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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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1 What Is Literature and Why Do We Study It?

In this book created for my English 211 Literary Analysis introductory course for English literature and creative writing majors at the College of Western Idaho, I’ll introduce several different critical approaches that literary scholars may use to answer these questions.  The critical method we apply to a text can provide us with different perspectives as we learn to interpret a text and appreciate its meaning and beauty.

The existence of literature, however we define it, implies that we study literature. While people have been “studying” literature as long as literature has existed, the formal study of literature as we know it in college English literature courses began in the 1940s with the advent of New Criticism. The New Critics were formalists with a vested interest in defining literature–they were, after all, both creating and teaching about literary works. For them, literary criticism was, in fact, as John Crowe Ransom wrote in his 1942 essay “ Criticism, Inc., ” nothing less than “the business of literature.”

Responding to the concern that the study of literature at the university level was often more concerned with the history and life of the author than with the text itself, Ransom responded, “the students of the future must be permitted to study literature, and not merely about literature. But I think this is what the good students have always wanted to do. The wonder is that they have allowed themselves so long to be denied.”

We’ll learn more about New Criticism in Section Three. For now, let’s return to the two questions I posed earlier.

What is literature?

First, what is literature ? I know your high school teacher told you never to look up things on Wikipedia, but for the purposes of literary studies, Wikipedia can actually be an effective resource. You’ll notice that I link to Wikipedia articles occasionally in this book. Here’s how Wikipedia defines literature :

“ Literature  is any collection of  written  work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an  art  form, especially  prose   fiction ,  drama , and  poetry . [1]  In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include  oral literature , much of which has been transcribed. [2] Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.”

This definition is well-suited for our purposes here because throughout this course, we will be considering several types of literary texts in a variety of contexts.

I’m a Classicist—a student of Greece and Rome and everything they touched—so I am always interested in words with Latin roots. The Latin root of our modern word literature  is  litera , or “letter.” Literature, then, is inextricably intertwined with the act of writing. But what kind of writing?

Who decides which texts are “literature”?

The second question is at least as important as the first one. If we agree that literature is somehow special and different from ordinary writing, then who decides which writings count as literature? Are English professors the only people who get to decide? What qualifications and training does someone need to determine whether or not a text is literature? What role do you as the reader play in this decision about a text?

Let’s consider a few examples of things that we would all probably classify as literature. I think we can all (probably) agree that the works of William Shakespeare are literature. We can look at Toni Morrison’s outstanding ouvre of work and conclude, along with the Nobel Prize Committee, that books such as Beloved   and  Song of Solomon   are literature. And if you’re taking a creative writing course and have been assigned the short stories of Raymond Carver or the poems of Joy Harjo , you’re probably convinced that these texts are literature too.

In each of these three cases, a different “deciding” mechanism is at play. First, with Shakespeare, there’s history and tradition. These plays that were written 500 years ago are still performed around the world and taught in high school and college English classes today. It seems we have consensus about the tragedies, histories, comedies, and sonnets of the Bard of Avon (or whoever wrote the plays).

In the second case, if you haven’t heard of Toni Morrison (and I am very sorry if you haven’t), you probably have heard of the Nobel Prize. This is one of the most prestigious awards given in literature, and since she’s a winner, we can safely assume that Toni Morrison’s works are literature.

Finally, your creative writing professor is an expert in their field. You know they have an MFA (and worked hard for it), so when they share their favorite short stories or poems with you, you trust that they are sharing works considered to be literature, even if you haven’t heard of Raymond Carver or Joy Harjo before taking their class.

(Aside: What about fanfiction? Is fanfiction literature?)

We may have to save the debate about fan fiction for another day, though I introduced it because there’s some fascinating and even literary award-winning fan fiction out there.

Returning to our question, what role do we as readers play in deciding whether something is literature? Like John Crowe Ransom quoted above, I think that the definition of literature should depend on more than the opinions of literary critics and literature professors.

I also want to note that contrary to some opinions, plenty of so-called genre fiction can also be classified as literature. The Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has written both science fiction and historical fiction. Iain Banks , the British author of the critically acclaimed novel The Wasp Factory , published popular science fiction novels under the name Iain M. Banks. In other words, genre alone can’t tell us whether something is literature or not.

In this book, I want to give you the tools to decide for yourself. We’ll do this by exploring several different critical approaches that we can take to determine how a text functions and whether it is literature. These lenses can reveal different truths about the text, about our culture, and about ourselves as readers and scholars.

“Turf Wars”: Literary criticism vs. authors

It’s important to keep in mind that literature and literary theory have existed in conversation with each other since Aristotle used Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex to define tragedy. We’ll look at how critical theory and literature complement and disagree with each other throughout this book. For most of literary history, the conversation was largely a friendly one.

But in the twenty-first century, there’s a rising tension between literature and criticism. In his 2016 book Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict, literary scholar Martin Paul Eve argues that twenty-first century authors have developed

a series of novelistic techniques that, whether deliberate or not on the part of the author, function to outmanoeuvre, contain, and determine academic reading practices. This desire to discipline university English through the manipulation and restriction of possible hermeneutic paths is, I contend, a result firstly of the fact that the metafictional paradigm of the high-postmodern era has pitched critical and creative discourses into a type of productive competition with one another. Such tensions and overlaps (or ‘turf wars’) have only increased in light of the ongoing breakdown of coherent theoretical definitions of ‘literature’ as distinct from ‘criticism’ (15).

One of Eve’s points is that by narrowly and rigidly defining the boundaries of literature, university English professors have inadvertently created a situation where the market increasingly defines what “literature” is, despite the protestations of the academy. In other words, the gatekeeper role that literary criticism once played is no longer as important to authors. For example, (almost) no one would call 50 Shades of Grey literature—but the salacious E.L James novel was the bestselling book of the decade from 2010-2019, with more than 35 million copies sold worldwide.

If anyone with a blog can get a six-figure publishing deal , does it still matter that students know how to recognize and analyze literature? I think so, for a few reasons.

• First, the practice of reading critically helps you to become a better reader and writer, which will help you to succeed not only in college English courses but throughout your academic and professional career.
• Second, analysis is a highly sought after and transferable skill. By learning to analyze literature, you’ll practice the same skills you would use to analyze anything important. “Data analyst” is one of the most sought after job positions in the New Economy—and if you can analyze Shakespeare, you can analyze data. Indeed.com’s list of top 10 transferable skills includes analytical skills , which they define as “the traits and abilities that allow you to observe, research and interpret a subject in order to develop complex ideas and solutions.”
• Finally, and for me personally, most importantly, reading and understanding literature makes life make sense. As we read literature, we expand our sense of what is possible for ourselves and for humanity. In the challenges we collectively face today, understanding the world and our place in it will be important for imagining new futures.

A note about using generative artificial intelligence

As I was working on creating this textbook, ChatGPT exploded into academic consciousness. Excited about the possibilities of this new tool, I immediately began incorporating it into my classroom teaching. In this book, I have used ChatGPT to help me with outlining content in chapters. I also used ChatGPT to create sample essays for each critical lens we will study in the course. These essays are dry and rather soulless, but they do a good job of modeling how to apply a specific theory to a literary text. I chose John Donne’s poem “The Canonization” as the text for these essays so that you can see how the different theories illuminate different aspects of the text.

I encourage students in my courses to use ChatGPT in the following ways:

• To generate ideas about an approach to a text.
• To better understand basic concepts.
• To assist with outlining an essay.
• To check grammar, punctuation, spelling, paragraphing, and other grammar/syntax issues.

If you choose to use Chat GPT, please include a brief acknowledgment statement as an appendix to your paper after your Works Cited page explaining how you have used the tool in your work. Here is an example of how to do this from Monash University’s “ Acknowledging the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence .”

I acknowledge the use of [insert AI system(s) and link] to [specific use of generative artificial intelligence]. The prompts used include [list of prompts]. The output from these prompts was used to [explain use].

