Analyzing with Literary Terms

How do we apply literary terms and strong verbs to our analysis? Well, like anything else with writing, building that complexity happens in steps. For example, as we closely read literary texts, we identify literary terms and devices and begin analysis in our annotation. As our argument takes shape, we complicate it with strong verbs and pose questions in order to develop the complexity our analysis.

Using Strong Verbs and Literary Terms to Analyze Evidence

“The author uses imagery” doesn’t tell us anything about the meaning of the evidence from the poem. In poetry, we refer to the person speaking in the poem as the speaker, but we’re not analyzing the speaker, nor the author, and are instead are analyzing the imagery and diction of specific evidence.

So, we look to our intellectual questions about specific evidence.

In Ross Gay’s poem “A Small Needful Fact,” how does the imagery of Eric Garner’s “very large hands” contrast with the diction of “he put gently into the earth” and serve to humanize Eric Garner (Gay)?

We have incorporated the literary terms of imagery and diction, but we also need to incorporate strong verbs in order to analyze what those terms do to illuminate meaning.

In Ross Gay’s poem “A Small Needful Fact,” how does the imagery of Eric Garner’s “very large hands” contrast with the diction of “he put gently into the earth” and serve to humanize Eric Garner (Gay)?

Transforming that question into a sentence allows us to create a claim that is specific to the evidence.

In Ross Gay’s poem “A Small Needful Fact,” the imagery of Eric Garner’s “very large hands” contrasts with the diction of “he put gently into the earth” and serves to humanize Eric Garner.

Our readers now expect us to dissect that evidence and explain the how of our analysis. In order to do that, we need to pose more questions of the evidence.

In order to dissect imagery of Eric Garner’s “very large hands,” we might ask:

What does that imagery tell us about the perception of Eric Garner? the stereotyping of of Black men?

In order to dissect how the diction of “he put gently into the earth,” we might ask

What does that imagery tell us about how the speaker wants the reader to perceive Eric Garner? Black men?

in order to dissect how “he put gently into the earth” humanizes Eric Garner, we might ask:

How does it make Eric Garner seem gentle?

In order to dissect the contrast between those images, we might ask

How does the imagery differ in terms of threatening versus loving?

Then we can draw conclusions about the meaning in order to support our claim.