- Hi, everybody. So I want to take a second to talk about analysis. A lot of you might be thinking, what does the teacher mean when she keeps saying, I want more analysis, I want more analysis? Well, always remember, analysis is the key to English class. The English teacher wants to see how you are reading the specific words of a piece of literature. We don't want to read a broad summary of the plot. We don't want to read generalizations about characters. 

We want you to present an idea that appears in the story. And then we want you to prove how that idea appears in the story. So let's start with, what is analysis? Analysis is this process of asking questions. You need to ask who, what, when, where, why, and how, particularly the what, the how, and the why. 

So you want to explore how an idea appears inside of a story. You can't just say, for example, that Arnold Friend in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates is an evil character. Well, what specifically makes him evil? Give me an idea. Is he a manipulator? Is he someone who seeks control? You tell me. 

Then you have to find the passage in the story that best illustrates that idea. And then you have to explain it. Think, why are we reading these stories, these poems, these plays, the novel? What is the point of reading? We're supposed to learn something about humanity. And the characters, the setting, all that good stuff helps reveal that. 

So there are four major steps to analysis. Number one, after you quote-- now, remember-- I'm going to back up for a second-- you still need to present analysis within a unified body paragraph. So you're going to have a topic sentence. You're going to introduce the quote. And then you're going to quote. And then the analysis appears after the quote. So you want to follow the steps after you've already quoted correctly. So first, reword the quote. You need to pretend that quote is in a different language from your reader, and you need to explain how you want the reader to read those words. 

And then you need to explain, well, what idea is trapped inside of those words? What am I trying to extract from those quoted words? And then you have to walk me through how. And this is a really important section. How? How do those quoted words mean what you think they mean? Take the words out. Talk about what they literally mean versus what they figuratively mean. Walk me through how to read those words. 

And then, finally, the paragraph needs to end with this nice concluding comment about the importance of it all. Why is the idea you're presenting so important? Why is the quote that you've provided so important to the meaning of the overall text? 

So take a second. You might want to pause the video. Really think about those four steps of analysis. I'm looking for the four steps of analysis in your discussion forum posts. I'm looking for them in papers that you write. I'm looking for the steps of analysis in all tests. So any writing that I ask you to complete that asks you to analyze a piece of literature, I'm looking for these four steps after the quote. 

All right, so here's an example. Let's talk about Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. So this is the very first paragraph. And I'll read it out loud, and then we'll talk about it for a second. 

So "Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem Village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with her pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown." 

OK, so this is the very first paragraph. This paragraph is going to set up the setting. It's going to set up the major themes of the story. Now, how? How does this passage do that? Let's start with the names, Young, Goodman, Brown. You have a young, you have a good man. Now, why the color brown? Well, brown is a very basic color. Think of trees and dirt, very sort of down to earth, just as a basic-- there's no real extravagant color happening. But brown is contrasted with pink, with the ribbon in Faith's hair. 

Now, you have Faith. Faith symbolizes faith. So now reading these words literally, you have Young Goodman Brown, he walks out of his door, puts his head out, comes back in, and he kisses his wife. And then he comes back out. So you have this moment of hesitation. He's going out into sunset. Sunset is usually the end of something. So he's about to enter into the end. So he's walking outside. Sun's coming down. He comes back a little bit. Then he keeps going. 

And you have Faith. She comes out, and she's this young little pretty thing with a pink-- naive, young child. And she comes outside, and the wind plays with her ribbon, like nothing's going on. So wind plays with Faith. You have this moment where the environment is playing with Faith. And she calls to Goodman Brown. He's no longer young. He has exited the house. He's no longer young. He's just a good man, and he's this average man. 

So I did that really quickly, but I tried to reword those words, what they're literally saying, and I tried to hint at what they mean. And now why is it all important? Well, these words set up the journey Young Goodman Brown is about to embark on. He's entering into a journey of losing his faith. He goes on this journey, and he has that hesitation, that moment where he's kind of like, wait, what? What? And he's unsure about himself. He's unsure about the world. He thinks everyone is good, and he wants to believe that. 

But he encounters all of these evil people on his journey. And so then he comes back from this journey completely disillusioned. He loses faith. What dies in this story? Young Goodman Brown's faith. The sun sets on his faith. He wants it to stay. He has hesitation. But in the end, it goes. 

Faith can be played with in the wind. It can be this young, innocent thing. But at the end of the day, faith is an innocent, naive concept that when it exits the threshold, it will be destroyed by all the evil in the world. 

All right, so if you have any questions, please let me know. I hope you take a second to really think about what I mean by analysis. I'm looking for analysis in all of your things that you write, discussion forums and papers. All right, best of luck. Always contact me with help.