A student completes a short story and writes the following: “In the story, the protagonist leaves the house, has an argument with her brother and then leaves again when she learns an important lesson about family.” This is technically true, but it’s also a summary. It states what happened in the story. Literary analysis, on the other hand, asks how the text conveys the change the character undergoes. The ability to distinguish between what happens and how the text conveys it is one of the most important distinctions you’ll learn about fiction.
Summary typically runs chronologically. It outlines events (action, character, conflict): “The character goes somewhere, finds something, makes a decision and reacts to the outcome.” Analysis slows around specific events and looks closely at them. The writing style of a character, recurring images, alterations in a character’s dialogue, juxtapositions of two settings, or the organization of a scene in which the plot turns can all be subjects of analysis. A summary might read, “The two characters drift apart during the course of the story.” An analytical sentence might read, “A decline in the length of their dialogue signals to the reader the growing distance between the characters.”
To identify a summary sentence, ask yourself if the claim needs evidence in the text. “The character enters the garden” is a plot claim. “The garden represents the character’s feeling of increasing isolation” is an analysis claim and therefore has evidence in the text. There might be details about closed gates, deserted gardens or darkening light in the description of the setting. These details do not restate the plot. They explain how diction and imagery help communicate the meaning of the action of the garden.
A helpful activity is to divide a sheet of notebook paper in thirds: plot, observation, analysis. In the plot section, state one action that takes place. In the observation section, note something specific in the writing (an image, a repeated word, a shift in tone, an unusual metaphor, a shift in point of view, etc.). In the analysis section, say why that specific element matters in the writing. For example, the event (in the story I’m working on) might be that a character refuses to go into a room. Observation might be the fact that the room is mentioned a few times in the narrative before the character tries to open it. The analysis might be that by mentioning the room several times beforehand, the story turns the room into the site of anxiety and suspense.
Quotations can also indicate whether or not a paragraph is summary. Quotations can lure writers into explaining plot details around the quote in the quotation mark. Pick a quotation that contains something noteworthy, rather than several sentences from a passage or an entire paragraph, and then look closely at a word or two. The character doesn’t just give a speech; instead, “I’m measuring every word before speaking it” he/she says. Is the character cautious? Does he/she know the truth will be a burden that will require careful handling? Do not tack onto a quotation a very general statement about how that quotation connects to a theme; the strongest analysis hovers close to the diction in the quotation and avoids generalizing an entire page of the book.
There is nothing inherently wrong with summary, as long as your readers have just enough summary to understand the analysis you’re proposing. Summary can take over a paragraph, however. Summarize the scene, characters or conflict in one or two sentences before you launch into analysis. Then the rest of your sentences should concentrate on how a text is doing what it’s doing. A helpful tip is to ask every sentence to identify itself: is it a piece of summary, evidence or analysis? If your summary sentences overwhelm your analysis, you may want to read the text more closely.
What makes the difference between a paragraph that is mostly analysis versus one that is mostly summary isn’t the absence of plot. It is knowing when and how to use plot. Summary informs the reader about where the moment of analysis takes place in the story. Analysis identifies, via a brief quotation or reference to another piece of textual detail, the specific textual element you’re focusing on. Analysis also explains why that textual element is important. When a paragraph contains summary, evidence and analysis, it stops sounding like an account of a story and starts sounding like an investigation of how the elements of literature create meaning.