Literary Analysis Essay Guidelines

Literary Analysis Essay Guidelines

A good literary analysis essay will retell the essential parts of a story for those that don't know it, explaining piece by piece the symbolism of the big events and smaller details. As far as symbolism goes, all events and details will be symbols of one message from the author.

In other words, your retelling will all be in support of one idea, your thesis, which states the main message of the author.

Literary Analysis Essay Sample Structure

Paragraph 1.
a. Grabber
b. Orient Reader to author, book and its context
c. Thesis

Body Paragraphs: In EVERY paragraph, include, in any order:
a. Evidence
(1) What happened (context)
(2) quotes
b. Commentary
(1) Connect evidence to thesis

Conclusion: End with a gift. Connect to something new and different.

Here’s what these terms mean, in more depth, along with a few other tips:

Grabber. Grab the reader’s attention with the first line. You can do this with action, a deep thought or question, vivid description, or dialogue.

Orient Reader. In 1-3 sentences, identify the title, author, and subject of the book. Don’t summarize the whole book in detail. But write just enough, as if to assume the reader knows nothing yet about the book.

Thesis. The thesis is your angle. It is what you will organize all your evidence around.
A thesis can’t be purely true; it has to be able to be argued one way or the other.

In a literary analysis essay, it should mention the author.
It should specifically identify what (specifically) the author is saying about a general subject, like life, relationships, gender, or class.

In other words, it should be a rewording of this formula: (Author’s name) is making a point about (general subject); the specific point s/he is making is that ____________.

It should suggest that the author is using the characters, setting, plot or voice to make that specific point about a general subject.
For example: “O’Neil uses the protagonist Sydney to argue that rich white men actually can find real happiness not in loving relationships, but in material possessions.”
(The general subject here is happiness.)

Evidence—on two levels: one, support your thesis with events that happened in the book (This is to show the context of your quotes). But stay focused: don’t summarize the book unless it’s as evidence for an idea of yours.

Two, use quotes (with page numbers) from the book. "Quotes" just means excerpts; they don't have to be dialogue. Try to incorporate them into your context, by having quotes and context share sentences. For example:

Not incorporated:
Janie’s images for romantic happiness come from nature. “Life should be more
like a pear tree in bloom, she thinks” (p. 67). She thinks this when she is unhappy in her relationships.

Incorporated:
Because Janie’s image for romantic happiness comes from nature, she thinks, “Life should be more like a pear tree in bloom” (p. 67) when she is unhappy in her relationship.

Notice, in the examples above, how to punctuate around quotes, and how to mark the page numbers. For marking page numbers, put (p. ___ ) in parentheses after the quote ends, followed by the period or comma that would be inside the quotes, if the sentence needs one.

Commentary. Make sure that before or after each quote, you point out how it connects to the thesis. As with blending in quotes, you can do this with variety and finesse. (You don’t have to mention the word “thesis,” or say the term, “proves my point.”) For example:

Repetitious and obvious: This also proves the thesis because a rich man is happier with an expensive toy than he is when in love.
Subtle yet effective: Once again, O’Neil portrays rich men as happier with expensive toys than in love.

Another tip:

Avoid pointing out that you are writing an essay. Don’t write, “In this essay I will…” or “I will first describe… and then I will…” or “When I first started to think about this subject…” or “In conclusion, I have proven…”

Book Review

Writing a Book Review

This essay is meant to be more than a simple Gosh, Hamlet is, like, totally awesome sort of review.  A true review provides the reader with something in addition to a Consumer Reports-style thumbs up or thumbs down.  A good review uses the book to leap into larger questions of aesthetics, philosophy, etc.  Your review will be expected to demonstrate knowledge of the book in questions but also of the author, comments of other critics, and connect it to something outside in the big, bad world.

Procedure

Check out some models

So what is a review essay, exactly?  I'm glad you asked, check it out Intro to Literary Criticism.doc.  So, no matter what "form" of media you choose to review, you are basically writing a literary analysis essay.  And, just because I love you, here are some tips:  WRITING LITERARY ANALYSIS.doc.  So now what?
How to write a book report and a book review · Library "How To Guides · Help & Instruction · Concordia Libraries #
Models: Movies and Books
Dark Visions. A review of Watchmen, written by Anthony Lane.
The Homer of the Ants. A review of Anthill, written by Margaret Atwood.

