Convince me! Highschool literature analysis.

A few thoughts, whatever they are worth:

I dislike literary analysis. In my own school experience, it killed the book every time. It ruined books I liked and made the books I disliked even worse. I personally don’t feel like it is necessary to do any. I completely agree with the authors you quoted.

However (and this is a big caveat), I have not graduated any kids and my boys are not college-bound. They very likely will end up in trades, doing things like electrical and carpentry, so I don’t feel a lot of pressure to do literary analysis, since it very likely won’t be necessary for their post-secondary experience.

I often feel as if literary analysis in high school is solely for the purpose of being prepared for college, because most kids going to college will take an English class where they need to do this, as far as I know/have heard.

What I would be interested in hearing is someone’s experience with a college-bound student who just enjoyed literature in high school without analyzing, and then went on to college classes. I would suspect that any child used to reading high quality literature and having good writing skills would do fine in those classes, even without previous analyzing experience, but that is just my hunch.

Another thing: Some books lend themselves well to a little analysis and discussion and some do not. Allegorical books always require a bit of digging for me to really “get” them. When my oldest read Animal Farm, we dug up a list of the characters and who they represented so that we got the most we could out of the story. The Pilgrim’s Progress would be similar in order to understand what each place represents to Christian. However, I’m not sure that actually counts as analysis. Maybe it’s just further research.

I will add that I do think some literary terms are important, like knowing what foreshadowing is, or allusion, or simile, etc. Those terms are often used in real life, or in regards to movies, so a general knowledge there is good, and I do teach those. Beyond that, we just enjoy the books, we have literature discussions once per week (which are sometimes very unproductive) and write 3-4 essays per year related to literature (but not necessarily formal lit. analysis essays).

I guess I will see in a few years how that decision pans out. 🙂

Deconstructing Penguins is a light way to introduce literary terms and analysis. We use it in highschool, but skim through it.

We do Christian Light Education Literature after that, but lightly.

lol I didn’t even notice!😂

Such great counsel in these replies! I don’t have much to add, KeriJ.

We want to avoid draining the lifeblood out of the wonderful literary works that our children are forming relations with. Overanalyzing (or analyzing everything) will do that.

However, we do want to make sure our children have a grasp of the basic terminology and concepts that are connected with literature; for example, plot, characters, protagonist, setting. And we want them to realize how an author’s experiences and historical climate can play into the style and context of what he/she wrote. But that can all be done through informal discussion.

If you simply make use of the 5 W questions, your child should be familiar with the aspects to consider when writing a literary essay:

• Who is the author? Does his background have an impact on what he wrote?
• What is happening in the book? Which events are significant?
• Where does the story take place? Is that important?
• When is the story set? How does historical setting play a part in the context?
• Then ask for your child’s opinion of the book and ask her to tell you Why she would evaluate it that way.  Encourage her to support her opinion with supporting passages from the book.

The other piece of the puzzle is learning the various literary devices; such as, foreshadowing, hyperbole, idiom, metaphor, simile, irony, pun, sarcasm, symbolism, personification. Those will require some direct teaching but can be pulled from literature passages as they fit. For example, I’ve been tucking them into the ULW lessons a few per book.

Yes, these concepts will help a student with college level work, but they will also help that child read books more intelligently throughout life and gain a richer understanding of them while still retaining the personal relationship and joy of a great living story.