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Analyzing Literature Through Sources

The passage summarizes two paragraphs from sample student essays that effectively incorporate secondary sources to support their analysis of primary texts. The first paragraph discusses a protagonist constantly reliving a traumatic event from war and how this passage conveys the author's experience as a veteran, relating it to other works about the Vietnam War. The second paragraph analyzes a poem about human's destruction of nature, paraphrasing a critic's view that technology blinds us to the environmental harm we cause and how this connects to the poet's imagery of a double-edged sword. Both examples demonstrate how the discussion of secondary sources fits organically into the analysis of the primary texts.

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244 views2 pages

Analyzing Literature Through Sources

The passage summarizes two paragraphs from sample student essays that effectively incorporate secondary sources to support their analysis of primary texts. The first paragraph discusses a protagonist constantly reliving a traumatic event from war and how this passage conveys the author's experience as a veteran, relating it to other works about the Vietnam War. The second paragraph analyzes a poem about human's destruction of nature, paraphrasing a critic's view that technology blinds us to the environmental harm we cause and how this connects to the poet's imagery of a double-edged sword. Both examples demonstrate how the discussion of secondary sources fits organically into the analysis of the primary texts.

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Sample incorporating sources paragraphs.

The protagonist relives Kavanaghs death constantly. At any given moment she exists in

the very same place that she existed in Iraq, the exact same instant that she stood over Kavanagh

bleeding out, or the moment she snatched her weapon up, or the instant before that when she

shouldve already been snatching her weapon up (69). The passage not only serves as a constant

reminder to the protagonist within the story, it also relays the authors experience as a combat

veteran, much like Tim OBriens work. In Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literature of Trauma,

Kal Tal discusses Philip Beidlers contention that the end goal seems to be the reduction of the

war to signfor him, Vietnam War literature is part of a continuing process of signification:

the telling and retelling of the war inscribes it upon the nations consciousness until we have

learned at what cost it was waged for everyone it touched then and now and beyond (Tal 63).

In the desire for signification, the author is compelled as much as her protagonist to tell the story

over and over again until it is an indelible mark on the nations consciousness.

Notice how the discussion of the secondary text fits organically into this paragraph where the
student is analyzing a story as their primary text. The student quotes from the secondary source,
then paraphrases the information that is most meaningful to their own argument about the story.

Jeffers philosophy of inhumanism focuses primarily on the beauty of nature and how

man has come to be blinded to this beauty. In the poem Science, Jeffers says that man has

bred knives on nature turns them also inward: they have thirsty points though (Jeffers 8-9).

This is where Jeffers finally points to the devastation that humans have inflicted upon the

environment. By harming nature, we are also harming ourselves, which he describes by creating

an image of a double-edged sword. Again, hes showing that because of our selfishness, we are

blind to the destruction that our technology causes and even our role in causing it (Scott 151). If

we do not change our ways, we may destroy the environment completely, which would result in
our own destruction as well. Jeffers acknowledges that the mind of man, brilliant in terms of

capabilities, forbodes (Jeffers 10) its destruction, and yet, despite these capabilities, or maybe

because of them, cannot see that there is a simple solution to this problem. I think Jeffers is

showing that sometimes the human mind is too great for its own good, trying to search for

solutions to the present problems by using the science and very technology that got us into this

trouble in the first place.

Again, note how the topic of the paraphrasing of a secondary sources commentary is connected
to her discussion of the poets use of imagery, and how she explains why this critic (Scott)s
comments matter to her argument about the poem. Then, she returns to her own argument to
build on what the critic said, diving into another example from the poem.

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