How to Analyze a Short Story or Novel

1. Basic Questions
• Who is the main character?
• Who are the two or three other most important characters?
• How are they related to one another?
2. Big Questions: A First Shot
• What is the story about?
• What are the Big Ideas here? (Can you tell yet?)
3. Mapping I: Places
• Draw a map of the most important places the main character goes through the story, and trace his or her movement.
• Next — maybe in another color? -- tell how the character feels at each place, and what he or she thinks.
• Next — maybe in another color? — tell what the character learns at each place.
• If you like, add other important characters to the map, or perhaps draw new maps for each important character.
4. Mapping II: Events
• Do the same mapping exercise, but this time make it a "time line" listing the important events of the story. (Again, map how the character feels at each place, and what he or she learns.)
5. Mapping III: Character (These can be applied to any important character)
• Make another map, or a timeline — or maybe just a list? — of the following things.
• What does the character, and perhaps other characters, desire?
• What gets in the way of attaining that desire? (In other words, what obstacle does the character meet?)
• What are the character’s main fears? Where do they appear? How are they described?
• Are any of the fears realized? (Do they actually happen?) How? How does the character react?
• What are the character’s main hopes? Where do they appear? How are they described?
• Do any of these hopes materialize? How? How does the character react?
• What does the character see or know that others do not?
• What does the main character not see or know that others do see or know?
6. Mapping IV: Themes
• Are there any important or unusual words or phrases, or objects or places, or feelings or ideas that occur more than once in the story? If so, these things are themes — things repeated several times. They mean to communicate important ideas.
• Make another map — or a list, if you like, or a timeline — and plot these themes in some way.
• Do these themes help you understand important places or events, fears or hopes?
7. Analysis I: Character and Plot
• Now look back at your maps. What are the very most important places and events in the story? How does the character change as a person at these turning points?
• What kind of person is the character at the beginning of the story?
• What kind of person is the character at the end?
• How do his or her relationships change?
• How do the people around him or her change?
8. Analysis II: Images and Ideas
• In the themes you’ve identified, is the author trying to use pictures to talk about ideas?
• List a few of the important pictures — big or small — and try to show how the author is using them to talk about ideas.
• Go back to your first sketchings of big ideas. Can you find any "pictures" in the story that communicate these big ideas?
• Look at the places where the author describes the character’s feelings, ideas, hopes, fears, desires, or obstacles. What pictures does the author draw to help you understand these?
9. Analysis III: Experience and Ideas
• Are there elements of the main character’s experience (or the experience of any other character) that are like your experience? How?
• Do you have experiences that are markedly different from those of the characters?
• Look at the Big Ideas of the story. Are there any that you agree with? Are there any you disagree with?
• What were your emotional reactions to the story? Do they change at various points?
• What is your emotional response to the story now that you’ve finished it?
• What moments in the story affected you the most? Why?
• What moments in the story bothered you the most? Why?
• What were your own hopes, fears, or desires as you read the story? Did these change as the story moved forward? How, and why?