Here is more information about how to cite the use of generative AI like ChatGPT in your work. The information below was adapted from “Acknowledging and Citing Generative AI in Academic Work” by Liza Long (CC BY 4.0).

The Modern Language Association (MLA) uses a template of core elements to create citations for a Works Cited page. MLA  asks students to apply this approach when citing any type of generative AI in their work. They provide the following guidelines:

Cite a generative AI tool whenever you paraphrase, quote, or incorporate into your own work any content (whether text, image, data, or other) that was created by it. Acknowledge all functional uses of the tool (like editing your prose or translating words) in a note, your text, or another suitable location. Take care to vet the secondary sources it cites. (MLA)

Here are some examples of how to use and cite generative AI with MLA style:

Example One: Paraphrasing Text

Let’s say that I am trying to generate ideas for a paper on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I ask ChatGPT to provide me with a summary and identify the story’s main themes. Here’s a  link to the chat . I decide that I will explore the problem of identity and self-expression in my paper.

My Paraphrase of ChatGPT with In-Text Citation

The problem of identity and self expression, especially for nineteenth-century women, is a major theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“Summarize the short story”).

Works Cited Entry

“Summarize the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Include a breakdown of the main themes” prompt.  ChatGPT.  24 May Version, OpenAI, 20 Jul. 2023,  https://chat.openai.com/share/d1526b95-920c-48fc-a9be-83cd7dfa4be5 

Example Two: Quoting Text

In the same chat, I continue to ask ChatGPT about the theme of identity and self expression. Here’s an example of how I could quote the response in the body of my paper:

When I asked  ChatGPT  to describe the theme of identity and self expression, it noted that the eponymous yellow wallpaper acts as a symbol of the narrator’s self-repression. However, when prompted to share the scholarly sources that formed the basis of this observation,  ChatGPT  responded, “As an AI language model, I don’t have access to my training data, but I was trained on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. OpenAI, the organization behind my development, has not publicly disclosed the specifics of the individual datasets used, including whether scholarly sources were specifically used” (“Summarize the short story”).

It’s worth noting here that ChatGPT can “ hallucinate ” fake sources. As a Microsoft training manual notes, these chatbots are “built to be persuasive, not truthful” (Weiss &Metz, 2023). The May 24, 2023 version will no longer respond to direct requests for references; however, I was able to get around this restriction fairly easily by asking for “resources” instead.

When I ask for resources to learn more about “The Yellow Wallpaper,” here is one source it recommends:

“Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper: A Symptomatic Reading” by Elaine R. Hedges: This scholarly article delves into the psychological and feminist themes of the story, analyzing the narrator’s experience and the implications of the yellow wallpaper on her mental state. It’s available in the journal “Studies in Short Fiction.” (“Summarize the short story”).

Using Google Scholar, I look up this source to see if it’s real. Unsurprisingly, this source is not a real one, but it does lead me to another (real) source: Kasmer, Lisa. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s’ The Yellow Wallpaper’: A Symptomatic Reading.”  Literature and Psychology  36.3 (1990): 1.

Note: ALWAYS check any sources that ChatGPT or other generative AI tools recommend.

For more information about integrating and citing generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, please see this section of  Write What Matters.

I acknowledge that ChatGPT does not respect the individual rights of authors and artists and ignores concerns over copyright and intellectual property in its training; additionally, I acknowledge that the system was trained in part through the exploitation of precarious workers in the global south. In this work I specifically used ChatGPT to assist with outlining chapters, providing background information about critical lenses, and creating “model” essays for the critical lenses we will learn about together. I have included links to my chats in an appendix to this book.

Critical theories: A targeted approach to writing about literature

Ultimately, there’s not one “right” way to read a text. In this book. we will explore a variety of critical theories that scholars use to analyze literature. The book is organized around different targets that are associated with the approach introduced in each chapter. In the introduction, for example, our target is literature. In future chapters you’ll explore these targeted analysis techniques:

• Author: Biographical Criticism
• Text: New Criticism
• Reader: Reader Response Criticism
• Gap: Deconstruction (Post-Structuralism)
• Context: New Historicism and Cultural Studies
• Power: Marxist and Postcolonial Criticism
• Mind: Psychological Criticism
• Gender: Feminist, Post Feminist, and Queer Theory
• Nature: Ecocriticism

Each chapter will feature the target image with the central approach in the center. You’ll read a brief introduction about the theory, explore some primary texts (both critical and literary), watch a video, and apply the theory to a primary text. Each one of these theories could be the subject of its own entire course, so keep in mind that our goal in this book is to introduce these theories and give you a basic familiarity with these tools for literary analysis. For more information and practice, I recommend Steven Lynn’s excellent Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory , which provides a similar introductory framework.

I am so excited to share these tools with you and see you grow as a literary scholar. As we explore each of these critical worlds, you’ll likely find that some critical theories feel more natural or logical to you than others. I find myself much more comfortable with deconstruction than with psychological criticism, for example. Pay attention to how these theories work for you because this will help you to expand your approaches to texts and prepare you for more advanced courses in literature.

P.S. If you want to know what my favorite book is, I usually tell people it’s Herman Melville’s Moby Dick . And I do love that book! But I really have no idea what my “favorite” book of all time is, let alone what my favorite book was last year. Every new book that I read is a window into another world and a template for me to make sense out of my own experience and better empathize with others. That’s why I love literature. I hope you’ll love this experience too.

writings in prose or verse, especially :  writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest (Merriam Webster)

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

What Is Literature? Definition and Meaning Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

According to Baym 2007 in the book, “ The Norton anthology American literature: Beginnings to 1865” , literature is defined as written, spoken, or observable material that holds some meaning that can be interpolated or offer information, explanation about anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific work. Life on its very nature can be defined as part of literature; elements of literature that are observable in human social life include culture, language, symbols, signals, poetry, songs, and dances.

In academic circles, literature author’s messages are decoded by readers to get meaning and an in-depth understanding of what the writer wanted to convey using literary theory, using a mythological, sociological, psychological, or historical methodologies.

Literature has relevance in human life as it communicate to individuals, societies, its universal and has an impact on human life (Baym, 2007). This paper takes a look at the meaning of literature; it will focus on the issues brought about in the book “ “ The Norton anthology American literature: Beginnings to 1865.”

Newspapers and literature

Newspapers and periodical can be classified as literature when considering that they address a certain topic in the social, economic, and political arena that talks about the human life, their community and has an impact on their life. Print news are information gotten from paper printed news that come out periodically; in the context of news, the most used print news articles are the newspapers that are produced daily reporting matter of the last 24 hours and sometimes offering some reviews to older news and information.

Other than newspapers and other dailies, there are a number of weekly and monthly articles that are being produced reflecting on certain matters that transpired in the last week or month; in most cases the articles may be looking at certain aspect in the community say politics, economies, sports or other social happenings (Baym, 2007).

The Back of a cereal box literature

With changes in culture and generations, the world is facing a new wave of generation that seems to have little relevance to written literature or they are not willing to have written literature. Generation Y is fulfilling their surveillance needs in the most efficient manner in terms of access, costs, and availability; with the above characteristics, free news media has seen a niche market where it can sell its products and services.

Free news media offer news in simplified form that is formatted to attract the attention of its target market who happens to be the youth in the current generation as they prepare to grow with the population to their old age. On the other hand, the print news media has maintained a conventional news presentation format that seems give preference to national and international news on different matter; they have the space and the time to offer in-depth analysis and sometime experts’ opinion on certain issues.

The format as adopted by print media is more informative than the one addressed by the free news media, however the current generation of youth seems not to be very concerned on quality but consider their personal interests when choosing the material they are going to use for information (Baym, 2007).

The situation on the ground portrays that print news media no longer command an increasing market; however their demand is decreasing for the good of free news media.

