Writing About Fiction

WRITING ABOUT FICTION

Demystifying the process

Writing an analysis of a piece of fiction can be a mystifying process. First, literary analyses (or

papers that offer an interpretation of a story) rely on the assumption that stories must mean

something. How does a story mean something? Isn’t a story just an arrangement of characters

and events? And if the author wanted to convey a meaning, wouldn’t he or she be much better

off writing an essay just telling us what he or she meant?

It’s pretty easy to see how at least some stories convey clear meanings or morals. Just think

about a parable like the prodigal son or a nursery tale about “crying wolf.” Stories like these are

reduced down to the bare elements, giving us just enough detail to lead us to their main points,

and because they are relatively easy to understand and tend to stick in our memories, they’re

often used in some kinds of education.

But if the meanings were always as clear as they are in parables, who would really need to write

a paper analyzing them? Interpretations of fiction would not be interesting if the meanings of the

stories were clear to everyone who reads them. Thankfully (or perhaps regrettably, depending on

your perspective) the stories we’re asked to interpret in our classes are a good bit more

complicated than most parables. They use characters, settings, and actions to illustrate issues that

have no easy resolution. They show different sides of a problem, and they can raise new

questions. In short, the stories we read in class have meanings that are arguable and complicated,

and it’s our job to sort them out.

It might seem that the stories do have specific meanings, and the instructor has already

decided what those meanings are. Not true. Instructors can be pretty dazzling (or mystifying)

with their interpretations, but that’s because they have a lot of practice with stories and have

developed a sense of the kinds of things to look for. Even so, the most...