Critical Analysis of a Book
Critical Analysis of a Book: Purposes and Tasks
First of all, to make good critical analysis of a book you should understand what you are supposed to do while doing the task. So, if you get such an assignment, read this article first!
Critical analysis of a book: your purposes
Generally speaking, critical analysis is written in order to explain the audience a literary work (critical analysis of a poem, a novel, a play, etc.), some research (for instance, critical analysis of a journal article, a research paper, etc.) or a movie. But first and foremost, you should understand the subject if you want your audience to understand it. So, when making your critical analysis of a book you should define 2 main purposes:
- To understand the subject of your analysis by yourself;
- To explain your audience the matter points that you have understood.
Critical analysis of a book: your tasks
Making of critical analysis of a book is aimed at looking at the book from within. When analyzing the book you have to answer a series of questions:
- What is the book about?
- What is the main idea of the author?
- What were the author’s intentions when writing this book?
- In what way does he/she realize these intentions?
- What is the plot of the book?
- Who are the characters of the book? etc.
If you have to make critical analysis of a book the following tasks should be pointed out for you:
- To study the book you are going to analyze. That means that you should not just read it but read attentively and for several times. Besides, you should take notes. That will be very helpful for you, especially if the book under analysis is too large and the time you have for making this analysis is too little. Notes will help you miss no details. What should you put down? Everything you consider to be necessary – names, numbers, quotations, descriptions, etc.
- To define a thesis statement for your analysis. After you have got the general idea about the book you may point out an issue that is the most interesting for analysis. Other words, your critical analysis is supposed to focus on this issue.
- Make your analysis. Analyze the issue you have chosen taking into account all the information about this book you have got: the plot, the characters, the main idea of the author, etc.
- Write your critical analysis paper. Pay attention that it should be well-structured and free of any mistakes.
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