Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Write an essay analyzing one of our stories from this Unit that discusses why and how specific symbols, metaphors, or uses of irony are used to depict one or two of the themes from Unit 1 in a particular way. Your essay should incorporate details and quotes from the story (using parenthetical documentation with the author's name), and you should use your own words to elaborate on the meanings of the details and quotes you use as evidence. Review your feedback from the Unit 3 Discussion on Analyzing a Short Story, as well as the posts and feedback of your classmates.  Follow these steps:
Choose one of the Short Story Selections from this Unit - you can certainly choose the same story you started to analyze in your Discussion, but you don't have to.  Your analysis might, however, benefit from the feedback you received in the Discussion, as well as the posts and responses of your classmates.
You will closely read your chosen story, considering its themes, characters, organization, dialogue, and other literary elements.  Take notes to outline later.
Read and reread the story; by paying attention to the varied features of the story, your awareness of these literary elements and how they build the story's meaning will grow.  Start to compose your outline and working thesis about literary devices the author uses, and how they contribute to the theme or themes you've identified.
See the Irony and Alienation in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" page as an example of how to approach your analysis.  Take your working thesis and build your introductory paragraph, making sure to lay out your main points.
Following your close reading of the story, draft your remaining paragraphs, providing textual evidence from the story to support each of your main points.  See the Starting Your Short Story Analysis Essay page for an outline of how to proceed.
Finally, write a conclusion, restating your thesis in such a way to encompass greater issues of time periods, cultural movements, or a lens of literary criticism through which the story and your identified theme(s) can be viewed.
Be sure to maintain an appropriate academic tone (no slang, second-person ["you," "we"], contractions, etc.)
“The Storm”
"The Paper Menagerie"
“August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”