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This topic sentence links to the thesis without merely repeating it. It also takes a literary
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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
You may wish to remind students
that details from the text do not serve
Analyzing Short Fiction
as evidence unless those details are
connected back to a defensible claim
© Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.
through their strong commentary.
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
You may wish to clarify the difference
between summary and commentary
by using examples from simple stories,
fairy tales, or fables. For example, “Red
Riding Hood walked through the woods to
deliver goods to her sick grandmother” is
summary. “Red Riding Hood’s willingness
to walk through the woods without protest
suggests that her duty to her grandmother
outweighs any potential fears that she
might have about potentially dangerous 44
encounters” includes commentary.
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technique from the sample thesis and connects it to meaning — in this case, the
character of a mother who wants to maintain control over her daughter’s behavior,
especially because the girl is on the precipice of becoming an independent young adult.
Developing a Line of Reasoning with Evidence from the Text
Once you have the focus of a topic sentence, you can plan the development of the rest
of your paragraph. Prose fiction analysis, as you know, requires textual references,
either via direct quotations or paraphrased references to the story. When you’re writing
an analysis or interpretation of a work, the text is your evidence. Quotations that are
carefully chosen and incorporated into your own writing provide persuasive support for
your thesis.
Take care to avoid quoting big chunks of text because your voice (not the author’s)
should prevail in a close analysis — that is, you must offer thoughtful commentary on
what you quote. One way you might check to make sure that you’re analyzing a work is
to highlight all your quotations from the text. The following paragraph incorporates
quotations from “Girl.”
By presenting the mother as the narrator of the story, and presenting her perspective in
what is essentially a monologue, Kincaid emphasizes the mother’s authority over her
daughter, a “girl,” who seems to be coming of age. She says, “Wash the white clothes on
Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday . . . don’t
walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil.” The mother
asks, “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?” and then tells her, “on Sundays try
to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” The daughter
responds by saying, “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school,”
but her mother doesn’t even acknowledge hearing her.
It’s true that the quotations from the story are accurate, and they are all — or could
be — relevant to the topic sentence. However, except for that topic sentence, this
paragraph is almost entirely made up of quotations from “Girl.” In fact, it probably feels
as though you’re rereading the story itself. There is almost no commentary, which
leaves the reader without a clear understanding of the paragraph writer’s interpretation.
Compare that paragraph with the one that follows. While they share a similar
structure and even use some of the same quotations, the original commentary is what
moves the following paragraph toward analysis. Notice how the writer interprets the
effect and function of the literary elements and techniques that Kincaid has chosen.
By presenting the mother as the narrator of the story, and presenting her perspective in
what is essentially a monologue, Kincaid emphasizes the mother’s authority over her
daughter, a “girl,” who seems to be coming of age. From the first word, the mother is the
voice readers hear as she issues one instruction after another: “Wash the white clothes on
Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday . . . don’t
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chapter 1 / Analyzing Short Fiction
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