When you write an essay, you have to produce three key ideas about a particular theme or aspect of the text. This means you need both good ideas, and evidence for each with which to flesh them out.
Both the ideas and the evidence are readily found in other people’s writing. Most people make the mistakes of a) trying to come up with everything themselves and b) just deciding to make something up till they’ve hit the word count. The first part means you spend too much time reinventing the wheel, and the second means the ideas won’t be as well-formulated as they could.
When you first read a book, you probably won’t even be able to list what themes were in it. Even if you think of some, your ideas about them will probably be rudimentary, and limited in perspective. You also only have the benefit of one reading of the text, which had previously been unseen, and likely little time to reflect on it. We know all this because this is exactly how we feel whenever we first finish reading a text for a new student.
An analysis, however, is a finished piece of writing on your text. It contains several complete ideas, often with evidence to back them up. Each analysis also frequently comes with its own perspective, which means the more analyses you read, the more varied angles you can find for the text you’ll have to analyse yourself.
The other reason why I recommend you read others’ work is that your own analysis will be better if you can draw connections between different things you have read. You won’t be able to write a nuanced analysis on gender in a text if you know nothing about gender theory, or how to discuss it. Reading what other people say on the matter is the first thing you can do to school yourself in how to think and write about complex themes.
Of course, it’s best if your essays contain at least sparks of original thought. This means you will still have to ponder the text yourself, and reflect on the viewpoints of others you have already read. However, starting from scratch can leave you floundering, so if you find that you don’t know where to start, I’d suggest reading some works of others.
In a pinch, you can google “[text name] analysis” or “[text name] themes”. Often, pages such as Sparknotes and Litcharts come up. I’ve found these to be the best so far, though other sites such as Schmoop, CliffsNotes and GradeSaver also often have some good nuggets. However, we recommend you start on this site: we're updating Hello Smart all the time to ensure we have the best free study guides available.
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