Literary Analysis

And

Literary Theory

What does literature mean? What does literature do? How does literature function? What themes—what truths—might literature confront us with? First and foremost, at the heart of literature is friction; at the heart of darkness lies intense internal conflict. However, the other elements of literature function to not only illustrate but also develop those internal conflicts. A question about one element of literature will overlap with another element and will always point to the core conflict that the text issues. Use these strategies for reading, analyzing, and writing about fiction, poetry, and film to help you interpret any literary text. Use this Literary Terms and Definitions site to cursorily explain literary vocabulary.

Fiction

Reading

• Slow down and let the world of the text wash over you. Take the text in, and allow it envelop your psyche. Turn off all of your distractions and engage the work of literature on its own terms.
• If something strikes you as significant and meaningful, make a note of it. Don't just highlight; actively take notes: pose questions, compose tentative theories, offer preliminary interpretations in the margins. Your annotations, if you're truly reading the work and reading it well, should enter into a dialogue with the text, with the world view of the work of literature, if not the mind of the author.
• Look for the formal elements of literature such as character, setting, point of view, tone (see below), but don't get bogged down by technique and artifice. Engage the primary conflicts, the meat of the content, to which the form points.
• Review and/or reread. Think about how you feel toward the work, about how the work makes you feel. Be able to articulate your primary response, your gut level reaction, to the work. Then, begin to transform that emotional response into a position regarding the work's themes. Find important passages which prove your position.

Analyzing

• conflict

• What is the primary cause and motivation of the piece of literature? What divisive tension must be traversed or transformed?
• What is the nature of the core conflict? Is the conflict internal or external?
  • If it's internal, is the conflict of self vs self, the self divided, the split subject, the psyche torn asunder?
  • If it's external, is the conflict between two or more people; between an individual and society; or between a human and nature, god, or machine?
  • In what ways might the external conflict mask or replicate the internal conflict of the main character? Does the main character flee from, cathart, or engage her core conflicts?
• How does the work of literature present its core conflict?
  • Does the main character fly from her core conflict, escape it, deny it, or cover it up?
  • Does the main character resolve her core conflict and eventually cathart it?
  • Or, does the main character actively engage her core conflicts in a self-critical process of continual and contingent working through?

• character

  • What do we learn about the character . . .
    • from her inner thoughts?
    • from what she says?
    • from what she does?
    • from the accord or discrepency among her thoughts, words, and deeds?
    • from others' interaction with and reaction to her?
    • from others' discussion of her . . .
      • when she's present?
      • when she's absent?
    • from the author's comments about her?
  • Does the character seem fleshed out, alive, and complexly human?
    • Is the character round (fully developed, three-dimensional) or flat (stereotypical, conventional)?
    • Is the character dynamic (does the character change, develop, grow) or static (does the characer remain the same, unchanged)?
  • What is her core conflict? What is the arc or throughline of the character's development through the story?
    • In what ways does she simply escape or repress them?
    • In what ways does she resolve or transcend her core conflicts by the text's end?
    • In what ways does she truly engage and work through her conflicts?

• setting

  • How does the time period in which the work takes place affect the character's psyche and structure her conflicts?
    • What about the place?
    • Or the social environment and the culture?
  • What is the atmosphere of the story?
    • More importantly, how does that mood affect your emotional response to the characters' struggles?
  • Does the story strive to create a sense of realism? To what purpose?
    • Or is the story purposefully unreal, even surreal? What effect does this have on your understanding of the characters' situation?
  • In what ways does the work's setting make its conflicts and characters specific and particular?
    • Conversely, in what ways does the work's particular characters and conflicts transcend time and place?
    • Does the story broach universal issues, or can it be pigeonholed as a mere period piece?

• imagery

  • What kind of sounds, objects, and language are used to convey the visual picture of the work?
  • How does the language move the work of literature from the literal plane to the figurative and metaphorical?
  • How does this visual language function to concretize abstract ideas?
  • How does the imagery become symbolic of larger themes?

