Summary Analysis Essay

ENC 1102: Summary Analysis Essay (1200 words- 4 pages)

FORMAT:  Typed and double-spaced in MLA format.

OBJECTIVE:

• The general purpose of all analysis is to enhance one’s understanding of the subject under consideration. A good analysis provides a valuable point of view, a way of seeing, a way of interpreting some element of the primary source (the novel) that otherwise may appear random or unexplainable. Your job is to make the implicit explicit.

• A summary is a restatement, in your own words, of the content of a text. It focuses on the central idea of the text. It indicates the main points in the text that support or explain the central idea and will reflect the order in which these points are presented. A good summary has three central qualities: brevity, completeness, and objectivity.

• Your task in writing a Summary Analysis is to turn your critical reading of Bachman’s Rage into a systematic summary and analysis in order to deepen your reader’s understanding of the topic you have chosen to focus on within the text.

Your essay should be structured thusly:

• Last name and page number in top right corner.
• MLA Header:

1. Introduction- begin with broad summative sentence that includes author and title. The rest of the intro should provide specific contextual details to lead the reader to your thesis. End the intro with a two-part X as a means to Y argumentative thesis that begins with the author’s last name: Bachman focuses on X as a means to Y ½ page
2. Summary of the novel with specific awareness to your topic. ½ page

3-5.  ***This section should be broken into three quote sandwich 

        paragraphs. Each of the three paragraphs will be a critical analysis of your topic

       supported by a direct quote from the novel. 1 page each

6. Conclusion ¼ page

Works Cited

WRITING TASKS:  As you outline and draft your essay, keep the following in mind:

• The thesis should be a complete sentence that establishes your topic in clear, unambiguous language that includes “as a means to” between the X and Y parts.
• As you’ll discover, summarizing is hard work- you are condensing many pages of text to a few paragraphs.
• A key part of the assignment is supporting your analysis; you must not articulate a personal position, opinion, judgment, belief/value, etc. Rather, you will present your analysis of the novel by supporting your discussion with specific evidence pulled from the text, and a detailed analysis of relevant portions of the text.
• Utilize literary present tense.
• Your conclusion should expand on your evaluation and explain the significance of your topic.

• The essay should use proper Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting – this means one-inch margins on all sides and twelve point Times New Roman font. If you are unsure of format, consult the many online MLA sources available.
• While mistakes are inevitable, drafts are to be thoroughly proofread.