The Road, New York Times Book Review

Review of Syriana #

Scary Harry - A more sinister Potter. Prisoner Review, Order Review

What can you say about Harry?

Luck, Pluck, and Thuggery - 50 Cent rejects the tradition of the autobiopic. By Martin Edlund 

This does a good job of putting the 50 cent movie into the context of Autobiographical films.

Take Back the Prom - How, and why, one school called it all off—and you can, too. 

It's about Prom Night, but more than that it's about Prom.

The Story of God, Alternate View

Notice how well the author connects to the larger issues

If you want suggested book titles, LOOK HERE
The National Book Awards 

I know you couldn't wait...

 Conference with me

When we get together, we’ll agree on what aspects of the writing you will want to work on and I’ll most likely add a stipulation that the essay is grammatically perfect, that you focus on using specific and intriguing detail, and that a clear sense of you as a writer is present.

Do a draft

Get to work.  Always keep an eye on your writing goals as you write.

Get a student response

When you get to a good stopping point, give one of your fellow students 3 things to look for (for example, good spelling, detail about the anecdote, and the ending) and give you feedback. If necessary I can find someone to help and you and give guidance for peer editing.

Do another draft

Take your feedback and work towards a draft that you can show me that gets as close as you can to your goals.  Feel free to talk to me or a fellow student if you get stuck.

Conference with me

Publish

Very helpful...with links to other places for information

The World is Flat!

We're going to do some analyzing by turning facts on their heads and presenting an argument for a losing side.  Here is the scenario:

All your life you have been taught that the world is ROUND.  However, there is new evidence that suggest that, in actual reality, the world is flat! You know this to be true and have to make a well-thought out argument to your classmates as to WHY this is so.  Delineate in half a page, single-spaced (paste it to your blogger afterwards) why, in actuality, the world is flat.  Use the best examples you can think of to prove this point.

Analyzing on Turning Ten by Billy Collins

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins

 

After reading, analyze the poem and answer the folllowing:

 

What is Collins trying to say with this poem? How does he capture childhood and the process of growing up? What makes this poem effective? how does this fit into your own life experience?

Weak vs strong Analysis

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 405).

WEAK ANALYSIS

Living simply lets you start living meaningfully.

Hold up.  What does simply mean?  What are we talking about when we say this?  What does it LOOK like?  And what about meaningfully?  What does that look like?  These are vague and empty adverbs and do not actually show any real analysis or thought.  BLAH BLAH BLAH is what I see.

STRONG ANALYSIS

To live deliberately, Thoreau found it necessary to remove himself from the industrialized society in which he lived and seek solitude by Walden Pond.  In so doing, he could focus on the big picture – identity, place in society, his own humanity, nature’s beauty – rather than getting trapped in the minutia of everyday life.  This minutia seems to consume modern society, from Facebook and Twitter posts and updates to conversations revolving around fashion and celebrities, etc.  Life has become who you know and what you can regurgitate rather than what you know and what you can critically think of and develop.  Thoreau thought to live that we must do the latter.

“Talking and writing about what they’re grateful for amplifies adults’ happiness, new studies show” (Elias).

WEAK ANALYSIS

We should write what we’re grateful for to make us happy.

Um…this is called PARAPHRASING.  Paraphrasing is NOT analysis.  It is taking what someone else said and putting it in your own words.  That is not hard to do.  My 5 year old daughter does this daily…

STRONG ANALYSIS

Romantic poets, similarly, looked at what they’re grateful for – whether a seashell (chambered nautilus) they happened upon or the rhythm of the tide rising and falling, and wrote about it, allowing them to hold more idealistic views of the world.  Too often, people expect to receive gifts, opportunities, etc.  There is a sense of entitlement.  However, if we take time to appreciate what we receive – a hug from a friend, a new pair of shoes, a stick of gum – whatever! – we could find greater happiness in what we have and less demand for more.

Definition Essay Examples

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/03/the-truth-about-beauty/5620/

The Truth About Beauty

It is the same in the eye of every beholder.