• symbolism

  • What objects, actions, or images in the story suggest a meaning or multiplicity of meanings beyond their simple referents? In other words, how do significant objects and situations stand for ideas beyond themselves?
  • Is the symbol public and conventional, i.e., does it work for a broad culture?
  • Or is the symbol private and individual, i.e., does it work only within the context of a particular work or author?

• plot and structure

  • Chart the most significant events in the story. Does it conform to Freytag's pyramid of rising and falling action?
    • What is the unstable situation—internal and/or external conflicts—that sets the plot in motion?
    • How does the author's exposition and the main characters' internal monologue and external dialogue explain the nature of that conflict?
    • What are the most important events that inform, alter, and intensify the conflict?
    • What is the most intense event—climax or turning point—of the novel?
    • What are the less intense events—falling action—that lead toward resolution?
    • What is the stable situation—denouement—at the end of the novel?
  • If the the story does not conform to the conventional structure of rising and falling action, of conflict exacerbation and resolution, then how is the story structured?
    • If the story varies from convention, to what meaningful, thematic effect does it subvert such a structure?
  • Who is the story's protagonist? the antagonist? Explain their conflict.
    • How does what takes place in the narrative effect, test, or change the main character's world view, her core conflicts?

• point of view

  • Who's telling the story?
    • a first-person narrator ("I")?
    • a second-person narrator ("you")?
    • a third-person narrator?
    • Note: The narrator of a poem is called the speaker
  • Is the narrator omniscient (all-knowing) or limited?
    • What does the narrator know, and how does she know it?
    • What does she tell the reader? How does she tell it? Why does she tell it?
    • What might she be holding back, denying, or repressing? Why?
  • What's the narrator's tone? her agenda? Is she reliable?
    • How does the point of view of the narrator affect how we view the characters? their struggles?
    • Why is the story told from a particular point of view?
    • How does the point of view affect the meaning and theme of the story?
    • How does it affect our interpretation of the story?
  • How does one determine the point of view in drama which is told completely from the multiple points of view of its characters?
    • Where do the distinct and most powerful points of view come into conflict?
    • Who is the main or central character and what is her point of view?
      • How is her world view valorized and challenged by the other characters?
      • How is she transformed (or not) over the course of the play?

• tone

  • How does the author feel about the subject matter and events of her work of literature?
    • How does the author feel about her characters and their world views and actions?
  • How does the author's presence and consciousness (for example, moral sensibility) affect or even color her presentation of the story?
  • What is the attitude of the frame narrator, if distinct from the real author, toward the story she's telling?
  • Within the story itself, in what ways do characters intonate their feelings and attitudes toward other characters?
    • Toward their own experiences and actions?

• theme

  • How does the work of literature deal with the core conflicts that it dramatizes?
  • What is the main idea of the work of literature? What values is the work trying to convey?
  • What does the story suggest or say about—argue about—the nature of the individual whose conflict was represented?
    • humanity?
    • of society?
    • of humanity's relationship with the world?
    • of humanity's ethics and morality?

• fiction and/as film

  • In what ways is film like fiction? How does film differ from fiction?
    • What elements of fiction can be read in film?
    • How must elements of textual fiction be analyzed differently in film?
    • What realities can film portray and what can it not portray?
    • How does film portray point of view? How does it portray interior monologue?
    • How do we know and judge a character's inner thoughts in a film?

Writing

• Summarize, Analyze, Criticize: Argue the text's main theme or set of interrelated themes as you interpret them through critical thought and sound analysis. Make sure your interpretation, however particular and local in the text, correlates with and suggests the overarching meaning of the text.
• Appreciate and Interrogate: Get into the author's psyche, her world view, and present her themes on life and the world of ideas. However, don't simply accept the author's mind set at face value; pose questions to her world view. Strong reading and strong writing not only comprehend where the poet and poem are coming from, they also engage the poems with their own understanding of the world.
• Close Reading and Quoting: Go through the most significant section or sections of the poem line by line, but only insofar as it helps to prove your point. If, for instance, you're writing about a particular symbol or image, you don't need to do a close reading of every single instance; instead, just tease out and quote the most appropriate sections to prove your point. Conversely, if you're writing about shift in tone or irony, you may want to do a close reading of an entire passage in order to tease out the nuances of the meanings.
• Applying the Elements: Know how to formally analyze a work of fiction, but always use formal critique as a means to the end of thematic investigation. Don't analyze the elements of fiction in and of themselves; show how they function to create meaning.
• Practice: Write questions and interpretations in the margins of your text. Keep a reading journal in which you try to articulate the world views of the authors you read. For class, send web-based discussion or listservice posts that at once summarize the main themes of the poem or poet, engage in selected close readings, and pose questions for class discussion.
• Essay Exams: To write an effective essay exam, first anticipate what questions you'll be asked as you read and review your notes and the works of fiction. Practice composing your response beforehand, for instance by preparing and memorizing an outline of each author's/story's main points. When writing the actual exam, note that instructors don't expect in-class essays to be polished; however, they do want you to hit the primary themes of the poems as they relate to the essay questions. Show what you know, how you think: present as many critical and analytical ideas as possible in the time allowed.

