Literature and Literary Analysis
Domain 2: Literature and Literary Analysis
This domain asks you to analyze fiction, poetry, and drama using the vocabulary of craft. Items test plot and conflict, characterization, point of view, setting, figurative language, sound devices, form, tone and mood, theme, and how historical or cultural context shapes meaning. You are usually asked not only to name a device but to explain its effect.
Core rules and concepts
- Plot and conflict: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Conflict types: person vs. person, self, society, nature, or fate.
- Characterization: direct (stated) versus indirect (shown through action, speech, thought, or effect on others). Round/flat and static/dynamic describe development, not virtue.
- Point of view: first person; third-person limited; third-person omniscient; objective/dramatic (camera-eye). The narrator is not the author.
- Figurative language: metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, synecdoche, paradox.
- Sound and form: alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, stanza, enjambment, meter (iambic pentameter = five iambic feet per line).
- Theme: a complete statement about a human issue developed across the whole work-not a one-word subject such as "love."
Worked example
Lines: "The lantern leaned into the rain, / a small sun stubborn in the street."
Question: What does the metaphor "a small sun" chiefly convey?
Reasoning: "Sun" brings brightness, warmth, and centrality; "small" limits scale; "stubborn" personifies persistence. Together they present the lantern as a minor but unyielding light against the storm. A strong answer identifies vehicle and tenor, cites "stubborn" as corroboration, and states the effect-endurance-rather than merely labeling the figure a metaphor.
Traps that cost marks
- Naming a device without analyzing its effect.
- Retelling plot instead of interpreting.
- Confusing tone (speaker's attitude) with mood (reader's feeling).
- Treating a symbol as having one fixed dictionary meaning.
- Assuming a poem's speaker is the poet.