Cosmetics makers have always sold “hope in a jar”—creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. Over the last few years, the marketers at Dove have added some new-and-improved enticements. They’re now promising self-esteem and cultural transformation. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” declares a press release, is “a global effort that is intended to serve as a starting point for societal change and act as a catalyst for widening the definition and discussion of beauty.” Along with its thigh-firming creams, self-tanners, and hair conditioners, Dove is peddling the crowd-pleasing notions that beauty is a media creation, that recognizing plural forms of beauty is the same as declaring every woman beautiful, and that self-esteem means ignoring imperfections.

Dove won widespread acclaim in June 2005 when it rolled out its thigh-firming cream with billboards of attractive but variously sized “real women” frolicking in their underwear. It advertised its hair-care products by showing hundreds of women in identical platinum-blonde wigs—described as “the kind of hair found in magazines”—tossing off those artificial manes and celebrating their real (perfectly styled, colored, and conditioned) hair. It ran print ads that featured atypical models, including a plump brunette and a ninety-five-year-old, and invited readers to choose between pejorative and complimentary adjectives: “Wrinkled or wonderful?” “Oversized or outstanding?” The public and press got the point, and Dove got attention. Oprah covered the story, and so did the Today show. Dove’s campaign, wrote Advertising Age, “undermines the basic proposition of decades of beauty-care advertising by telling women—and young girls—they’re beautiful just the way they are.”

Last fall, Dove extended its image building with a successful bit of viral marketing: a seventy-five-second online video called Evolution. Created by Ogilvy & Mather, the video is a close-up of a seemingly ordinary woman, shot in harsh lighting that calls attention to her uneven skin tone, slightly lopsided eyes, and dull, flat hair. In twenty seconds of time-lapse video, makeup artists and hair stylists turn her into a wide-eyed, big-haired beauty with sculpted cheeks and perfect skin. It’s Extreme Makeover without the surgical gore.

---

Denial
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word denial denotes the act of ‘asserting (of anything) to be untrue or untenable’. That is why denial has been inextricably linked to critical thought throughout the ages. Those who deny the official version of events have always faced hostility, and sometimes physical repression. Today, the word denial has become denuded of its radical and critical associations. Instead it is used as a synonym for refusing to acknowledge the truth – as in Holocaust Denial. In its colloquial and everyday usage, denial is seen as an act driven by base and dishonest motives. This draws on the psychoanalytical usage of the word. In psychoanalysis, denial means the suppression of painful and shameful recollections and experiences. In today’s therapy culture, people who express views that contradict our own are often told that they are ‘in denial’ (18). It has become a way of discrediting their viewpoint, or shutting them up.
Contemporary culture encourages the public disclosure of emotion – and it encourages the recognition and acknowledgement of others’ feelings (19). In these circumstances, denial has come to be seen as a negative emotional response. One account says denial represents the refusal to ‘recognise a disturbing or painful reality’ (20). So being in denial is the polar opposite of acknowledging pain and other uncomfortable facts. In an age that prides itself on public confessionalism, the charge of denial is a powerful expression of moral disapproval. People can be forgiven for doing drugs or drinking too much, so long as they go on a 12-step recovery programme and acknowledge their wrongdoing. Denial, on the other hand, is seen as a symptom of a destructive and dangerous personality; part of a disease that dooms the individual to behave self-destructively. According to one account, alcoholism is ‘the disease of denial’ and ‘denial is the life-blood of addiction’ (21). In popular culture, denial often serves as a marker for a sick mind. One self-help website informs the world that the ‘disease of denial kills more people every year than any other disease’. Apparently ‘it also maims, cripples, disables and incapacitates more people, and those close to them, than anything else’ (22).
When denial is then attached to a painful historical event like the Holocaust, it ceases to be merely self-destructive and apparently becomes a threat to others, too. Denial is not simply the psychological attribute of an individual – it has become a cultural force that threatens people’s wellbeing. In the domain of culture, denial has acquired powerful physical and existential attributes with apparently grave consequences for its victims. The criminalisation of denial is most developed in debates about genocide. According to Gregory Stanton, former president of Genocide Watch, denial represents the final stage in what he calls the ‘eight stages of genocide’, and moreover it is among the ‘surest indicators of further genocidal massacres’ (23). From this perspective, denial is not simply an act of speech; it is part of the physical act of extermination.
Therapy culture encourages people to interpret their emotional distress as being more painful and damaging than physical distress. And from this perspective, the pain caused by denial is portrayed as uniquely grave and hurtful. This is what Elie Wiesel meant when he characterised genocide denial as a ‘double killing’, because he believes it also murders the memory of the crime. This transformation of words and metaphors into weapons of mass destruction has also become part of the green alarmists’ strategy. Psychobabble about individuals in denial who cannot acknowledge the truth is cited as an explanation for why the public is not always in a state of panic about the impending environmental apocalypse. Indian journalist Mihir Shah has described it as the ‘environment denial syndrome’ (24). Others preach that ‘we can intellectually accept the evidence of climate change, but we find it extremely hard to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity’. In this case, the deniers are condemned for refusing to accept responsibility for an enormous crime. According to George Marshall, this shows that denial is a fundamentally immoral deed. ‘Indeed, the most powerful evidence of our denial is the failure to even recognise that there is a moral dimension with identifiable perpetrators and victims’, he argues (25).

Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003

The Real Meaning of Evil

By Lance Morrow

The word evil — brandished so often by George W. Bush and just as regularly scorned by those who oppose him — could use some serious parsing.
It is possible that neither side in the debate about evil quite knows what it is talking about. Philosophically and theologically, both are fighting the last war. They are talking about a world that no longer exists, or rather, they fail to see what evil lies in the world that now exists.

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President Bush uses the word in an in-your-face, born-again manner that takes its resonance from a long Judeo-Christian tradition that sees radical evil embodied in heroically diabolical figures. This personalized evil is the kind that is insinuated by the sauntering Tempter in the first scene of the Book of Job, when God and Satan speculate like racing touts about whether Job can go a mile and a quarter on a muddy track. In Bush's usage, evil has the perverse prestige of Milton's defiant Lucifer. Evil emanates, implicitly, from a devilish intelligence with horns and a tail, an absolutely malevolent personality, God's rival in the cosmos, condemned to lose the fight (eventually) but powerful in the world.
Bush's critics, hearing the word, go ironic. They put evil in quotes and think of Dana Carvey's Church Lady: "Well, isn't that special, Saddam? Who's your little friend? Could it be Satan!!!???" They mock Bush for what they see as a primitive, frightening and atavistic use of a medieval term that should probably be banished from civilized discourse in a multicultural world.
Evil, these critics say, is in any case such an elusive term that it can only cause mischief in human affairs and has a way of evaporating — or turning into something else as time passes. Toward the end of World War I, when labor unions threatened strikes in England, Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill sternly blamed "evil and subterranean influences," meaning, he said, "pacifism, defeatism and Bolshevism." Of course, the real evils of World War I, which slaughtered an entire generation of Europe's young men, were obdurate military stupidity, the effectiveness of newly industrialized war and a monstrous official indifference to the value of human life. (A neglected dimension of evil, by the way, is stupidity.)
But even if it's elusive and even if the term is used brainlessly, evil is still there — a mystery, a black hole into which reason and sunshine vanish but nonetheless ... there. Talk to the children with chopped-off hands in Sierra Leone. It is as fatuous to deny the existence of evil as it is to toss the word around irresponsibly. The children of the Enlightenment sometimes have an inadequate understanding of the possibilities of the Endarkenment. The question is how evil exists, how it works.
Go back 40 years to the controversy that surrounded Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, a study of the Adolf Eichmann trial, in which she coined the famous phrase "the banality of evil." Arendt did not seem satisfied with the term and afterward wrote in a letter to a friend (the great scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem), "It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never 'radical,' that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface." This was what W.H. Auden meant: "Evil is unspectacular and always human,/And shares our bed and eats at our own table." The normality of evil.
The truth about evil that needs attention now is its shallow, deadly, fungus quality. Nice people — especially in a tiny, multicultural world in which different civilizations inhabit different centuries — are often moved to evil deeds, like blowing up the Other. Don't bother demonizing people as being inherently evil (as Satan is evil). That's not how it works. Opportunistic evil passes like an electric current through the world and through people, or wanders like an infection that takes up residence in individuals or cultures from time to time.
Distance once helped dampen the effects of human wickedness, and weapons once had limited range. But evil has burst into a new dimension. The globalization, democratization and miniaturization of the instruments of destruction (nuclear weapons or their diabolical chemical-biological stepbrothers) mean a quantum leap in the delivery systems of evil. This levels the playing field — and the level field has fungus on it. Every tinhorn with a chemistry set becomes a potential world-historical force with more discretionary destructive power at hand than the great old monsters, from Caligula to Stalin, ever had. In the new dimension, micro-evil (the dark impulse to rape or murder, say) and macro-evil (the urge to genocide) achieve an ominous reunion in any bid for the apocalyptic gesture. That's the real evil that is going around.