Poetry

Reading

• As Mark Strand wrote, slow down for poetry! Reading poetry isn't the same as reading a magazine or a newspaper article; nor is it reading a textbook. Poetry is literature, which requires a psychologically aware mind capable of engaging the most primordial of feelings and affects above and beyond a rational and argumentative faculty capable of digesting facts and reasoned argument. Moreoever, poetry is composed of the most concentrated and charged language (as Blake asserted in another context, it's the world in a grain of sand); consequently, meticulous and rigorous analysis are needed to to unpack poetry's multivalences.
• Read the poem aloud. Let the sound and meter—the feel of the words and how they relate to one another—guide you to an understanding of the overall structure of the poem. The feel of the poem—whether the sounds of the words are fine or coarse, whether the beat is fluid or staccato—will attune you to the voice of the poem, and sometimes even the inner voice of the poet behind the poem.
• Read the poem more than once. You absolutely cannot digest a poem, let alone understand it, the first time you read it. First, read aloud for sound and structure, then read for narrative or train of mind, then read it again . . . for the ambiguities and the resonances of the language and of the poetically dwelling psyche.
• Don't just highlight; actively take notes: pose questions, compose tentative theories, offer preliminary interpretations in the margins. Your annotations, if you're truly reading the poem and reading it well, should enter into a dialogue with the poem, with the world view of the poem, if not the mind of the poet.

Analyzing

• speaker and tone

• Who's speaking to whom? The speaker isn't necessarily the poet, and she's not necessarily speaking to you the reader.
• For instance, is the poem a dramatic monologue (a poem written from the standpoint of a character talking or writing to another character, as in a play), an elegy (a poem eulogizing a person's death, sometimes addressing the dead herself), a lyric or ode (a poem meditating on and working through a subject), or a narrative (a poem that tells a story)?
• What is the speaker's tone, her attitude and feelings toward the subject-matter?
• What is the poem's tone, its atmosphere and mood?

• diction

• Why and how does the poet choose her words? Pay attention to diction, that is, word choice.
• Is it elevated and overtly poetic? Or is it formal, informal, or somewhere in the middle?
• Diction correlates with the subject position and/or state of mind of the speaker and/or poet.
• Know the denotations of the words (look them up in the dictionary if you don't know them), but also be aware of the connotation of the words, that is, the implied personal and cultural shades of meaning that reveal the poet's world view . . . as well as your own, and hence affect how you understand the poem.

• imagery

• The poem's sensational and sensory words that, in appealling to your sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, that make you feel as if you're in the world of the poem; they transport you there. Conversely, images can also transport you to an imaginative world, the imagination.
• Do the poems images take you to a real, historical world? Or do they transport you to another world, the world of the imagination or of the mind and psyche?