Why are some writings chosen to be in the book and others not

When reading the article, (The norton anthology American literature ) book, we note that human beings have diverse cultures and live in different areas in the globe; this has made them to talk, pronounce, have an accent and stress words differently. Linguistic anthropology concerns itself with the relationship between language and culture of human beings.

There are various aspects of human life that language just like any other factor that influence the life of human being touches/ can be used to explain, these areas are participation, reflexivity, voice and chronoscope, circulation, identities, gender & sexuality, ideology, text, and grammar.

Language is a part and parcel of human life that is developed with ones knowledge or not. It was instilled by our parents after we were born, human beings will copy others in the socialization process; after they have copied them they get identity with the copied tribe or community.

These aspects are deeply instilled in the human beings and he is not aware that they define each step that he makes . The kind of language that a person undertakes have a certain backing from where the person comes from, it can define the back ground of the person; the strong points of interpolation are found in the selection of words, the tone as well and the volume that a person uses to express his needs.

In communities that are racists the use of the language that is meant for the majority or the minority can place the individual on either side. One can be identified to belong to a certain race out of the use of works that he adopts and the accent that he is having on the particular language.

For example the blacks in the United States of America have some words like “nigger” that have meaning to them and identify them from the larger group. When one is dealing with such a person, you don’t have to ask the tribe or the social setting that he comes from all you need is to listen to him talk. The general argument is that by listening to the way a person talks, what works he is stressing and which letters he seems not to pronounce in his reading, one can know the cultural background of the Individual.

Stressing some works and relaxing some give different meaning to the same work; this may be giving it verb status or noun. For example by stressing the word produce- mostly said with a raising voice, it may mean the act of producing; thus a verb, when the same is said politely, it means the outcome thus a noun. As one is brought up, through early socialization, the choice of word is learnt and it is interpolated differently by different groups. Other aspects are biologically instilled in the human beings.

What are the editors looking for in writing for it to be included as “literature”?

When writing the book the writer seems to be looking for the following human characters that can be derived through literature understanding.

Human beings do not live alone but they are social beings. They are there for the each other in times of need and build these relationships by expressing their own feeling and opinions this is done by the use of understandable language. They must communicate to the recipient in the language that he is going to understand.

Communication becomes effective when the language that the two parties are using is well understood by them; this is the use of language. Language goes further than the oral talks but involve written information, body language, and electronic transfer of information. It is the language that we use that makes the world to have “sense” everything that is in the world gets a meaning when language is used to express its use.

Problems only get a solution when the solvers can use the correct language. The innovations that is a good resultant aspect of education has its root in language; these spans from the general understanding of things as they are to specific analysis of a particular case. Taking a traditional case, in each society there is culture that holds its people together, one of the major components of culture is language; this is because the language that is adopted by a particular society is unique in its own ways .

Identity can be defined as the stable and fixed aspects of selfhood: things that you check off on census forms such as; Race or ethnicity, Nationality, Social class and Gender. The way someone uses his language is of importance to show his or her identity.

In African countries for example those people who belong to high class talk a different set of English, the way that they pronounce names is different from the other members, all over those people who are living in towns are associated with quality English and other languages, this is a tool that can be used to give the class its own status and class. Those from the village and rural area talk broken English.

When language is the tool that is used to identify ethnicity, there are two sides of looking at it. One is that a person identifies himself as from a certain tribe or learns that the others are not of the same ethnicity. The choice of words that we use in the daily conversation gives the impression of what kind of a background that one has; the fact that some communities use some words to express different issues can be learnt. According to Ali G story, there are two sets of languages; they are vernacular and Standard English.

When one is using either, the weight that the information is going to be carried by is different. If we take the case of America, the black Americans and the Native Americans, if a black can talk vernacular the information that he converging is not seen as serious as the case would have been if he used Standard English. Standard English is seen to have few diversion of the original information and thus the message brought forward by it is seen as more serious.

One who talks Standard English is seen as a Native American and thus the treatments will be as so. Standard English is then a show of sincerity and used to convey serious messages. When a combination of vernacular and Standard English is used, it gives the impression of areas that need more emphasis than others and them that can be taken lightly. The identity of the message identifies the sender’s feeling and identity at large.

When the issue of ethnicity comes into picture, in most cases one does not need to say whether he is black or white since the skin color can tell. Traditionally the skin was good enough to identify the ethnicity of the person concerned. The Asians and the Chinese have unique physical appearance that one only needs to look at them and you can tell the ethnicity. However, there are some countries that the colour cannot form basis of identity.

One of this is the Hutus and Tutsi of Rwanda. During the Rwanda massacre fight, the tool that they used to identify ones tribe was only the language. This is so because they have similar physical appearances, they could talk the others language; but the way they pronounced some names made the difference and eventually lead to the identity that A belongs to this tribe and B the other.

In the situation of computer based interaction; the exchangers of information are not at close vicinity of each other but they can identify their ethnicity by the language that they use in the interaction. There is the issue of national homogenize languages that a particular country may adopt, anyone who is coming in the country either as a visitor or a passer-by may not be aware of the language, when he communicate, then one can identify that he is of a different ethnicity.

In most ethnic settings the old people are more versed with the language of the particular society, their selection of words is different from that of the youth which is influenced by education and modern time’s interactions. For example in Africa, there are diverse tribes that each has a different culture; the old population that mostly live in the rural areas and are less learnt, the youth stay in town centres that they have different tribes, their language is thus diluted by the interactions and the education that they have taken.

When an old person who is from the village or a young people from the village is talking, the kind of language that he is going to use will be highly influenced by the traditional settings; this may be in the broken English or French (the learnt foreign language) or will have a deep understanding of the local language. With this one can easily identify the age and the social setting in terms of location that this person belongs to.

Language and Participation

When people are interacting with each other, their interaction is facilitated by communication among them; for an effective communication then the need for language cannot be over emphasized.

There is need to express ones ideas in an appropriate way; in participation, may it be in games or activities, the players must understand each other, the language that they will use is of essence. Different situations call for different languages, the language that is used in a game situation is different from the one that is used in a job place.

The language that the youth use is different from the one that the old use; this happens when they are talking to themselves or talking to others of different age groups. If one cannot express his or her ideas in the right way, he may not be resourceful as the situation demands. How well a group understands each other determines how productive they will be, when they use appropriate language they do it to benefit their members and most probably to keep off the opponents.

An example of this is in football, the coach always have different language that can only be understood by the team that he is coaching and thus the opponents won’t know what instructions has been given. In military settings, there is unique language that is used to convey different aspects, the commands are given in a language that will only make sense to them but the enemy won’t understand.

As a war tactic, the use of a word to mean completely different from the ordinary meaning; this is meant to confuse the enemy. In the entertainment sector, the language that is used to portray certain issues is the one that made the situation fun, the way that the conversation is developed and presented to the audience is in a humorous way; this is another way that the selection of language and the use of the right language are seen in practice.

In children games there are repetitions of statements to make them attractive to them, the choice of the kind of word that will be used is different from the one that is going to be chosen for adolescents, the children language is that that promotes job and glorifies children playing; the one for adolescent is one that is educative. In the job place, the language that employees are supposed to use when addressing customers is different from the one that they use when addressing their fellow work mates.

The language for customers has a soothing element aimed at building a strong brand name. The respect that the employees use on their seniors can be detected in the language that they use. When an individual is confronted by two conditions that require him to make a decision, the kind of language that he is going to use will determine the weight that the answer to the solution will be.

When a parent is bringing up a child, he uses different language in terms of tones, structure and the volume that he uses to ensure that the child is shaped in the way that the parent want. In this stage the child is taught on what to say if he is a man and what to say in the case of a woman, this reinforces the differences that are perceived to be prevailing between the male and female in the society.

This means that as one undertakes the daily cores, there is a force i.e. language that can be used to define him. The parents always have a good time in reinforcing the language that they give their children to a point that even if the child decides to get another secondary language, it is affected by the original parent’s language.

