9. Analyze Plot and Composition.

What is a conflict (or conflicts) on which the plot of the book turns?

Is the conflict external or internal?

Describe the plot in terms of its exposition, complication, climax (crisis), falling, action and resolution (denouement).

What are the chief episodes or incidents that make up the plot? Is its development strictly chronological, or is the chronology rearranged in some way? Are there any flashbacks and foreshadowing?

Compare the plot's beginning and end. What essential changes have taken place?

Is the plot unified? Do the individual episodes logically relate to one another?

Which episodes have been given the greatest emphasis?

Is the ending appropriate to and consistent with the rest of the plot?

Is the end clear-out and conclusive or does it leave room for suggestion?

Is the plot plausible? What role, if any, do chance and coincidence play?

On what note does the story end?

10. Analyze Characters.

Who (or what) is the protagonist of the work and who (or what) is the antagonist?

Describe traits and qualities of each.

What is the function of the work's minor characters?

Identify the characters in terms of whether they are flat and round, dynamic or static.

What methods does the author employ to establish and reveal the characters( direct or indirect method of

characterization)? Are the methods primarily of showing or telling?

Does the narrator employ interior monologue to render the thoughts and feelings of the characters?

Are the actions of the characters properly motivated and consistent?

In the course of the work do the characters change as a result of their experience?

Are the characters of the work finally credible and interesting?

11. Analize Style, sd, Tone and Mood .

Describe the author's diction. Is the language concrete or abstract formal or informal, literal or figurative? What

part of speech occur most often?

Analyze the choice of words ( The vocabulary is divided into: neutral, bookish, literary (archaisms, foreign

words, terms, neologisms), colloquial strata (slang, vulgarisms, jargonisms, dialectical words).

If its an extract, identify, whether it is narration, dialogue, interior monologue, or digression.

What use does the author make of:

1. patterns of rhyme and sound ( the emphatic use of punctuation, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia and other graphical and phonetic stylistic devices, such as, the changed type (italics, bold type, etc) or spelling (multiplication – “laaarge”, “rrruin”), hyphenation – “des-pise”, “g-irle” );

2. figurative devices ( lexical SD: metaphor, metonymy, zeugma, synecdoche, pun, paradox, hyperbole, personification, epithet, oxymoron, euphemism, irony; lexico-syntactical SD: simile, periphrasis, antithesis, represented speech.);

3. grammar constructions, the use of tenses, voices, articles, constructions with the verbals, plural forms of abstract nouns, imperative sentences, contracted forms, oblique moods etc;

4. syntactical SD (inversion, rhetorical question, repetition – anaphora, epiphora, framing reduplication; parallelism, polysyndeton, asyndeton).

Are the sentences predominantly long or short; simple; compound, or complex; loose, periodic, or balanced?

Describe the author's tone. Is it, for example, sympathetic, detached, condescending, serious, humorous, or

ironic? How is the tone established and revealed?

What are the distinctive characteristics of the author's style? In what ways is the style appropriate to the work’s

subject and theme?