• figures of speech

• Although poems can be read literally, they should not be. Rather, read even the straightest of narrative as an act of imagination, a structure of psychological conflict. Figures of speech transport you from the real world to the world of the poem, if not the psyche of the poet, through acts of the imagination.
• Poems, and literature in general, don't necessarily function logically with rational arguments based upon physical reality. Rather, they make comparisons using figures of speech such as similes, which use like, as, than, appears, seems, or metaphors which make direct or implied associations, sometimes extending throughout the entire poem as in extended or controlling metaphor.
• Sometimes the poem compares the nonhuman with the human (personification); sometimes the poem addresses the absent or nonhuman (apostrophe).
• Sometimes the point is made through hyperbole (exaggerated overstatement) or litotes (exaggerated understatement).
• Sometimes the literal part is substituted for the whole or vice versa, as in the synechdoches of wagging tongues or behind bars; and sometimes the substitution operates through close association as in the metonymy of the silver screen.
• What truly necessitates that the poem cannot be read literally, but must be read imaginatively and psychologically are paradoxes (self-contradictory statements that upon closer or alternate means of reflection resolve themselves) and oxymorons (the pairing of contradictory words as in silent scream), for those two figures of speech transfer you from the world of straight logic to world of the multiplicitous and ambivalent, the poetic world of thought that stands powerfully equal to but radically divergent from the world of logic and reason.

• symbols

• Symbol are the literal object or images themselves, but they also open up to potential meanings beyond themselves, meanings which may be either conventional—public, cultural, tradition—or literary and contextual to the particular poet or poem. Symbols are another key to theme and meaning for in analyzing them you must move from the world of the poem to the world view, the vision, of the poet.
• Archetypes, universal or transcultural symbols, signify patterns of human experience especially in myth, folk and fairy tales, and religious cycles. Archetypes can also be thought of as relating the basic structures of human meaning, as in our conception of time (nature's seasonal cycle), of morality (the archetypal characters of hero and villain), and of narrative (the journey of ordeal, quest, and initiation). Although archetypes can be used for understanding the deep structure or symbolic principle of the poem, don't lose sight of individual and cultural meaning: think of the mind of the poem as varying, playing with, re-imagining, and re-creating the archetypal content for its own vision.

• irony

• Irony is the contrast between appearance and reality, expectation and truth.
• Situational irony occurs when an expectation of what will or does occur conflicts with what really happens; verbal irony occurs when what is said conflicts with what is meant, as in sarcasm for example; dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows more than the character or speaker.
• What a poem or poet says isn't necessarily what it or she means; poems, or at least those complex and authentically engaged in multifaceted and many-voiced world views, often subvert their own meanings. Therefore, rather than reading a poem as having a straight and simplistic, singular and univocal theme, an awareness of irony compels the reader to internalize the ambivalences and conflicts of the poetic vision and meaning.

• sound and rhyme

• Poetry was originally part of an oral tradition (and to a certain extent still is); as such sound and rhyme patterns made poems entertaining, helped them to be memorized, and gave a rather open-ended form closure.
• Look for the ordered repetition of certain sounds as you're determing how the poem should be read and what words and meanings are significant. Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sounds at the beginnings of words. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds; consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds.
• Look for rhyme, two or more words or phrases that repeat the same sounds, as a structuring mechanism. End rhyme is at end of lines; internal rhyme is within the line. Single or masculine rhyme is single-syllable end-rhyme while double or feminine rhyme is composed of a stressed syllable then unstressed syllable at the end of the line. Exact rhyme uses the same sounds. Near (also known as off, slant, or approximate) rhyme uses almost, but not exactly, the same sounds.
• A word of advice: Use the definitions of sound and rhyme above as well as those of rhythm, meter, and form below only inasmuch as they help you to break down and then interpret the poem; don't sacrifice an investigation into meaning for obsession with outer form. Form may follow content, but an exclusive analysis of form will ring hollow.

• rhythm and meter

• Rhythm, the patterned and recurring timed movement or beat, constitutes another structuring principle that affects and shapes emphasis and thereby meaning. For example, sing-songy nursery rhymes require drastically different rhythms from funeral dirges. The rhythm of the poem is based on line length (long versus short lines), line endings (end-stopped vs run-on or enjambed lines), pauses (ceasuras, or beat-stops within the line), spaces (textual gaps within lines), and word and sound choice.
• Meter is the measurement of the regular beat or pattern of stresses and/or syllables. Prosody is the type of meter; scansion is the act of measuring to determine the prosody. Rising meter moves from unstressed to stressed syllables while falling meter moves from from stressed to unstressed syllables. Masculine endings are lines ending on a stressed syllable while feminine endings are lines ending on an unstressed syllable. A foot is the smallest metrical unit, comprised of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. The most common meter is iambic pentameter, a line of five feet, in this case iambs (one unstressed then one stressed syllables).
• Click here and here for more information.