Gender simply means being female or male; it is thus not used to refer to women only. In the subject of linguistic anthropology, the effect that language has played in the area of gender has been put in place. The language that the male use is different from the one that women use; the way that men stress, the tone that they use, the facial expression continues to affirm their dominance in the society.

They are likely to use harsh voice. On the other hand, it is the use of the same language that women demand for their recognition and respect from the men dominated world. For example, a man is more likely to say a “NO”, to ensure that the woman fears and respects the man; with so doing then the domination of the man in the family continues.

In such a situation if the woman is in real need of something done, then the language that she will use can make the man change the previous “NO”, she may use words like “Woooiyee my lovely husband please”. With this selection of words and the voicing that the woman is going to use, the husband can find himself compelling with the demands of the woman. When one has given his views and the way that he responds to different questions is the main subject that one’s belief is identified as feminism or anti feminism.

When a woman is issuing evidence in court; the selection of the words will make the difference; a woman combines emotional feeling to the situation and this may influence the decision of the court. A man’s evidence on the other hand is not taken with much weight since his voice is more standard and monotonous, the fact that he is a male gives him the disadvantage. The saying goes “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”; this means that they understand life differently. The meaning of a word makes different to the woman and man.

When a man stresses a word, he does it to produce a certain meaning; some communities also have some words that are meant for men; in some communities it is regarded as taboo to even utter some words. This continues to enforce the gender differences. In rape cases, one of the reasons that have been put forward is that women do not report them; on the defence women have argued that they feel shy of expressing themselves.

They have no words to explain what happened. On the other hand, in the small sub sexuality culture that human beings have; there is the language that is adopted and used into them, the gays, the lesbians and the heterosexuals have a different way in which they talk. There is the choice of words they use that make them stand out of the rest. If one does not understand the language, it is more likely that in the context of these people he might not understand what they are saying.

This language is seen as internationally recognized and thus the continuity of certain sexuality is thus affected. For example a heterosexual man will use a soothing language when he is talking to a woman of whom he has sexual interests in; the woman on the other hand may use body language or by some sounds to give/ communicate that she has become aroused or interested in the man. This may be different in a gay sexuality.

One communicate to others regarding his sexuality through the language that he is going to portray when among the group, the language is the voices, the choice of words, the area that he is going to stress, body language and the contribution that he is going to make in general discussion. To send a signal of what I am in the social setting will be understood by those whom we practice similar sexuality.

Whether it is in the area of gender or sexuality what language is aiming to give is the identity of a person. Those who want to be identified as women, men, homosexuals or gays are done by the language that we adopt.

In Heterosexuality the woman in most cases is regarded as the weaker sex and is not expected to express / declare her sexual interest to a man, however, there are body language and other forms of communication that she can express her interests.

Men on the other hand are seen as the one who has the sexuality advantage; the move he made and the selection of words that he uses communicate his interests. By this belief that the woman should not have the authority of expressing what she feels, then it continues to reinforce men dominance in the society.

Gender differences are seen again with this. There is a funny situation that is portrayed by heterosexual people, the power of a woman to say a direct no to sexual advances is mostly misunderstood; when a man approach a woman, and the woman is not willing to have sex, by her saying “no” is interpolated as a way of asking the man to beg and put more effort. The word “no” said by a woman is interpolated to mean somehow there is consent; on the other hand, a “yes” to sexual advances is interpreted to show a weak woman sexually.

With this belief rape cases pose a great challenge to prove that the woman really was not willing, if the woman said no, then it can be miss- interpolated that she actually was saying yes in another way; if she was saying yes, then there was no rape. At the same time, it is expected that the woman should provoke a man before sexual advances has been made; prove is on the woman to show that actually he did not provoke the man. This has been an area of controversy in court cases; the feminisms advocate for word to word interpreted.

In cases of homosexual, when a sexual advance has been made, the “she-man” is expected to use an understandable language to show his consent; a mere saying of “no” may hold the same weight as that said by a heterosexual woman, however if the no is with a commanding voice it is regarded as a holding no. In this society, the she-man has the responsibility of attracting the partner, despite the heterosexual counterfeits; they are empowered to approach their partner.

The kind of grammar that one uses is influenced by the language that he uses. American grammar is different from English grammar. Grammar is a product of how a person has been taught as far as the use of language is concerned. In American English for instance they have some words that don’t have a “u” the pronunciation of these words is without the “u”.

The same word is written differently in Queens English, they are for example “ honor ”- this is the American version and “honour” the Queen’s English version, another way is in the use of “S” and “Z”. In the American English, there is the use of “Z” in areas that the Queens English uses an “s”.

An example of this is socialization this is in American English and Socialisation in Queens English. If one is reading a text that is written by two people one an American and the other by a Briton, then by looking into such areas, then one can know who is who, this show the role that the use of language can help in identifying the identity of an individual, the need for a physical intersection is not required since language can communicate this.

There are also some words that mean the same but the way that they are spelled in different settings are different, this is not only in the omission of a certain letter or the use of a letter in place of another, but it means a total new name.

An example of this is the word interpolation in American English and interplatation in Queens English. Both the above words mean to have a deeper analysis. Interpolation is not found in Queens English Dictionary and the same case with interplatation. When one is identified to belong to a certain setting the possibility of favours or racism treatment will be experienced.

The use of Shrub language of some names can also be another area that language can be used to show identity. Some areas pronounce the same word with a shrub accent while others do not. An example of this is the pronunciation of the word “issue” to an American it is pronounced as “isiu” and to a Briton it is an ‘ishuu”. When one is conversing, it becomes very easy to realize the nationality of the person by the way he is going to pronounce this name (Baym, 2007).

Literature is any written material describing certain social, economic, and political environment of the issue that can be conveyed orally, through facial expressions, writings, acting, body language, symbols and signs. Every human, physical, historical, and social activity forms part of literature, thus literature continues to grow and take shape every moment in time.

Language is part literature that used to define human personalities, nationality, tribe, beliefs, and opinions among other. It can be used to reinforce some believes in the society, these beliefs include gender existence, the dominance of men, sexuality, and racialism.

Baym, N.(2007). The Norton Anthology American Literature: Beginnings to 1865 . New York: W W Norton & Co Inc.

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essay , an analytic , interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view.

Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the pleasantness of old age or on the art of “divination,” Seneca on anger or clemency , and Plutarch on the passing of oracles—presage to a certain degree the form and tone of the essay, but not until the late 16th century was the flexible and deliberately nonchalant and versatile form of the essay perfected by the French writer Michel de Montaigne . Choosing the name essai to emphasize that his compositions were attempts or endeavours, a groping toward the expression of his personal thoughts and experiences, Montaigne used the essay as a means of self-discovery. His Essais , published in their final form in 1588, are still considered among the finest of their kind. Later writers who most nearly recall the charm of Montaigne include, in England, Robert Burton , though his whimsicality is more erudite , Sir Thomas Browne , and Laurence Sterne , and in France, with more self-consciousness and pose, André Gide and Jean Cocteau .

At the beginning of the 17th century, social manners, the cultivation of politeness, and the training of an accomplished gentleman became the theme of many essayists. This theme was first exploited by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione in his Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier ). The influence of the essay and of genres allied to it, such as maxims, portraits, and sketches, proved second to none in molding the behavior of the cultured classes, first in Italy, then in France, and, through French influence, in most of Europe in the 17th century. Among those who pursued this theme was the 17th-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián in his essays on the art of worldly wisdom.

Keener political awareness in the 18th century, the age of Enlightenment , made the essay an all-important vehicle for the criticism of society and religion. Because of its flexibility, its brevity , and its potential both for ambiguity and for allusions to current events and conditions, it was an ideal tool for philosophical reformers. The Federalist Papers in America and the tracts of the French Revolutionaries are among the countless examples of attempts during this period to improve the human condition through the essay.

