A literary analysis essay argues how a work of literature makes its meaning and proves the argument with evidence from the text. It doesn't retell the plot or judge whether the book is good. It follows a pattern, such as an image, a character's choices, the narration or the structure, and explains what that pattern does. The usual shape is a thesis someone could dispute, body paragraphs built from short quotations and commentary, and a conclusion that says what the reading adds up to.
Below is a complete sample essay on Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” (1894), with a note on what each part does and one paragraph taken apart into claim, evidence and interpretation. After it come a table of what other elements would ask of the same story, shorter examples on a poem, Paul Laurence Dunbar's “We Wear the Mask” (1895), and a novel, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), then the outline the essay was written from and the steps from a first reading to a thesis.
Full example: “The Story of an Hour”
Chopin's story first appeared in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as “The Dream of an Hour.” Told that her husband, Brently, has been killed in a railroad disaster, Louise Mallard weeps, goes to her room alone and, facing an open window, finds herself whispering “free, free, free!” When she comes back downstairs, Brently lets himself in at the front door, unhurt, and she dies. Read it twice before the essay; the essay quotes the text on the Kate Chopin International Society's site.
Introduction
Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” is remembered for its last line, in which doctors decide that Louise Mallard has died “of joy that kills.” Read for the twist alone, the story turns on one surprise: the husband reported dead walks in alive. But the irony is built long before the front door opens. Chopin stages Louise's hour in two kinds of space, an open window through which the spring world reaches her, and a series of doors that other people knock at, guard and finally open with a key. By letting freedom arrive through the window and taking it away through the door, Chopin shows that Louise's self-possession can survive only in a room no one else enters, which is why the doctors, who know only what happened at the door, misread her death.
Why it works. The opening admits what every reader remembers, the ending, then turns to how the story prepares it. The thesis names a pattern (window and door), a claim about it (freedom exists only in private) and a consequence (the doctors' misreading), so a careful reader could argue with it.
Body paragraph 1: the window
Chopin delivers Louise's freedom through her senses before Louise can name it. Alone in her room, she sinks into an armchair “facing the open window,” and what follows is almost all perception: treetops “aquiver with the new spring life,” the smell of rain, a peddler's cry, sparrows in the eaves and “patches of blue sky.” None of these details belongs to the house or the marriage; they come from the street and the sky. When the feeling arrives, it comes the same way, “creeping out of the sky” and reaching her through sounds and scents. Louise tries to “beat it back with her will,” but the word she whispers is the window's before it is hers. The season matters because it is new life arriving unasked. By letting the reader feel the spring before Louise understands it, Chopin makes her joy seem natural, so that when the story raises the possibility of “a monstrous joy,” the reader is as ready as Louise to dismiss it.
Here is the same paragraph taken apart, sentence by sentence:
| Move | Sentences | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| MoveClaim | Sentences1: “Chopin delivers Louise's freedom through her senses before Louise can name it.” | What it doesStates one arguable point about a choice Chopin made. The rest of the paragraph has to prove it. |
| MoveTextual evidence | Sentences2, 4 and the first half of 5: the open window, the treetops “aquiver with the new spring life,” the rain, the peddler, the sparrows, the “patches of blue sky,” the feeling “creeping out of the sky,” the effort to “beat it back” | What it doesGathers details from one passage into a pattern, quoted in short phrases inside the essay's own sentences. |
| MoveInterpretation | Sentences3, the second half of 5, 6 and 7 | What it doesSays what the pattern means (every detail comes from outside the house and the marriage) and what it does to the reader (her joy feels natural before the story calls it “monstrous”). |
Body paragraph 2: a will of her own
What the window shows Louise is not escape from a cruel man but possession of herself. Chopin is careful to make Brently kind: Louise expects to weep over his “kind, tender hands” and a face that never looked at her except with love. The story's objection is to any arrangement in which one person bends another, and the key sentence puts it in general terms, faulting the “blind persistence” with which men and women alike believe they may “impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” The next sentence closes the escape route of good intentions: a kind intention or a cruel one makes the act “no less a crime.” The language of ownership runs through the passage. The years ahead “would belong to her absolutely,” and self-assertion is “the strongest impulse of her being.” Love is waved aside in two short sentences: “And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.” Because Chopin removes every reason to blame Brently, the reader can't explain the joy as relief from a bad husband. It has to be read as what it is, the discovery of a self the marriage had no room for.
Why it works. The paragraph takes on the obvious objection, that Brently must have been a bad husband, and answers it from the text, which turns an observation into an argument. Each quotation is a phrase the commentary interprets.
Body paragraph 3: the doors
Against the open window Chopin sets a run of doors, and none of them is Louise's to control. Josephine kneels “before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole,” begging to be let in, and the door marks the edge of the only space where Louise is free. When Louise finally opens it to her sister's “importunities,” she carries the window's spirit out with her “like a goddess of Victory” and goes down the stairs. There the last door opens from outside: “Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey.” Brently doesn't knock. He has his own key, and he enters “composedly” with his grip-sack and umbrella, knowing nothing of the accident or of the hour his wife has just lived. Richards moves to block the view and is “too late.” The front door undoes the window. Louise's freedom lasts only as long as she is alone in a closed room, and when the household is restored, it ends, and so does she.
