How to analyze a text
Analyzing a text means reading it carefully, extracting the main points, and drawing conclusions.
Here we will look at two steps to analyze a text.
1:Identifying genre or type
2:Close reading.
To identify the genre, the first step is to find out the type of writing. Check what its type is; is it a poem or a play? Is it fiction or nonfiction?
What is the subgenre? Is it humor, mystery, etc.
The second part, which is close reading, is as follows:
Close reading means to read carefully and uncover the ideas in the text; it is to break the text into pieces, analyze, and then organize.
If you read carefully, you will not only gain knowledge of the explicit meaning of the text, but you will also explore more implicit meanings. Here we will see how to do close reading.
Title and subtitle
Firstly, focus on the title and subtitle to see what they mean.
See if the title is suitable for the text or not.
What meaning is it conveying? What idea did you get from the title, and if there is any implicit meaning in the title or the subtitle.
Quotations
Read and note down the opening and closing lines of the text or chapter.
Find out different famous or repeated lines in the text, or lines that seem important in any way.
Diction
Diction is the language of the text. Reflect on writing style. What kind of language is used? Is it simple or flowery? If it is poetry, check for different poetic features like free or blank verse, meter, rhyme, etc.
Different authors have their own way of writing, which is their writing style.
Try to understand the writer’s style of writing.
Analyze the text for its style of writing and determine whether it is easy or hard to understand.
References
Look for references made in the text where and how often the writer is referring to some other work or event, etc. and how it is related to the text you are analyzing.
Themes
Extract the themes: what is the subject matter of the play or what idea poetry is conveying? How well is the plot constructed? What main theme is focused on and how is it explained?
Figures of speech
Collect the part of the text with figures of speech.
Make notes and analyze the use of these literary terms, like simile, where comparison is made, how well the simile shows the comparison, or whether it seems unfit to the text.
Symbolism
Dive deep into the text to look into the symbolic meanings of the words or sentences. The words uttered by the characters might be symbolic, conveying a double meaning, an explicit and obvious meaning, or an implicit meaning.
Euphemism
Euphemism in simple words is sugar-coated words; to say things sweetly, even if bitter, is like selling chilies dipped in honey so the listener is not offended.
Much more literary terms could be observed in this process.
Content
Content refers to what is written in the text. So far, various features have been explained, including the style in which the text is written. Now you will see the content, which means what is written.
Check for coherence to see if it is well organized or not, whether the content presented is quality content or not.
All the above-explained features can fall under the content category, but you can also analyze them as a whole by looking into the overall impact of the text.
Finally, to conclude, you should draw inferences supported by the textual evidence.
Simply, put your opinion of the text, but it should be objective, not just based on what you feel. You can write your opinions and then support them with the lines of the text.
These are the factors that may vary from person to person, but I hope they will help you to a great extent.