Reflect on these three different words.  Based on what the authro wrote, write three definitons and understandings of these words AS ACCORDING to the author, but in your own words

Definition Essay

Writing a Definition Essay
 What is love at first sight?  What does it mean to be a good kid?  Or a good American?  Can we ever really define a best friend?  A definition Essay attempts to do just this.  The writers of these essays do us a great service.  The writer provides us with an idea as to what a word really means--not in an Webster's dictionary sort of way, but in the more useful sense of a word's true cosmic worth.  What's better than that?  More specifically, the definition essay defines a word or term. The word or term chosen as a subject is either

v     an unfamiliar word (i.e., accoutrement)

v     a word that has many possible meanings (i.e., liberal)

v     familiar words that may be used in a particular sense (i.e., mother)

The job of the definition essay is to define the word/term accurately, surprise and enlighten the audience.

The Three Ways to Define
Definitions may be classified as three types: short, stipulative, or extended.
short: A short definition explains a word by a brief identification of its meaning. (This is the kind of definition that dictionaries provide.) A synonym. (i.e., nervousness = anxiety)
stipulative: Stipulative definitions identify the particular meaning you intend to use in your writing. (For example, the word liberal often has various connotations.) This is a formal definition: you may place the term to be defined in a general class and describe its particular characteristics. I.e., A watch à is a mechanical device -à is for telling time and is usally carried or worn.
à extended: These definitions may include both short and stipulative definitions, but they go far beyond both. They are essentially essays that seek to explain the writer's view of a subject, something that cannot be done effectively in a short definition. An extended definition may begin with a dictionary definition, but it goes on to add to, modify, and illustrate that definition. In so doing, it may use any of the patterns of development discussed earlier in this class: it may compare or contrast one meaning with another; it may provide descriptive or illustrative examples; it may show cause and effect.

Some Important Tips:
• In many cases, you must consider what your readers already know, or think they know, about your topic.
• Are there popular misconceptions that need to be done away with?
• Are there aspects of the topic that are seldom considered?
• Have particular experiences helped you understand the topic?
• You may use synonyms or formal definitions to help you define your topic, but you must convince your readers to accept your particular understanding of it.
• NEVER    start your essay with the dictionary definition!

In selecting a topic to define, look for something that you can define within your own experience and that will allow your poetic imagination some room to play. It might be a big mistake for your English instructor to define reggae or rap music, but there are many students who could do a great job. If you try to define something that is beyond the comprehension of your paper or your own experience, the task will become overwhelming and get mired down in details or abstractions. You could write a book trying to define a concept such as conservatism or liberalism and you still wouldn't have said anything that more than two other people would agree with. Students would be wise to avoid abstract notions such as patriotism, beauty, justice, love, or being a good sport.

On the other hand, it can be useful — even fun — to take a rather abstract notion and put a spin on it. There doesn't appear to be much point in defining a student, for example, but defining what we mean by a good student could be interesting. Push that definition to the limit to make a special point. A good student is not necessarily one that earns good grades or even one that does his or her best; a good student is one that makes the teacher feel like a good teacher. Or try defining a good teacher, a good parent, a good doctor, a good lover. In any case, if you are going to define something that everyone else has some idea about, you will need to shed fresh, even surprising light upon your subject.

A definition can be developed in a number of ways. A definition of a business management concept such as Total Quality Management (TQM), for instance, could begin with a history (a kind of process paper) of its inception in Japanese management systems, its migration across the Pacific, its implementation and transformation in American systems, and its predicted demise. It could also (or instead) include examples of the kind of labor conflict that TQM is supposed to eliminate or alleviate. Or it could describe TQM as a process, the steps involved in its implementation, or involve an analysis of its principles and its place in management theory. Contrasts to other management theories might be appropriate, demonstrating what TQM is not as well as what it is. We could even think of it as a Cause and Effect situation in which we describe how TQM responds to certain needs in the workplace. A definition essay is not limited to any one method of development and it may, in fact, employ more than one method at once.