Why it works. The third paragraph follows the story's order, which here is part of the argument: the doors close in as the ending nears. It also ties back to the first paragraph, so the essay reads as one argument in three steps rather than three observations.
Conclusion and Works Cited
The doctors' verdict, that she “died of heart disease—of joy that kills,” is the story's last closed door, and only the reader stands on the other side of it. To the doctors, a wife who collapses at the sight of her husband can only have died of happiness. The reader, who has sat with Louise at the window, knows the joy was real and had nothing to do with his return; what killed her was its end. The first sentence warned that she was “afflicted with a heart trouble,” and by the last, the phrase means more than medicine. Only the day before, she had thought with a shudder that life might be long; at the window she prays that it will be. The story gives her an hour.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” 1894. KateChopin.org, Kate Chopin International Society, www.katechopin.org/story-hour/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2026.
Why it works. The conclusion reads the last line in the light of the whole essay instead of restating the thesis, and it ends on the title, a detail that only lands after the analysis. The online text has no page numbers, so the essay gives none; MLA doesn't want numbers taken from a browser's print preview. For a paper that brings in criticism, the MLA annotated bibliography example builds a source list around the same story.
What a literary analysis looks at
The sample essay follows one pattern, the window and the doors, through the whole story. One or two elements followed closely make a stronger essay than a tour of every device. The guide to literary elements defines them; here is what each asks of the same story. If your text is a speech or an argument, the rhetorical analysis example is the better model.
| Element | Ask | In “The Story of an Hour” |
|---|---|---|
| ElementSetting and imagery | AskWhich details keep coming back, and what do they do? | In “The Story of an Hour”The open window, the spring air, the “patches of blue sky” |
| ElementCharacter | AskWhat does the character want, and what stands in the way? | In “The Story of an Hour”Louise wants years that “would belong to her absolutely” |
| ElementPoint of view | AskWho knows what, and when? | In “The Story of an Hour”The narration follows Louise's thoughts; the doctors know only her collapse |
| ElementStructure | AskWhere does the text turn? | In “The Story of an Hour”Grief, then the whispered “free,” then the front door |
| ElementIrony | AskWhere does the text mean more than it says? | In “The Story of an Hour”The doctors' diagnosis, “joy that kills” |
| ElementTheme | AskWhat larger claim do the patterns support? | In “The Story of an Hour”Self-possession, in a world that can't imagine a wife wanting it |
Example on a poem: “We Wear the Mask”
Dunbar's poem appeared in Majors and Minors (1895), his second book of poems. Its fifteen lines use only two rhyme sounds plus a short refrain, the pattern of the rondeau. Read the whole poem before the paragraph. An analysis of a poem usually cites line numbers instead of pages, with “line” or “lines” in the first citation and the numbers alone after that, and marks line breaks inside a short quotation with a slash. The Poetry Foundation's text doesn't number its lines, and the MLA Style Center's answer for an online poem without line numbers is to give none; many instructors ask you to count the lines anyway, as this paragraph does, so follow yours.
Dunbar's poem is about a mask, and its form wears one. Apart from the refrain, every line ends on one of two rhyme sounds, the long i of “lies,” “eyes” and “cries” or the “-ile” of “guile,” “smile” and “vile,” and the opening words come back twice as the refrain. The effect is controlled and pleasant to the ear, the verbal equivalent of the mask “that grins and lies” (line 1). Under that music is anguish: “torn and bleeding hearts” (4), “tortured souls” (11), “the clay is vile / Beneath our feet” (12-13). One rhyme gives the game away. “Subtleties” (5) rhymes with “lies” on the page but not in the ear, a slip in the smooth surface at the very point where the speakers “mouth with myriad subtleties.” The refrain shifts too: line 9 ends it with a period, line 15 with an exclamation mark. By the end the mask is no longer described but declared, and a reader who has heard the cries under the smile can't hear the poem's music as cheerful again.
Why it works. A paragraph on a poem can treat form as evidence, as long as every formal point leads back to meaning. The claim, that the form wears the mask too, can be tested line by line, and each quotation can be found by its line number.
Example on a novel: The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne's novel, published in 1850, is set in Puritan Massachusetts in the 1640s. In its second chapter Hester Prynne is led out before the town with a scarlet A on her gown, the punishment for adultery. A paragraph on a novel has to choose one thread through hundreds of pages, and this one follows the letter.