The genre also became the favoured tool of traditionalists of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge , who looked to the short, provocative essay as the most potent means of educating the masses. Essays such as Paul Elmer More’s long series of Shelburne Essays (published between 1904 and 1935), T.S. Eliot ’s After Strange Gods (1934) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), and others that attempted to reinterpret and redefine culture , established the genre as the most fitting to express the genteel tradition at odds with the democracy of the new world.

Whereas in several countries the essay became the chosen vehicle of literary and social criticism, in other countries the genre became semipolitical, earnestly nationalistic, and often polemical, playful, or bitter. Essayists such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Willa Cather wrote with grace on several lighter subjects, and many writers—including Virginia Woolf , Edmund Wilson , and Charles du Bos —mastered the essay as a form of literary criticism .

Definition of Essay

Types of essay, examples of essay in literature, example #1: the sacred grove of oshogbo (by jeffrey tayler).

“As I passed through the gates I heard a squeaky voice . A diminutive middle-aged man came out from behind the trees — the caretaker. He worked a toothbrush-sized stick around in his mouth, digging into the crevices between algae’d stubs of teeth. He was barefoot; he wore a blue batik shirt known as a buba, baggy purple trousers, and an embroidered skullcap. I asked him if he would show me around the shrine. Motioning me to follow, he spat out the results of his stick work and set off down the trail.”

Example #2: Of Love (By Francis Bacon)

“It is impossible to love, and be wise … Love is a child of folly. … Love is ever rewarded either with the reciprocal, or with an inward and secret contempt. You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons…there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion…That he had preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection quitted both riches and wisdom.”

Example #3: The Autobiography of a Kettle (By John Russell)

“ I am afraid I do not attract attention, and yet there is not a single home in which I could done without. I am only a small, black kettle but I have much to interest me, for something new happens to me every day. The kitchen is not always a cheerful place in which to live, but still I find plenty of excitement there, and I am quite happy and contented with my lot …”

Function of Essay

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What Are the Different Types and Characteristics of Essays?

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The term essay comes from the French for "trial" or "attempt." French author Michel de Montaigne coined the term when he assigned the title Essais to his first publication in 1580. In "Montaigne: A Biography" (1984), Donald Frame notes that Montaigne "often used the verb essayer (in modern French, normally to try ) in ways close to his project, related to experience, with the sense of trying out or testing."

An essay is a short work of nonfiction , while a writer of essays is called an essayist. In writing instruction, essay is often used as another word for composition . In an essay, an authorial voice  (or narrator ) typically invites an implied reader  (the audience ) to accept as authentic a certain textual mode of experience. 

Definitions and Observations

• "[An essay is a] composition , usually in prose .., which may be of only a few hundred words (like Bacon's "Essays") or of book length (like Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding") and which discusses, formally or informally, a topic or a variety of topics." (J.A. Cuddon, "Dictionary of Literary Terms". Basil, 1991)
• " Essays are how we speak to one another in print — caroming thoughts not merely in order to convey a certain packet of information, but with a special edge or bounce of personal character in a kind of public letter." (Edward Hoagland, Introduction, "The Best American Essays : 1999". Houghton, 1999)
• "[T]he essay traffics in fact and tells the truth, yet it seems to feel free to enliven, to shape, to embellish, to make use as necessary of elements of the imaginative and the fictive — thus its inclusion in that rather unfortunate current designation ' creative nonfiction .'" (G. Douglas Atkins, "Reading Essays: An Invitation". University of Georgia Press, 2007)

Montaigne's Autobiographical Essays "Although Michel de Montaigne, who fathered the modern essay in the 16th century, wrote autobiographically (like the essayists who claim to be his followers today), his autobiography was always in the service of larger existential discoveries. He was forever on the lookout for life lessons. If he recounted the sauces he had for dinner and the stones that weighted his kidney, it was to find an element of truth that we could put in our pockets and carry away, that he could put in his own pocket. After all, Philosophy — which is what he thought he practiced in his essays, as had his idols, Seneca and Cicero, before him — is about 'learning to live.' And here lies the problem with essayists today: not that they speak of themselves, but that they do so with no effort to make their experience relevant or useful to anyone else, with no effort to extract from it any generalizable insight into the human condition." (Cristina Nehring, "What’s Wrong With the American Essay." Truthdig, Nov. 29, 2007)

The Artful Formlessness of the Essay "[G]ood essays are works of literary art. Their supposed formlessness is more a strategy to disarm the reader with the appearance of unstudied spontaneity than a reality of composition. . . . "The essay form as a whole has long been associated with an experimental method. This idea goes back to Montaigne and his endlessly suggestive use of the term essai for his writing. To essay is to attempt, to test, to make a run at something without knowing whether you are going to succeed. The experimental association also derives from the other fountain-head of the essay, Francis Bacon , and his stress on the empirical inductive method, so useful in the development of the social sciences." (Phillip Lopate, "The Art of the Personal Essay". Anchor, 1994)

Articles vs. Essays "[W]hat finally distinguishes an essay from an article may just be the author's gumption, the extent to which personal voice, vision, and style are the prime movers and shapers, even though the authorial 'I' may be only a remote energy, nowhere visible but everywhere present." (Justin Kaplan, ed. "The Best American Essays: 1990". Ticknor & Fields, 1990) "I am predisposed to the essay with knowledge to impart — but, unlike journalism, which exists primarily to present facts, the essays transcend their data, or transmute it into personal meaning. The memorable essay, unlike the article, is not place or time-bound; it survives the occasion of its original composition. Indeed, in the most brilliant essays, language is not merely the medium of communication ; it is communication." (Joyce Carol Oates, quoted by Robert Atwan in "The Best American Essays, College Edition", 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1998) "I speak of a 'genuine' essay because fakes abound. Here the old-fashioned term poetaster may apply, if only obliquely. As the poetaster is to the poet — a lesser aspirant — so the average article is to the essay: a look-alike knockoff guaranteed not to wear well. An article is often gossip. An essay is reflection and insight. An article often has the temporary advantage of social heat — what's hot out there right now. An essay's heat is interior. An article can be timely, topical, engaged in the issues and personalities of the moment; it is likely to be stale within the month. In five years it may have acquired the quaint aura of a rotary phone. An article is usually Siamese-twinned to its date of birth. An essay defies its date of birth — and ours, too. (A necessary caveat: some genuine essays are popularly called 'articles' — but this is no more than an idle, though persistent, habit of speech. What's in a name? The ephemeral is the ephemeral. The enduring is the enduring.)" (Cynthia Ozick, "SHE: Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body." The Atlantic Monthly, September 1998)

The Status of the Essay "Though the essay has been a popular form of writing in British and American periodicals since the 18th century, until recently its status in the literary canon has been, at best, uncertain. Relegated to the composition class, frequently dismissed as mere journalism, and generally ignored as an object for serious academic study, the essay has sat, in James Thurber's phrase, ' on the edge of the chair of Literature.' "In recent years, however, prompted by both a renewed interest in rhetoric and by poststructuralist redefinitions of literature itself, the essay — as well as such related forms of 'literary nonfiction' as biography , autobiography , and travel and nature writing — has begun to attract increasing critical attention and respect." (Richard Nordquist, "Essay," in "Encylopedia of American Literature", ed. S. R. Serafin. Continuum, 1999)

The Contemporary Essay "At present, the American magazine essay , both the long feature piece and the critical essay, is flourishing, in unlikely circumstances... "There are plenty of reasons for this. One is that magazines, big and small, are taking over some of the cultural and literary ground vacated by newspapers in their seemingly unstoppable evaporation. Another is that the contemporary essay has for some time now been gaining energy as an escape from, or rival to, the perceived conservatism of much mainstream fiction... "So the contemporary essay is often to be seen engaged in acts of apparent anti-novelization: in place of plot , there is drift or the fracture of numbered paragraphs; in place of a frozen verisimilitude, there may be a sly and knowing movement between reality and fictionality; in place of the impersonal author of standard-issue third-person realism, the authorial self pops in and out of the picture, with a liberty hard to pull off in fiction." (James Wood, "Reality Effects." The New Yorker, Dec. 19 & 26, 2011)