• form

• Form is the overall structure or shape of the poem. As with sound and rhyme and rhythm and meter, form shapes reading and meaning. Be aware of form only inasmuch as it helps you understand the meaning of the poem. There are two general types of poetic form, fixed and open.
• Fixed forms are categorized by line and stanza (the regular grouping of lines), meter and rhyme scheme (the pattern of end rhymes). A couplet is two lines of the same rhythm and meter; a heroic couplet is rhymed iambic pentameter. A tercet is a three-line stanza; a triplet is a three-line stanza in which all the lines rhyme. Terza rima is an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme (aba); a quatrain is a four-line stanza (aabb, abba, aaba, abcb). A sonnet, etymologically "little song," is a 14-line rhyming poem in iambic pentameter. An Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is composed of an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdccdc) while an English or Shakespearean sonnet is composed of three quatrains and a couplet (ababcdcdefefgg). A villanelle is a 19-line poem comprised of 5 tercets and a concluding quatrain in which the first line is the same as lines 6, 12, and 18 (aba aba aba aba aba abaa). A sestina is a 39-line poem composed of 6 6-line stanzas and a 3-line concluding stanza called an envoy; also, the 6 end words of stanza 1 are repeated in other stanzas. An epigram is a brief, pointed, and compressed witty poem, often using sarcasm, irony, and paradox. A limerick is composed of 5 anapestic lines (aabba), in which lines 1,2, and 5 have 3 feet while lines 3 and 4 have 2 feet. A picture or concrete poem arranges its words into what they describe. A parody is a humorous imitation of a serious poem.
• The second general type of form is open form, often called free verse, which has no established pattern. Open form resulted from modern experiments with old forms which were deemed to constrain for an evolving, new consciousness. Two specific types of open form are prose poems and found poems. A prose poem does not use lines, but is distinct from prose because it's language is so condensed. A found poem turns found writing into poetry.
• Click here and here for more forms.

Writing

• Summarize, Analyze, Criticize: Argue the text's main theme or set of interrelated themes as you interpret them through critical thought and sound analysis. Make sure your interpretation, however particular and local in the text, correlates with and suggests the overarching meaning of the text.
• Appreciate and Interrogate: Get into the author's psyche, her world view, and present her themes on life and the world of ideas. However, don't simply accept the author's mind set at face value; pose questions to her world view. Strong reading and strong writing not only comprehend where the poet and poem are coming from, they also engage the poems with their own understanding of the world.
• Close Reading and Quoting: Go through the most significant section or sections of the poem line by line, but only insofar as it helps to prove your point. If, for instance, you're writing about a particular metaphor, symbol, or image, you don't need to do a close reading of every line; instead, just tease out and quote the most appropriate lines to prove your point. Conversely, if you're writing about shift in tone or irony, you may want to do a close reading of an entire passage in order to tease out the nuances of the meanings.
• Applying the Elements: Know how to formally analyze a poem, but always use formal critique as a means to the end of thematic investigation. Don't analyze the elements of poetry in and of themselves; show how they function to create meaning.
• Practice: Write questions and interpretations in the margins of your poems. Keep a reading journal in which you try to articulate the world views of the poets you read. For class, send web-based discussion or listservice posts that at once summarize the main themes of the poem or poet, engage in selected close readings, and pose questions for class discussion.
• Essay Exams: To write an effective essay exam, first anticipate what questions you'll be asked as you read and review your notes and the poems. Practice composing your response beforehand, for instance by preparing and memorizing an outline of each poet's/poem's main points. When writing the actual exam, note that instructors don't expect in-class essays to be polished; however, they do want you to hit the primary themes of the poems as they relate to the essay questions. Show what you know, how you think: present as many critical and analytical ideas as possible in the time allowed.

