Literary Analysis: Outline This worksheet must be TYPED. Bring your completed worksheet (along with the O’Connor short stories) to class with you on Tuesday 11/27. Note: Page 1 of this outline provides a sample outline of the thesis statement and ONE paragraph from the online sample Literary Analysis Essay. Complete pages 2-3 of this worksheet for class on Tues 11/27.
Thesis Statement (one sentence that sums up your specific interpretation of the story): In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must go mad in order to “free” the woman trapped in the wallpaper and escape the oppressive patriarchal control of her husband and society. Topic Sentence (sums up a major point about the story that helps support your interpretation): Gilman’s unnamed narrator is locked in an old nursery in order to help remedy her depression, an illness her physician husband refuses to take seriously, dismissing it as a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 437).
A. Evidence from Primary text 1. ) Evidence from the story (relevant detail and/or quotation): • The narrator writes in secret, attempting to find a creative outlet for her feelings; she doesn’t want to be locked up • John dismisses her desire to write as “a nervous weakness…sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies” (Gilman 442) 2. ) Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence): • He refuses to take her feelings and thoughts seriously, dismissing her as weak, childish, and hysterical, adjectives clearly aligned with women and femininity. The narrator, because she is a woman, is granted no recourse against her doctor-husband and begins to see another woman trapped in the room with her, creeping behind the wallpaper. B. Support from secondary text 1. ) Relevant Detail or quotation • Elizabeth Ammons, “Biographical Echoes in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”: “The prisoner of a charming man and an ugly empty domestic life that she cannot escape” (page 454). 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence): • Regardless of her own wants and desires, the narrator is effectively a prisoner of her husband, a man who becomes more and more sinister as the story progresses. Complete the following outline for your Literary Analysis essay. Outlines are due in class on Tuesday 11/27. I. Thesis Statement: II. Body paragraph 1 Topic Sentence (sums up a major point about the story that helps support your interpretation): A. Evidence from primary text 1. Evidence from the story (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2.
Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence) B. Support from secondary source 1. Support from an article (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence) III. Body Paragraph 2 Topic Sentence (sums up a major point about the story that helps support your interpretation) A. Evidence from primary text 1. Evidence from the story (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence) B. Support from secondary source 1.
Support from an article (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence) IV. Body Paragraph 3 Topic Sentence (sums up a major point about the story that helps support your interpretation) A. Evidence from primary text 1. Evidence from the story (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence) B. Support from secondary source 1. Support from an article (relevant detail and/or quotation) 2. Your explanation of the evidence (what it shows that is relevant to your topic sentence)