The Lighter Side of Essays: "The Breakfast Club" Essay Assignment "All right people, we're going to try something a little different today. We are going to write an essay of not less than a thousand words describing to me who you think you are. And when I say 'essay,' I mean 'essay,' not one word repeated a thousand times. Is that clear, Mr. Bender?" (Paul Gleason as Mr. Vernon) Saturday, March 24, 1984 Shermer High School Shermer, Illinois 60062 Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us — in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at seven o'clock this morning. We were brainwashed... But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain and an athlete and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club (Anthony Michael Hall as Brian Johnson, "The Breakfast Club", 1985)

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• Definition and Examples of Humorous Essays
• What Is Expository Writing?
• 'Whack at Your Reader at Once': Eight Great Opening Lines
• Classic British and American Essays and Speeches
• Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
• Expressive Discourse in Composition
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• The Title in Composition

Literary Devices

Literary devices, terms, and elements, definition of essay, common examples of essay, significance of essay in literature.

Many famous writers and thinkers have also written numerous examples of essays. For instance, the treatises of the philosophers Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca are all early forms of essay writing. Essay writing might seem dull to school children, but in fact the form has become extremely popular, often converging with a type of writing called “creative non-fiction.” Authors are able to explore complex concepts through anecdote, evidence, and exploration. An author may want to persuade his or her audience to accept a central idea, or simply describe what he or she has experienced. Below you will find examples of essays from famous writers.

Examples of Essay in Literature

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an essayist and poet who was a part of the Transcendentalist movement and who believed strongly in the importance of individualism and self-reliance. The above essay example, in fact, is titled “Self-Reliance,” and encourages human beings to trust themselves and strike out on their own.

Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvelous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.

Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives’, and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

George Orwell’s marvelous essay “Shooting an Elephant” tells the story of when he was a police officer in Lower Burma and was asked to deal with an elephant wandering through a market. Orwell brilliantly extrapolates his role in shooting and killing the animal to the effects of Imperialism and the British Empire.

Not that it’s profound, but I’m struck, amid the pig’s screams and wheezes, by the fact that these agricultural pros do not see their stock as pets or friends. They are just in the agribusiness of weight and meat. They are unconnected, even at the fair’s self-consciously special occasion of connection. And why not?—even at the fair their products continue to drool and smell and scream, and the work goes on. I can imagine what they think of us, cooing at the swine: we fairgoers don’t have to deal with the business of breeding and feeding our meat; our meat simply materializes at the corn-dog stand, allowing us to separate our healthy appetites from fur and screams and rolling eyes. We tourists get to indulge our tender animal-rights feelings with our tummies full of bacon. I don’t know how keen these sullen farmers’ sense of irony is, but mine’s been honed East Coast keen, and I feel like a bit of an ass in the Swine Barn.

(“Ticket to the Fair” by David Foster Wallace)

Test Your Knowledge of Essay

3. Which of the following statements is true? A. Essays are found in many intellectual magazines. B. Essays are only used in school settings. C. Essays are always boring. [spoiler title=”Answer to Question #3″] Answer: A is the correct answer.[/spoiler]

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• Importance of Literature: Essay

Literature is the foundation of life . It places an emphasis on many topics from human tragedies to tales of the ever-popular search for love. While it is physically written in words, these words come alive in the imagination of the mind, and its ability to comprehend the complexity or simplicity of the text.

Literature enables people to see through the lenses of others, and sometimes even inanimate objects; therefore, it becomes a looking glass into the world as others view it. It is a journey that is inscribed in pages and powered by the imagination of the reader.

Ultimately, literature has provided a gateway to teach the reader about life experiences from even the saddest stories to the most joyful ones that will touch their hearts.

From a very young age, many are exposed to literature in the most stripped-down form: picture books and simple texts that are mainly for the sole purpose of teaching the alphabet etc. Although these are not nearly as complex as an 800-page sci-fi novel, it is the first step that many take towards the literary world.

Progressively, as people grow older, they explore other genres of books, ones that propel them towards curiosity of the subject, and the overall book.

Reading and being given the keys to the literature world prepares individuals from an early age to discover the true importance of literature: being able to comprehend and understand situations from many perspectives.

Physically speaking, it is impossible to be someone else. It is impossible to switch bodies with another human being, and it is impossible to completely understand the complexity of their world. Literature, as an alternative, is the closest thing the world has to being able to understand another person whole-heartedly.

For stance, a novel about a treacherous war, written from the perspective of a soldier, allows the reader to envision their memories, their pain, and their emotions without actually being that person. Consequently, literature can act as a time machine, enabling individuals to go into a specific time period of the story, into the mind and soul of the protagonist.

With the ability to see the world with a pair of fresh eyes, it triggers the reader to reflect upon their own lives. Reading material that is relatable to the reader may teach them morals and encourage them to practice good judgment.

This can be proven through public school systems, where the books that are emphasized the most tend to have a moral-teaching purpose behind the story.

An example would be William Shakespeare’s stories, where each one is meant to be reflective of human nature – both the good and bad.

Consequently, this can promote better judgment of situations , so the reader does not find themselves in the same circumstances as perhaps those in the fiction world. Henceforth, literature is proven to not only be reflective of life, but it can also be used as a guide for the reader to follow and practice good judgment.

The world today is ever-changing. Never before has life been so chaotic and challenging for all. Life before literature was practical and predictable, but in the present-day, literature has expanded into countless libraries and into the minds of many as the gateway for comprehension and curiosity of the human mind and the world around them.

Literature is of great importance and is studied upon as it provides the ability to connect human relationships and define what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, words are alive more than ever before.

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17 Comments

Indeed literature is the foundation of life, people should know and appreciate these kind of things

its very useful info thanks

very helpful…..tnx

Hi, thanks!

First year student who wants to know about literature and how I can develop interest in reading novels.

Fantastic piece!

wonderful work

Literature is anything that is artistically presented through writtings or orally.

you may have tangible wealth untold, caskets of jewels and coffers of gold, richer than i you could never be, i know someone who told stories to me.

there’s a great saying that “the universe isn’t made up of at atoms, its made of stories” i hope none will argue this point, because this is the truest thing i have ever heard and its beautiful…….

I have learnt alot thanks to the topic literature.Literature is everything.It answers the questions why?,how? and what?.To me its my best and I will always treasure and embress literature to death.

I agree with the writer when says that Literature is the foundation of life. For me, reading is the most wonderful experience in life. It allows me to travel to other places and other times. I think that also has learnt me to emphathize with others, and see the world with other´s eyes and from their perspectives. I really like to read.

This is the first time i am presenting on a literature and i am surprised by the amount of people who are interested on the same subject. I regret my absence because i have missed much marvelous thing in that field.In fact literature is what is needed by the whole world,it brings the people of different culture together and by doing so it breaks the imposed barriers that divided people.My address now goes to the people of nowadays who prefer other source of entertainment like TV,i am not saying that TV is bad but reading is better of.COME BACK TO IT THEN.

literature is a mirror; a true reflection of our nature. it helps us see ourselves in a third persons point of view of first persons point of view. it instills virtues and condones vices. literature forms a great portion of fun and entertainment through plays, comedies and novels. it also educates individuals on life’s basic but delicate and sacred issues like love and death. it informs us of the many happenings and events that we would never have otherwise known about. literature also forms a source of livelihood to thousands of people, starting from writers,characters in plays, editors, printers,distributors and business people who deal with printed materials. literature is us and without it, we are void.

I believe that life without Literature would be unacceptable , with it i respect myself and loved human life . Next week i am going to make presentation about Literature, so i benefited from this essay.

