The Purpose Of A Literary Analysis Essay

A literary analysis essay has many purposes because writing is a the sharpening of your mind. As one develops their writing skills, they will also improve the perceptions and critical abilities of the writer. Writing a literary analysis essay is writing about meaning:

• What the author was trying to communicate.
• How did he or she do it?
• What was the theme that the author was trying to communicate with the readers?

These are all very important with reading and the objective in writing a literary analysis essay is to convince the person that is reading the essay that you have supported the idea that you are developing with your writing.

This becomes a useful exercise when reading and identifying the meaning of the story and investigating the type of literary tools that author uses to reveal the theme.

A few common literary tools or devices that authors use to define the theme are:

• Imagery
• Symbolism
• Dialogue
• Alliteration
• Metaphors
• Tone

Unlike just discussing within a classroom about a piece of literary work, the writing is one sided and the writing must stick with the reader. This kind of writing demands organization and control so the essay must have a thesis, or a central idea that explains what the essay is about and the reason for the essay. The thesis statement will set your essay into action. There are three very important principles to writing a good literary analysis essay:

• The essay must cover the topic that it is being written about.
• The essay must have a central idea that develops as the essay is written.
• The essay must be organized so that it is easy to read and understand.

Literature is an art and this art needs a certain level of skill to understand and the purpose of a literary essay is to express the skill of understanding that art. In a school setting, teachers assign literary essays to allow students to express themselves and really get to understand the literature that they are reading.

Remember: that the purpose of a literary analysis essay is not what is being written or said, it’s not even about how long and wordy the essay is, the purpose is how the essay is written and how good the content is. The reader of the essay wants to understand the literature that is being written by the author.