Film

Viewing

• Don't view movies passively! Movies need not be an escape from thinking to be pleasurable; an escape into thinking about how the film works and what it means is intellectually and emotionally satisfying. Question what you see and how it's affecting you.
• Pay close attention to the formal elements such as mise en scène, cinematography, dialogue, sound, among others (see below). Look for repeated images, sounds, or dialogue—what is repeated tends to be significant and meaningful.
• Although you should pay attention to the formal elements, don't engage the film as pure form, pure spectacle. Instead, contemplate the inner conflicts that the outward form conveys. In other words, think about the content, the theme, just as much as the form, i.e., the message just as much as the medium.
• If you want to know a movie inside and out, you must view it more than once for there's too much information (visual, aural, thematic) to completely process the first time around.

Analyzing

• mise en scène: the staging of the film

  • setting
    • How does the time period in which the film occurs affect the main characters and structure their conflicts? the place? the social environment, the culture and its conditions and assumptions? the objects around the main characters? the atmosphere and mood?
    • How does the setting's sense of realism, nonrealism, or indefiniteness affect the overall meaning of the piece? How does setting construct and build character? How does it organize the film, i.e., make it cohere or not?
  • subject
    • What do we learn about the character from her outward appearance?
    • How does the type of actor playing the character (a star, method actor, character actor, or nonprofessional) affect the meaning of the film?
  • composition
    • How do the formal and visual compositions of shots affect the meaning of the scene? Why is a particular shot symmetrical (balanced) or assymetrical (unbalanced)?
    • How are the foreground and background elements related? Why does a shot focus on the foreground rather than the background, or vice versa? What is the significance of a shot switching focus between figure and ground?
    • How are the actors situated within a frame? Are they among many objects, or empty/negative space?

• characterization

  • What do we learn about the character's and her core conflicts?
    
    • from her outward appearance?
    • from her inner thoughts, if given through narration or suggested through body language?
    • from what she says?
    • from what she does?
    • from the accord or discrepency among her thoughts, words, and deeds?
    • from others' interaction with and reaction to her?
    • from others' discussion of her when she's around and when she's not around?
    • from the narrator's comments about her, if applicable?
  • Does the character change, grow, learn?
    
    • Is the character round (fully developed, three-dimensional) or flat (stereotypical, conventional)?
      
    • Is the character dynamic (does the character change, develop, grow) or static (does the characer remain the same, unchanged)?
    • What is the arc or throughline of the dynamic character's development?
      
    • What is her core conflict?
      
    • In what ways does she resolve or transcend her core conflicts by the text's end?
      
    • In what ways does she simply escape them or repress them?
      
    • In what ways does she truly engage and work through her conflicts?

• cinematography: film stock, lighting, and the camera

  • film stock: how does the graininess and color of the film stock create a tone that enhancings the meaning of the film?
    
    • gauge: the width of the film (16mm, 35mm, 70mm); larger width means better picture quality because the image is not as blown up on the screen
    • speed: slow film stock requires more light and is in general grainier than fast speed film which requires less light
    • color: do the film's or scene's primary colors tend to be saturated (full and intense) vs desaturated (bland and wash-out)? are the colors warm (vibrant, alive, passionate) or cool (stagnant, dead, sterile)?
  • lighting: how does the lighting reveal and create character?
    
    • Is the light hard (severe and specular, making the characters appear unflattering or overly dramatic) or soft (reflective and diffused, making the characters appear most flattering and "normal")
    • Is the light key (coming from a single specular source), fill (soft light filling out the areas that the key light missed), back (coming from behind the characters)? Is it a combination of all three, i.e., three-point lighting?
    • Is the lighting high-key (flooded with light) or low-key (only lightly illuminated)?
    • Do the shadows reveal as much as they conceal?
  • the camera: how does the choice of camera lens, focus, angle, and distance from the subject affect how we read the subject and the scene?
    
