critical analysis essay

Critical Analysis Guidelines The purpose for writing a critical analysis is to evaluate someone's work (book, essay, movie, paining, play, etc…) in order to increase the reader's understanding of it. A critical analysis is subjective writing because it expresses the writer's opinion and evaluation of the work. Analysis means to break down and study the parts. Writing a critical paper requires two steps: critical reading and critical writing. CRITICAL READING: -Identify the author's thesis/purpose -Outline the work or write a description of it -Summarize the work -Determine the purpose of the work and evaluate the means by which the author has accomplished this purpose: -To inform with factual material? (Has the material been presented clearly, accurately, with order and coherence? -To persuade with appeal to reason or emotion? (Is there evidence, logical reasoning, contrary evidence?) -To entertain (affecting emotion?) (How are the emotions affected? Does it make the reader laugh, cry, get angry? Why and how does it affect the reader this way?) Consider the following questions: 1. How is the material organized? 2. Who is the intended audience? 3. What are the writer's assumptions about the audience? 4. What kind of language and imagery does the author use?

SAMPLE OUTLINE FOR CRITICAL ANALYSIS ESSAY I. Background information on author and essay to help readers understand the nature of the work. A. Title and author B. Publication Information C. Statement of Topic/Purpose II. Thesis Statement indicating the writer's (YOUR) main reaction to the work. III. Summary/Description of the work IV. Interpretation and Evaluation a. Organization b. Style c. Effectiveness d. Treatment of Topic e. Appeal to a Particular Audience V. Conclusion Tips to remember when writing: -Avoid using first person. Do not introduce your ideas by stating "I think," or "In my opinion." Keep the focus on the subject of your analysis, not on yourself. Identifying your opinions weakens them. For example: instead of writing “I thought the piece was a good example of…” use “the piece was a good example of…” YOU are the author. The reader already knows and assumes that is your opinion. -Always introduce the work. Do not assume your reader knows what you are writing about; therefore does not need to know the title and the author*. Assume your reader knows nothing about the piece you are writing about. (*Never use author’s first name only; chances are you are not on a first-name basis with the author and even if you were, this is a formal essay and first names are considered “casual”. Use first and last when introducing the author, then use last name only for the remainder). -Is there controversy surrounding the subject? The author? -Overall value of the piece? -Strength and Weaknesses of the piece? -Support your thesis with detailed evidence from the text. Do not forget to document quotes and paraphrases. Acknowledge your sources. -Be open-minded, well-informed and fair. Express your opinions, but back them up with evidence.

A Sample Critical Essay on a Novel

To keep Jake Barnes drunk, fed, clean, mobile, and distracted in The Sun Also

Rises, Ernest Hemingway employs a large retinue of minor functionaries: maids, cab

drivers, bartenders, porters, tailors, bootblacks, barbers, policemen, and one village idiot.

But of all the retainers seen working quietly in the background of the novel, the most

familiar figure by far is the waiter. In cafés from Paris to Madrid, from one sunrise to the

next, over two dozen waiters deliver drinks and relay messages to Barnes and his

compatriots. As frequently in attendance and as indistinguishable from one another as they

are, these various waiters seem to merge into a single emblematic figure as the novel

progresses. A detached observer of human vanity, this figure does more than serve food

and drink: he serves to illuminate the character of Jake Barnes.

Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, Pulitzer and Nobel prize winner, wrote numerous

stories that are considered classics of American Literature. In The Sun Also Rises,

published in 1926, an understated style creates one of his strongest characters.

On a number of occasions, Jakes expresses a sympathetic awareness of the waiters

around him.For instance, after dining with Brett and the count at the restaurant in the Bois,

Jake recognizes that the two waiters standing by the door "wanted to go home" (61).

Likewise, on the French train crowded with pilgrims, Jake discourages Bill from teasing the

overworked waiter, saying, "No. He's too tired" (88). It is fitting that Jake should identify,

at least implicitly, with waiters. Like them, he is a reticent and passive observer, carrying

out routines with emotional detachment. For the waiters, of course, such detachment is

merely professional decorum. For Jake, however, emotional detachment is a means of

protection, a method for coping with life.

One way that Jake maintains his composure is to substitute objective observations

for emotional responses. His ritualistic descriptions of waiters doing their work often serves

this purpose, as in the conclusion to the scene in the Bar Milano. Ignoring the warnings of

Montoya, Jake has set Brett up with Pedro Romero:

When I came back and looked in the café, twenty minutes later, Brett and Romero

were gone. The coffee-glasses and our three empty cognac-glasses were on the table. A

waiter came with a cloth and picked up the glasses and mopped off the table. (187)

By focusing on this image of cleansing and reordering--of a waiter clearing up the

mess made by others--Jake displaces whatever feelings of remorse, shame, and envy he

may have.

On occasion, however, a waiter may be seen to dramatize rather than displace Jake's

feelings. After leaving the Bar Milano, Jake goes to the Café Suizo, where he is knocked

out cold by Robert Cohn. After being revived, he again offers a parting view: "I looked

back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his

head in his hands" (192). As an image of weariness, this is hardly unusual: it's late and the

waiter is tired. But the image of head in hands may suggest something more, particularly as

observed by a man whose own head is "a little wobbly" (192). It may be seen as a tableau

dramatizing Jake's own exhaustion, pain, shame, and despair.

For the most part, waiters function silently throughout the novel as disinterested

witnesses, emblems of routine maintenance, and correlatives to Jake Barnes and his

suppressed emotions. In one important scene, however, immediately following the death of

Vincente Girones, a waiter steps out of his conventional role, sits down beside Jake at the

table, and offers this choric commentary: "A big horn wound. All for fun. Just for fun. . . .

That's it. All for fun. Fun, you understand. . . . Right through the back. A cornada right

through the back. For fun--you understand. . . . You hear? Muerto. Dead" (197-98). It is not

just the repetition and the echo of "cornada" in this speech that recall the prayer of the older

waiter in Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." More significantly, it is

the weary but forceful note of human concern in the face of human absurdity that links the

two waiters. This view, defiantly anti-romantic, is one Jake Barnes is still struggling to

achieve. When asked by the waiter what he thinks of all this "fun," Jake can say only, "I

don't know" (197).

Appropriately, then, it is again a waiter who signals a possible change in Jake's life.

The last part of the novel opens with another image of cleansing, waiters "sweeping the

streets and sprinkling them with a hose" (227). And it is a waiter's actions that dramatize

the end of the fiesta:

A waiter wearing a blue apron came out with a bucket of water and a cloth, and

commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing and

rubbing away the paper that stuck to the stone. The fiesta was over. (227)

The vigorous verbs in this description reflect Jake's determination that certain things

in his life were over, that he had reached "the end of the line" (239), that he was "through

with fiestas for awhile" (232). Perhaps he had learned something about friendship, about

"valuable qualities," something waiters had always understood (233).

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway has countered the lost generation of

main characters with the emblematic figure of the waiter, whose voice is as old as the book

of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity" (The

Holy Bible Eccles. 1:2). The wisdom gained by the waiter through disinterested

observations of human folly may lead to the strength that can help him endure. We should

remember, after all, that the novel's single representative of moral valor, Pedro Romero,

"learned his English as a waiter in Gib" (242).

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Winner Take Nothing, New York: Scribner's, 1933. ---. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner's, 1926. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1999.

© Richard F. Nordquist, 1986