Instruction
For your analytical essays, you should choose one of these aspects of your literary work: The importance of being Earnest
• Setting: Where and when the work is set? What is the social or cultural environment
here? How is the setting significant within the work?
• Point of view, including the narrator (fiction) or speaker (poem): Who is the voice of the
work? How does this choice shape the presentation of the work?
• Plot: What happens and why? Why are these events selected rather than others? If the
plot is not presented chronologically, what is the structure and what is the effect of this
organization?
• Characterization of one character: How do we know what this character is like? What is
the character’s significance in the literary work?
• Analysis of one theme: What is one major idea the work deals with, and what does it say
about it?
• Tone and style: What attitude or emotion is conveyed by the work, and how is this
apparent? How does this relate to the author’s use of language?
Each analytical essay should be at least 1000 words not counting the Works Cited or References
page. You do not need to use any sources other than the literary work (the primary source).
However, if you do use secondary sources (writing about the literary work), you are limited to
books only.