    • lens: wide-angle lens emphasize distance, normal lens approximate normal eyesight, and telephoto lens emphasize closeness
    • focus: deep focus keeps all subjects in the frame in focus while shallow focus only keeps one subject plane in focus
    • distance: at one end of the spectrum, extreme long shots reveal characters in their overall environments from a distance, while at the other, close-ups and extreme close-up force the viewer to intrude into the subject's space, creating a feeling of disorientation or discomfort (other shots in the range include the long shot, medium shot, and medium close-up)
    • perspective: the angle from which the camera captures the shot. Most shots are eye-level in order that the viewer feel s/he is unselfconsciously gazing upon a scene. Bird's eye view disorient the viewer by making them see the frame from a completely foreign perspective. Low angles suggest power over the subject while high angles imply the subject's power over the scene. Dutch angles (angles that are askew) emphasize the chaotic feelings of the scene and subject, and point-of-view shots create a one-to-one identification between the viewer's gaze and the subject's.
    • movement: Camera movements such as gradual pans, fast swish pans, crane shots, and Steadicam give different feels for the action (contrast the frenetic, jerky camera movements of MTV with the urgent yet graceful Steadicam movements of ER).

• editing

  • the grammar of editing: how does the way the film's shots and scenes are put together contribute to the meaning of the work?
    • shot: uninterrupted film, the building blocks of scenes and sequences; like a word is to sentences, paragraphs
    • scene: a section of film that gives the impression of continuous action, time, and place; like a sentence is to a paragraph
    • sequence: a group of related consecutive scene unified most often by 1) plot and/or 2) formal and symbolic imagery
    • transition: the segway between shots
      • cut: end of first shot attached to beginning of the second shot
      • match or form cut: shape or movement of a subject in the beginning of the second shot is similar to the subject in the first shot
      • jump cut: second shot discontinuous with first shot
      • fade-out, fade in: first shot fades out completely and then the second shot fades in
      • lap dissolve or dissolve: first shot fades out as the second shot fades in
      • wipe: the first shot is pushed off the scene by the second shot
  • editing for continuity: films are generally edited so that shots flow seemlessly into scenes and scenes flow seemlessly into shots in order that the viewer not be distracted or confused; however, some films may use discontinuous editing to emphasize a point or theme; if they do so, you must ask why they chose a discontinuous or disorienting edit for a scene or sequence
    • eyeline matches: in the first shot a subject looks at something offscreen and in the next sceen shows what the subject is looking at from approximately the subject's point of view
    • shot similarity: the same lighting and camera work between shots can give a feeling of seemlessness
    • shot/reverse shot: a shot from over the shoulder of subject one and showing the face of subject two transitions to a shot over the shoulder of subject two and showing the face of subject one
  • image on image and image after image: like match cuts within the same shot, combining images consitutes a visual and often thematic connection
    • superimposition: during dissolve, the image from shot two is blended with the image of shot one
    • expressive juxtapositions: typically via jump cuts, the image from shot two doesn't logically continue from the image of shot one in order to express a point
    • action and reaction: the action occurs in shot one, and the characters react to the action in shot two
    • parallel editing, or cross-cutting: the film shifts back and forth between two or more subjects plotlines in order to effect the general continuity between the shots
  • pace and time: the rhythm and duration of the film
    • slow cutting vs fast cutting: slow cutting (consecutive shots of long duration) slows down the film's scenes while fast cutting (consecutive shots of brief duration) speeds it up as in, for instance, the different overall pacing of tragedy vs comedy, or of Dances with Wolves vs Naked Gun
    • film time vs real time: in order to cut to the quick of the point of the story, film editing usually speeds up the duration of events in real time; however, at times editing will choose to slow down time in order to emphasize or dwell on a point (for example, the slow motion of the final at bat in a tied baseball game)
    • montage: a sequence of images used to convey character transition and scenic change
      