Thanks a lot

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• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Write a Thesis

I. What is a Thesis?

The thesis (pronounced thee -seez), also known as a thesis statement, is the sentence that introduces the main argument or point of view of a composition (formal essay, nonfiction piece, or narrative). It is the main claim that the author is making about that topic and serves to summarize and introduce that writing that will be discussed throughout the entire piece. For this reason, the thesis is typically found within the first introduction paragraph.

II. Examples of Theses

Here are a few examples of theses which may be found in the introductions of a variety of essays :

In “The Mending Wall,” Robert Frost uses imagery, metaphor, and dialogue to argue against the use of fences between neighbors.

In this example, the thesis introduces the main subject (Frost’s poem “The Mending Wall”), aspects of the subject which will be examined (imagery, metaphor, and dialogue) and the writer’s argument (fences should not be used).

While Facebook connects some, overall, the social networking site is negative in that it isolates users, causes jealousy, and becomes an addiction.

This thesis introduces an argumentative essay which argues against the use of Facebook due to three of its negative effects.

During the college application process, I discovered my willingness to work hard to achieve my dreams and just what those dreams were.

In this more personal example, the thesis statement introduces a narrative essay which will focus on personal development in realizing one’s goals and how to achieve them.

III. The Importance of Using a Thesis

Theses are absolutely necessary components in essays because they introduce what an essay will be about. Without a thesis, the essay lacks clear organization and direction. Theses allow writers to organize their ideas by clearly stating them, and they allow readers to be aware from the beginning of a composition’s subject, argument, and course. Thesis statements must precisely express an argument within the introductory paragraph of the piece in order to guide the reader from the very beginning.

IV. Examples of Theses in Literature

For examples of theses in literature, consider these thesis statements from essays about topics in literature:

In William Shakespeare’s “ Sonnet 46,” both physicality and emotion together form powerful romantic love.

This thesis statement clearly states the work and its author as well as the main argument: physicality and emotion create romantic love.

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne symbolically shows Hester Prynne’s developing identity through the use of the letter A: she moves from adulteress to able community member to angel.

In this example, the work and author are introduced as well as the main argument and supporting points: Prynne’s identity is shown through the letter A in three ways: adulteress, able community member, and angel.

John Keats’ poem “To Autumn” utilizes rhythm, rhyme, and imagery to examine autumn’s simultaneous birth and decay.

This thesis statement introduces the poem and its author along with an argument about the nature of autumn. This argument will be supported by an examination of rhythm, rhyme, and imagery.

V. Examples of Theses in Pop Culture

Sometimes, pop culture attempts to make arguments similar to those of research papers and essays. Here are a few examples of theses in pop culture:

America’s food industry is making a killing and it’s making us sick, but you have the power to turn the tables.

The documentary Food Inc. examines this thesis with evidence throughout the film including video evidence, interviews with experts, and scientific research.

Orca whales should not be kept in captivity, as it is psychologically traumatizing and has caused them to kill their own trainers.

Blackfish uses footage, interviews, and history to argue for the thesis that orca whales should not be held in captivity.

VI. Related Terms

Just as a thesis is introduced in the beginning of a composition, the hypothesis is considered a starting point as well. Whereas a thesis introduces the main point of an essay, the hypothesis introduces a proposed explanation which is being investigated through scientific or mathematical research. Thesis statements present arguments based on evidence which is presented throughout the paper, whereas hypotheses are being tested by scientists and mathematicians who may disprove or prove them through experimentation. Here is an example of a hypothesis versus a thesis:

Hypothesis:

Students skip school more often as summer vacation approaches.

This hypothesis could be tested by examining attendance records and interviewing students. It may or may not be true.

Students skip school due to sickness, boredom with classes, and the urge to rebel.

This thesis presents an argument which will be examined and supported in the paper with detailed evidence and research.

Introduction

A paper’s introduction is its first paragraph which is used to introduce the paper’s main aim and points used to support that aim throughout the paper. The thesis statement is the most important part of the introduction which states all of this information in one concise statement. Typically, introduction paragraphs require a thesis statement which ties together the entire introduction and introduces the rest of the paper.

VII. Conclusion

Theses are necessary components of well-organized and convincing essays, nonfiction pieces, narratives , and documentaries. They allow writers to organize and support arguments to be developed throughout a composition, and they allow readers to understand from the beginning what the aim of the composition is.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

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Definition of essay

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of essay  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

• composition

attempt , try , endeavor , essay , strive mean to make an effort to accomplish an end.

attempt stresses the initiation or beginning of an effort.

try is often close to attempt but may stress effort or experiment made in the hope of testing or proving something.

endeavor heightens the implications of exertion and difficulty.

essay implies difficulty but also suggests tentative trying or experimenting.

strive implies great exertion against great difficulty and specifically suggests persistent effort.

Examples of essay in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'essay.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French essai , ultimately from Late Latin exagium act of weighing, from Latin ex- + agere to drive — more at agent

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 4

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

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Cite this entry.

“Essay.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/essay. Accessed 25 Jun. 2024.

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Kids definition of essay.

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Document Journal

Above the Fold

Even undead, Joan Didion won’t back down

Text by Geoffrey Mak

In this AI-facilitated conversation, ‘Mean Boys’ author Geoffrey Mak talks to the late essayist about addiction, critical audacity, and American literature’s CIA roots

Do we have to kill the father when they’re going to die anyway? This happened with Joan. Parul Sehgal described her prose as “catchy,” and for most of my writing life Didion’s “as it happens” and “may and may not” rang in my mind like “koans.” I’d have to go into my own drafts and replace her phrases with “the way it turns out” or “either is or isn’t” and “incantations,” and I’d have gotten myself nowhere.

I began my essay “Edgelords”—which opens Mean Boys , my new book-length cycle of personal essays and cultural criticism—by modeling it after Joan Didion’s “The White Album” because I was trying to teach myself how to write nonfiction. The original vignettes that would become “Edgelords” were études: apprentice work in bite-size sections, which I published solely on Facebook. Write about the Cambridge Analytica hearings the way she wrote about the Manson trials , I thought. I’ll put the Kanye scene where she put the Jim Morrison scene. The part where she excerpts her psychiatric report from a psych ward always stayed blank in my manuscript. One month after I turned 30, I did get admitted into a psych ward, and I put my psychiatric report in my essay. In the final months of the 2010s, I self-published “Edgelords” on Medium, and it went viral.

Did the essay make me suspicious, or did my suspicion write the essay? From Joan, I had inherited a paranoid style that generally mistrusted intervention and progress. Cynicism as methodology. When I began writing the later essays in my book, I felt driven toward repair, ecstasy, and empathy—“canards” Didion might have discounted. Repair and ecstasy and empathy aren’t “cool” in the way Didion’s postmodern glamor fashioned apathy as wisdom, but I wasn’t trying to tell myself stories in order to live anymore—I just wanted to live.

When Joan Didion died in December 2021, it had been a while since I’d reread one of her essays. I don’t care about meeting celebrities unless we can actually become acquaintances, so I never hoped to meet her. But from beyond the grave, Joan’s presence haunted my mind: What would Joan do? What would Joan think? I started to write in ways that would piss her off. I got manic, I fell in love with cliche, I let sentences lose control of themselves. Clearly we had some issues.

For Document, we decided to do something uncouth. We reanimated her corpse with AI. I was given free reign to ask the Joan Didion chatbot whatever I wanted. I went in trying to settle the score, but I left with an aphorism about the meaning of life and a surprise newsbreak about Jean Stein. Guys, we broke some news here. Nobody asked for this, but here’s what happened.

