 So, if players, coaches, and weather conditions are some of the separate parts of a team's chance of winning, 01:52 what would be the separate parts of a story? 01:56 The answer to that is LITERARY ELEMENTS, which are the parts of stories. 02:00 Some of the most common literary elements are character, symbolism, 02:04 plot, setting, imagery, and tone/mood. 02:08 If you're not sure what those are, take a moment to look them up in your textbook or online. 02:14 Remember, our chosen theme for Cinderella is "Dreams can come true if you don't give up." 02:19 So, we need to find literary elements that prove that this is a meaning in the story. 02:24 Let's start with plot. 02:26 In the movie, Cinderella eventually gets her dream of going to the ball 02:30 because she didn't give up despite the obstacles that her family caused. 02:34 Prince Charming also gets his dream of finding Cinderella 02:37 after traveling his whole kingdom with the glass slipper. 02:41 Both of these examples are events in the plot that support our bigger meaning, 02:45 "Dreams can come true if you don't give up." 02:48 But you don't want to stop with only one literary element. Try to push it further. 02:52 Another element we could use is dialogue. 02:55 We could discuss the words in the song, "A Dream is a Wish that Your Heart Makes" 02:59 which is from the movie. 03:01 We'd be able to pull out specific lines, like 03:04 [music] "No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, 03:16 the dream that you wish will come true." 03:28 This is another piece of our analysis. 03:31 We could also use the literary element symbolism to prove our theme 03:34 by talking about how the glass slipper symbolizes a dream that has come true. 03:39 After all, shoes made out of glass are certainly more dream-like than realistic, 03:44 but somehow they become true enough for Cinderella to wear to the ball. 03:49 As you can see, we're studying all of these literary elements 03:52 to think critically about the WHOLE story---that's literary analysis. 03:57 You would use this same process to analyze any text. 04:00 First, come up with a theme which again is a bigger meaning of the story, 04:05 then pick out literaryelements that prove that your theme is true. 04:10 Want to learn more tips for succeeding in college? 04:12 Stop by the learning center at YOUR HACC campus to talk with a tutor. 04:16 And don't forget to check out our other cool online videos. 04:19 See ya next time.