The scarlet letter is meant to fix one meaning on Hester Prynne, and the novel shows the town losing control of it. Even at Hester's first appearance the A, elaborately embroidered in gold thread, is more than a label: it has “the effect of a spell,” setting her apart from everyone around her (ch. 2). Years later so much “power to do, and power to sympathise” has been found in Hester that many townspeople “refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able” (ch. 13). The same chapter puts the result bluntly: “The scarlet letter had not done its office.” Even the sky joins in. On the night Governor Winthrop dies, a great red letter appears overhead, and the sexton reports the letter A, “which we interpret to stand for Angel” (ch. 12). By the last page the letter has passed from law into heraldry, engraved on the one tombstone that serves two graves: “On a field, sable, the letter A, gules” (ch. 24). Hawthorne's point is not that Hester escapes her punishment but that a symbol belongs to whoever reads it. The Puritans wanted a sign with one meaning and got one that means whatever its readers need.
Why it works. A short paragraph handles a long book by following one object through it: four moments, far apart, in order. The last sentences state what the evidence has built, a claim about symbols and their readers. The paragraph quotes the Project Gutenberg text, which has no page numbers (and keeps the spelling “sympathise”), so it cites chapters; with a printed edition, give the page, a semicolon and the chapter, as in (79; ch. 1).
Literary analysis outline
Here is the plan the essay above was written from. For a blank version with room for a thesis and supporting points, use the essay outline template.
Literary analysis outline: the essay above
Introduction
Hook: the famous last line, and the usual reading of it as a twist
Turn: the irony is built long before the front door opens
Thesis: the window brings freedom, the doors take it away,
and the doctors know only what happened at the door
Body 1: The window
Claim: freedom reaches Louise through her senses before she can name it
Evidence: the open window, the spring details, “creeping out of the sky”
Commentary: the season makes her joy feel natural, not monstrous
Body 2: A will of her own
Claim: the story removes every reason to blame Brently
Evidence: “kind, tender hands,” “a private will,” “no less a crime”
Commentary: the joy is self-possession, not relief from cruelty
Body 3: The doors
Claim: no door is Louise's to control
Evidence: the keyhole, the stairs, the latchkey, “too late”
Commentary: freedom lasts only while the room stays closed
Conclusion
The verdict as the last closed door; “a heart trouble”; an hour of lifeFrom first reading to thesis
- Read once for the story, once with a pencil
The first reading is for what happens. On the second, mark what repeats, what changes and where the text turns. In Chopin's story the window stands out at once; the doors line up only on the second reading.
- Collect a pattern, not a device
List every instance of what you noticed, with its place in the text: the open window, the closed door, the keyhole, the stairs, the latchkey. One image is an observation. Five that line up are evidence, and often a motif.
- Ask the question the pattern raises
Why does freedom arrive through a window and leave through a door? A good question has more than one possible answer, and the text can settle it. The theme examples show how such questions turn into claims about meaning.
- Answer it in one sentence someone could dispute
That sentence is your working thesis. Test it: does it say how the text works, not just what it is about, and could a careful reader disagree? The thesis statement examples include more literary theses to compare it with.
- Choose short quotations, then cut the summary
Two to four short quotations per body paragraph is a workable range. Introduce each one, weave it into your own sentence and discuss it, and keep quotations to a small share of the essay. In MLA style, set off prose longer than four lines, or four or more lines of verse, as a block. Then cut every sentence that only says what happens, unless the reader needs it to follow the claim.
Common literary analysis mistakes
Analysis
- A claim about how a passage works: the window lets the world in before Louise can name what she feels
- Short quotations inside your own sentences, with more commentary than quotation
- Evidence from the text, ordered to build one argument
- The present tense for events in the text: Louise whispers, the doctors decide
Summary or guesswork
- Retelling the plot in order, with a theme announced at the end
- A block quotation followed by one line of comment
- The author's life offered as proof of what a passage means
- One paragraph per device, with no thesis tying them together
The first mistake comes from assuming the task is to recall what happened. A sentence or two of plot can set up a claim, but it is never the point. A quick test: read only your own sentences, skipping the quotations. If they say what happens, the paragraph is summary. If they make a claim and explain the evidence, it is analysis.
If your course allows assistant tools, you can attach the story to a chat with the Strokes Assistant and ask which sentences in a paragraph only retell the plot, or whether each quotation in your draft matches the story word for word.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a literary analysis essay?
There is no standard length; the assignment sets it. A close reading of a short story or poem is often an introduction, two to four body paragraphs and a conclusion, like the sample essay above, and papers that bring in criticism need more room. Depth matters more than length: each body paragraph should develop one part of the thesis fully.
Should a literary analysis be written in present tense?
Usually, yes. Most instructors expect the literary present for events in the text: Louise whispers, the doctors decide, Hester stands before the town. Use the past tense for history outside the text, such as when the work was published, and keep the tense consistent within a paragraph.
What is the difference between a literary analysis and a rhetorical analysis?
A literary analysis studies how a work of literature makes meaning: its imagery, characters, narration and structure. A rhetorical analysis studies how a speaker or writer tries to persuade a particular audience. The methods overlap, close reading and quotation with commentary, but the questions differ: what the text means, versus how it persuades.