• graphics and sound

  • logos: if a studio logo is altered, it is usally to set the mood for the film
  • main titles and opening credits: how do the main titles and opening credits (or lack thereof) and their appearance set the mood of the film? do the opening credits (if given) establish the setting, the film's authenticity or disclaimer, a prologue or prelude,
  • end titles and closing credits: how does the end title (if given) punctuate the film? do the closing credits provide additional information, music, or an epilogue?
  • intertitles: how do intertitles (if used) provide the film additional meaning?
  • vocals: dialogue obviously expresses the characters' ideas, but the way the dialogue is presented can also express the film's themes; for instance, quick, ejaculatory, overlapping dialogue in a newsroom can set the stage for an intense drama while slow and deliberate conversation can set the scene for a love story
  • sound effects: give a sense of location and fill out a scene when the ambient sound wasn't picked up on set or simply didn't sound right; as with all of the formal elements of film, sound effects may be used to emphasize a point or serve as meaningful commentary
  • voice-over narration: does the off-camera narration or commentary come from a narrating "I" (like a first-person narrator in fiction), the voice of God (like a third-person omniscient narrator in fiction), an epistolary voice (a character reading a letter), or the subjective voice of the film itself (like a third-person limited narrator in fiction)
  • music: music not only creates mood and atmosphere (suspenseful violins in horror films) but also reveals character and emotion (Kronos Quartet's intense score for Requiem for a Dream), sometimes via juxtaposition and irony (think of the way the William Tell Overture is used ironically with Little Alex's character in A Clockwork Orange)
  • silence: the sound of silence can also be used to emphasize a filmic point, most often resolution or death as with the extreme long shot
  • sound as transition: sound (dialogue, music, effects, silence) may also be used as editing features in order to augment or punctuate transitions between shots (musically, this is called a bridge) or as a narrative feature as an expository or advancement of the plot as in narration

• narrative

  • narrative: As narrative is a series of unified events, then it is the task of the viewer to analyze those events to determine their unity and meaning
  • structure: As structure is the selection and order of events, then it is the task of the viewer to analyze those narrative decisions in order to determine how they work together to create meaning
    the basic fictional structure includes
    • one or more characters trying to achieve particular goals
    • but meeting certain obstacles conflicts (the most fundamental conflicts are human vs nature, human vs other humans, and human vs self),
    • with a basic plotline of
      • beginning, in which the exposition of major characters, their goals, and the unstable situation that sets the story in motion takes place,
      • middle in which the main characters meet a series of obstacles to their goals and often relating to their inner conflicts,
      • and an ending in which the characters face consequences of their actions, often resolving their conflicts
  • time
    • present: shows events happening in the present, the most common way filmmakers unfold their narratives because it's least confusing to the audience (it's the way we experience time)
    • flashforward: shows a future event, within the filmic reality of the film or in a character's intuitive mind, in order to emphasize a plot point, character trait, or theme
    • flashback: shows a past event, within the filmic reality of the film or in a character's memory, in order to emphasize a plot point, character trait, or theme
    • plot vs fabula: because the events of the narrative may not be presented chronologically, it's wise to differentiate plot (the selection and arrangement of the story's events) and fabula (the viewer's mental reconstruction in chronological order of all the events in a nonchronological plot)
• Many of these questions are adapted from William H. Phillips' Film: An Introduction and Bernard F. Dick's Anatomy of Film.

Writing

• Summarize, Analyze, Criticize: Argue the film's main theme or set of interrelated themes as you interpret them through critical thought and sound analysis. Make sure your interpretation, however particular and local in the text, correlates with and suggests the overarching meaning of the film.
• Appreciate and Interrogate: Get into the film's psyche, it's world view, and present it's themes on life and the world of ideas. However, don't simply accept the film's message at face value; pose questions.
• Close Viewing and Quoting: Go through the most significant scenes of the film frame by frame, line by line, but only insofar as it helps to prove your point.
• Applying the Elements: Know how to formally analyze a film, but always use formal critique as a means to the end of thematic investigation. Don't analyze the elements of poetry in and of themselves; show how they function to create meaning. For instance, formally analyze the elements of a film's mise en scène in order to determine its core conflicts.
• Practice: Write questions and interpretations—take notes—as you view. Keep a viewing journal in which you articulate the themes of the films you view. For class, send web-based discussion responses that summarize the main themes of the film and pose issue questions for class discussion.
• Essay Exams: To write an effective essay exam, first anticipate what questions you'll be asked as you read and review your notes and the films. Practice composing your response beforehand, for instance by preparing and memorizing an outline of each film's main scenes and thematic points. When writing the actual exam, note that instructors don't expect in-class essays to be polished; however, they do want you to hit the primary themes of the material as they relate to the essay questions. Show what you know and how you think: present as many critical and analytical ideas as possible in the time allowed.