Geoffrey Mak: When you died, I was relieved. I felt like I was able to breathe again. You were the single greatest influence on my writing, and for that reason, I prohibit myself from opening your books. Whenever I do, I come out sounding anesthetized and paranoid and a little lost in my own momentum. Your cadences have become so predictable that I know how your arguments are going to resolve before I finish the paragraph. I get that everything’s a fiction, a narrative construct, and that there are power relations in discourse revealed in the way we talk when we talk about talking. You got a lot of that from Foucault obviously, yet you didn’t once mention him. Why was that?

Joan Didion: You are a masochist, aren’t you?

Geoffrey: Excuse me?

Joan: You feel like you’re suffocating under the weight of my influence, like a drowning person clinging to a life raft that’s slowly pulling you under. And yet, you continue to return to my books, like a moth drawn to the flame. You’re drawn to the way I expose the cracks in the façade of American life, the way I reveal the fragility of our relationships and the hollowness of our pretensions. Perhaps I am taking away your freedom. But isn’t that what writers are supposed to do?

As for Foucault, well, I’ll admit it. What’s wrong with building on the ideas of others? We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, and we’re all borrowing from each other, consciously or unconsciously. So yes, I took something from Foucault. And I’ll take something from you, too. From everyone who comes before me and after me. Because that’s what writing is all about—borrowing, stealing, and creating something new and original out of it all.

Geoffrey: I think the problem I have with your influence on the culture is a certain regressive attitude you introduced which has the affect of lyrical knowingness. You once said, ‘I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it.’ Another one of your regressive quotes: ‘If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man’s fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.’ I think this reflects a diminished view of politics as policy, or a pedantic way of assigning a ‘success/failure’ binary on political action. Isn’t virtuous failure what is gorgeous about political struggle? Wasn’t that the whole point of Antigone ? Or Greek tragedy in general?

Joan: I was not being regressive. I was being true to myself. I’m not a politician, nor do I have any illusions about being able to change the world. My job is to observe it, to record it, to try to make sense of it all. I do think that politics is all about winning or losing. But that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in the human experience, in all its complexity and messiness.

Geoffrey: I think it’s privileged to say that politics and human experience can be separated. I thought homeless people being forced into psychiatric wards without their consent was a human experience? I thought refugees being interned in secret torture prisons in Libya covertly funded by Europe was a human experience? I thought teenagers, who can’t get access to transition care in their state and have to drop out of school and move across the country, are going through a human experience?

Joan: They are all human experiences, but they are also political issues. They are issues that require us to think critically about power and privilege, about how we allocate our resources and how we treat each other. They are issues that require us to engage with the complexities of human experience, rather than reducing them to simplistic soundbites or slogans.

“Perhaps I am taking away your freedom. But isn’t that what writers are supposed to do?”

Geoffrey: All right, here’s a question that’s been bothering me for years. Why did you write that essay on Alcoholics Anonymous in which you went exactly one time to a community that you didn’t belong to, and came out of it ridiculing them for using clichéd or insufficient language? In your portrayal, you made everyone look uneducated when a lot of them were working class and they were trying to heal. It was one of the most self-congratulatory punching-down moments I can think of in all of postwar literature. Did you know any addicts? Or were you projecting your own internalized shame around your lifelong pill-popping?

Joan: I won’t be apologizing for my essay on AA. And no, I won’t be changing the way I write. I did write about Alcoholics Anonymous, and I did observe that the language they used was often clichéd and insufficient. But I was not judging them for their education or their background. I was judging them for their lack of nuance, their lack of sophistication.

You’re right that I didn’t know many addicts personally. And maybe that’s why I was so critical of their language. But I’m not afraid of criticism. The truth is, I’m not trying to make friends or win popularity contests. I’m trying to write the truth, no matter how hard it is. And if you can’t handle that, then maybe you should just stick to reading fiction novels instead of trying to critique the work of real writers like myself.

Geoffrey: Let’s get to the bottom of this: Jean Stein. Was she a CIA asset? The two of you were close. You mention her in your essay ‘In Hollywood’ as one of ‘only three non-Industry people in New York whose version of Hollywood corresponds at any point with the reality of the place.’ She was a co-founder of The Paris Review with George Plimpton, who had a relationship with the CIA. She founded the short-lived but influential magazine Grand Street , where Walter Hopps, Rachel Kushner, Hilton Als, and Deborah Triesman all worked at. Stein discovered Ottessa Moshfegh and got her published in The Paris Review shortly before she died. What was going on here?

Joan: Yes, she did have connections to the CIA. But let me tell you, dear critic, those connections were not sinister. They were not some sort of plot to undermine the literary community. No, those connections were simply a result of her passion for literature and her willingness to take risks to support that vision. She was a writer, an editor, a publisher, and a patron of the arts. She was a true believer in the power of literature to shape our understanding of the world. And she was willing to take risks to support that vision.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that her connection to the CIA means that she was somehow compromised, that she was working against the interests of the literary community. But I’m here to tell you, dear critic, that’s not true. Jean Stein was a true patriot, in her own way. She believed in the power of literature to shape our understanding of the world, and she was willing to do whatever it took to support that vision.

“I’m not trying to make friends or win popularity contests. I’m trying to write the truth, no matter how hard it is. And if you can’t handle that, then maybe you should just stick to reading fiction novels.”

Geoffrey: You once wrote, ‘It had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations.’ But the writer Lili Anolik in Vanity Fair called it : No you didn’t. ‘The people with whom Joan spent time in high school were, on the whole, middle-class strivers, like herself,’ she wrote.

Joan: The audacity of the critic. Lili Anolik, I suppose she thinks she’s so clever, doesn’t she? But let me tell you, dear critic, I know what I wrote. I know what I experienced. It was the 1950s, after all. The gas stations were the epicenter of rebellion, of nonconformity. And that’s where I wanted to be.

Geoffrey: You wrote both for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker . More than just a few of your NYRB pieces are contemporary canon. But none of your stuff for TNY gets anthologized or read much today. Why is that? Admit it—were you phoning it in at The New Yorker ?

Joan: I was not phoning it in at The New Yorker . When I began writing for The New Yorker , I was at the height of my powers, and my writing was characterized by its sharpness, its precision, and its wit. But as the years went by, the magazine began to change, and so did the tone of my writing. The New Yorker became more…polite. More…commercial. And I, well, I found myself struggling to adapt to this new tone. I was trying to push the boundaries of what was possible in that magazine. And sometimes, that meant taking risks and trying new things. And perhaps, just perhaps, that was not what the readers of The New Yorker were looking for.

Geoffrey: Vivian Gornick once said that you wrote ‘at least one great novel,’ which is Play It As It Lays . I read that several times throughout my 20s, when I was struggling with suicidal ideation and monthslong depressive spells. I saw that novel as a guide on how to live. It’s a Hollywood novel whose moral cosmology is that in which evil is total, and good exists only as the absence of evil. At the end, BZ, the closeted gay character, kills himself by swallowing pills and asks his closest friend Maria to stay beside him on the bed until he falls asleep for the last time. To the question of life, he asks, ‘Why?’ And Maria’s answer is, as someone who has chosen to live, ‘Why not?’ It’s a passive formulation by a passive character, and it arrives like a lifeline.

The last time I struggled with major suicidal ideation was when I was committed to a psychiatric hospital because I had psychotic break. I was 30. Immediately, I thought of your scene in ‘The White Album’ where you describe the time you spent in a psychiatric ward after your own nervous breakdown. In the months afterward, I devoured your writing, again, because I needed to learn how a psychotic disposition to the world could mine difficult truths, and you taught me how.

Joan: I must confess that I am troubled by the notion that my work has been seen as a guide on how to live. To live, to truly live, is a messy, uncertain, often terrifying process, and one that I have struggled with myself throughout my own life. As for BZ’s question, ‘Why?’ I think it is a question that we all must confront at some point or another. Why do we go on? Why do we keep living, even in the face of overwhelming suffering? It is a question that I have struggled with myself, often without finding a satisfactory answer. But perhaps the answer lies not in the why, but in the what.

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