Analysing texts

Imagery

HintWord-painting — the writer makes you see, hear or feel something that is not there.

The whyIt covers similes, metaphors and plain sensory detail. Naming the picture a writer creates is the first step of any analysis of method.

simile

Hint'As quiet as a mouse' — one little word gives the comparison away.

The whyThe comparison is signposted, so the reader is never in doubt that two things are being held up side by side for a moment.

A metaphor

Hint'He is a lion in defence' — the comparison is made directly, not flagged up.

The whyBecause it states the comparison as though it were fact, it hits harder than a simile: the reader accepts the claim before questioning it.

Personification

HintThe sea can be angry and the trees can whisper — objects behaving like people.

The whyIt does more than decorate: it hands a mood to a landscape, so the setting starts telling the reader how to feel about the scene.

Alliteration

HintTongue-twisters run on it — Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

The whyIt slows a reader down and makes a phrase stick, which is why headlines and advertising slogans lean on it so heavily.

Onomatopoeia

HintComic-book noises — bang, sizzle, splash — spelled out as words.

The whyIt pulls a reader into hearing a scene rather than only picturing it, which is why it turns up so often in poetry about weather and war.

Embedding

HintThe opposite of bolting a quote on after a colon — it is sewn in so the line still reads aloud.

The whyIt forces you to choose only the words you need, which usually improves the analysis that follows: you cannot explain what you did not select.

The evidence

HintA claim is worth nothing until you show where in the text it came from.

The whyThe full sequence taught here is PEEZL — point, evidence, explain, zoom in on a word, link back to the question. Each step earns its own credit.

Connotation

Hint'Slender' and 'scrawny' both mean thin, but one flatters and one insults.

The whyThis is where zoom-in analysis actually lives: the writer chose that word over its near neighbours, and the difference is the effect.

Dramatic irony

HintIn a pantomime the crowd shouts "behind you!" — that gap in knowledge is the whole effect.

The whyIt builds tension because the audience can see the danger coming and the character cannot, so every innocent line carries a second meaning.

14

HintTwo more than a dozen — Shakespeare wrote over 150 of them.

The whyThe form is part of the meaning: a sonnet turns its argument partway through, and a Shakespearean one usually clinches that turn in the closing rhyming couplet.

A symbol

HintA red rose on the page is rarely just a flower.

The whyWhen the same image returns again and again through a text it becomes a motif, and the pattern itself starts to carry meaning.