8.8–Writing About Nonfiction Literature

Each of the layers of analysis that we’ve covered in this chapter–genre classification, cultural and biographical contexts, literary elements, sentence analysis, and tropes and schemes– are all potentially fruitful areas of exploration for a literary essay about a nonfiction text. Incorporating them all, however, would likely be overwhelming for most undergraduate papers, forcing the writer to either skim the surface over each of them or turn in an excessively lengthy draft. How, then, should a writer decide which layers to focus on and which to potentially omit?

The two biggest factors to consider in answering this question are progression and connections. Generally speaking, when you’re moving from macro- to micro-levels of literary analysis, or vice versa, it’s best to stick with going in the same direction as much as possible. Moving back and forth between sentence analysis and cultural context multiple times in rapid succession, for example, is likely going to confuse your reader. Being consistent in your paper’s progression, however, can amplify the points you’re making and emphasize their progression for the reader. Concepts that are relatively close to one another in scale (like cultural and biographical contexts) also lend themselves to being easily connected with one another.

It’s also important, however, to help the reader understand explicit connections between macro- and micro-concepts. For example, how does an author’s use of a particular metaphor or symbol reflect the cultural backgrounds of the writer and their audience? How does the genre of a nonfiction text clarify the writer’s structural choices? Being able to answer these questions about and make these connections within your text will not only demonstrate your understanding of it, it will make your analysis more creative and compelling for the reader. Without being able to make these connections, it will be harder to determine as the writer which layers of analysis are most important. It’s also much easier to fall into the trap of simply listing a bunch of concepts that are present (“The writer uses metaphors, isocolon, and antithesis in this piece.”), which doesn’t help the reader understand the larger significance of the author’s choices or your analysis.

In order to approach analyzing a nonfiction piece more systematically, it’s best to split your analysis into answering three questions: the what, the why, and the how. Each question covers a different aspect of the text. As you review each question and the different ways you could answer, keep in mind that you do not need to cover them all in an undergraduate essay (particularly those within the why).

1. The what is the primary stylistic “feel” of your text. In other words, what writing techniques does the writer use, and what emotions/perceptions do they evoke? Keep in mind that:
   • The “feel” will not be homogeneous, but is likely to change within any passage, and definitely across passages. These changes are interesting and have to be noted.
   •  The “feel” is not always immediately apparent, and likely your relationship to the text and the writer will shape what the feel is. This fact is usually essential to your argument: what does your approach and context do to the effect?
   • The aim is NOT to convey the same feeling in your own writing. So in describing here, we don’t meet imitating (we’re practicing that elsewhere). Rather, try to come up with an analytic language to describe the feeling and then provide some textual evidence so that we can “know that feel.”
2. Explain why the stylistic feel is important or interesting by considering questions of context, either at the time of writing, now, or both. Note that this is likely to require (informal) research, although some texts will contain meta-reflection that can be used as evidence. Possible approaches:
   • Consider context internal to the text: how does the style and this effect relate to (alter, become essential for) what is being said or described?
   • Consider the cultural contexts at the time of writing. What was going on that might demand this effect?
   • Consider elements of authorship: what do we know about that author’s approach and aim that would help us understand these effects? (While author intention is not to be taken as authoritative, it can help clarify the stylistic approach as long as you also attend to the text first and foremost).
   • Consider the rhetorical challenges that your text might be addressing in terms of audience preconceptions, resistances, hopes, experiences, etc.
   • Consider the current setting for reading this text, particularly in how it might alter, change, or perhaps need the effect described in the what portion of your paper.
3. The how consists of a detailed analysis of the stylistic nuances present in your text. These should include the literary elements, the sentence-level stylistic choices, and the tropes and schemes. However, what you focus on will be determined by what you are trying to show (your overall thesis) and by the text itself–not all stylistic elements will support your larger argument (that is, they won’t all be interesting) nor will every text possess all the elements of style we discuss in this course.
   • Do not just describe what the text is doing, but analyze it. To do so you need to introduce a passage in relation to your thesis, insert the relevant passage into your paper (3-8 lines at a time), and then point out what is interesting in that passage and why.

Although nonfiction is defined in antithesis to fiction, nonfiction literature ultimately applies many of the same literary elements (and in the same manner) as fiction. Understanding the variety of genres and forms that nonfiction literature can take helps us to contextualize the writer’s choices in the text. Additionally, analyzing additional layers of context such as the life of the author and the cultural contexts relevant to authors and their audiences adds further insight to a nonfiction text’s composition. On the sentence level, identifying patterns of branching and modifier usage, as well as the applications of tropes and schemes, helps us to appreciate how the smaller choices that authors make compound within a work.

The essay below will demonstrate how to approach analyzing a literary nonfiction text using the what/why/how approach, focusing on Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.”