Some rhetorical points about defining things:

Avoid using the phrases "is where" and "is when" in your definition: "Total Quality Management is when management and labor agree to. . . ." "A computer virus is where . . . ."

Avoid circular definitions (repeating the defined term within the predicate, the definition itself): "A computer virus is a virus that destroys or disrupts software . . . ."

Avoid using a too narrow definition, one that would unduly limit the scope of your paper: "Reggae music is sung on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. . . ."

The following essay, written by student Doobie Weiser and used with his permission, attempts to define the idea of being a Yankee.  Read the essay and answer the questions at the bottom on your blog:

What is a Yankee?

To most of the world, a Yankee is an American, anybody who lives in the United States. It is not always a pleasant connotation; in fact, "Yankee, go home!" calls up images of angry Latin American mobs protesting the oppression of American imperialist policies.

To most Americans, though, the word Yankee means either the pin-striped New York baseball team or the Northern forces in the American Civil War, the soldiers from north of the Mason-Dixon Line. In time, though, the idea that the word Yankee suggests has shrunk geographically until it is on the verge of extinction.

Perhaps the most famous Yankee of all (no offense to the musical Damn Yankees! intended) has star billing in Mark Twain's novel Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I have lived most of my life, now, in that southern New England state, and I can assure you there are precious few real Yankees around. Real Yankees might have lived in Connecticut at one time, but now they are from another place and perhaps another time. As television and other forms of mass media invade our homes and tend to diminish regional differences, to make Americans more and more homogeneous, the Yankee might be one of the first genuine American characters to disappear.

A neighbor of mine claims he knows what a real Yankee is all about. Years ago, he says, he lived next door to one. It seems his plumbing was acting up and he'd actually removed the toilet from the floor and taken it out into the backyard to do some surgery on it. Now he knew that his neighbor, who happened to be a professional plumber as well as the putative Yankee, was well aware of the fact that he was struggling to fix his toilet and he knew that his neighbor was home, doing nothing in particular that day, probably watching from the kitchen window. But would he come over and offer to help? No way. But when my friend finally gave up and went over and asked for assistance, the plumber-neighbor not only agreed to help, he did so gleefully. He spent the entire afternoon finding and fixing the problem and helping to return the toilet to its proper place. And wouldn't accept a dime, of course.

According to my friend, that's the first tenet of Yankee-ness. You must never offer help because that makes the person to whom you have proferred assistance "beholden" to you. And a Yankee must never be "beholden" to anyone. (That's how the word for this concept is said, and so we must spell it that way, too.) To be beholden means that you owe something to someone else. Now everyone in the world can owe something to the Yankee, but the Yankee must never owe anyone else anything, and he can't really understand someone who would be willing to be beholden. Thus he will not offer help — oh, maybe in a real emergency, he would be as good a Samaritan as anyone else — until asked. When asked, it's another story. You will get more help than you can imagine, help in great abundance, more than you could ever deserve or pay back. So it's not that Yankees are stingy; on the contrary, a Yankee is generous to a fault. But there is a sense of reserve that prohibits the true Yankee from offering help before being asked. The sense of inviolate space is paramount: "Good fences make good neighbors," says the neighbor in Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall," and the Yankee will not cross the fence until asked.

Another friend of mine knows someone, a Yankee, a chap born so far north in Vermont that he's nearly Canadian, who comes over to help with his taxes ever year. To re-pay him, my friend must resort to trickery, leaving something on the doorstep in the middle of the night. To offer anything else, up front, might tip the beholden scales in his favor and that would be risky.

That's what I think defines this dying breed of the American Yankee: an extraordinary sense of balance and reserve, a holding off — and yet, behind all that reserve, a reservoir of generosity and friendliness that can be nearly overwhelming.

Questions to answer:

Are there any fresh ideas enlisted in this definition? How would you have defined this idea? Are there ideas similar to it that you could choose to define?

There are allusions here: (1) to the musical Damn Yankees!, (2) to the Bible (the parable of the Good Samaritan), and (3) to a poem by Robert Frost. Do these allusions add anything to the essay or to your understanding of things? What if you didn't "get" the allusions?

What techniques of development does the essay use in the process of definition? Do you think the writer dwelt too long on what a Yankee is not before moving on to what a Yankee is?

Can you point to (write down) one sentence that functions as thesis statement in this essay?