a really helpful thing written by someone.......credits not to me i didnt write this.........lolz
Well, I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is stating the obvious. If you're writing a commentary about the Life of Pi (that was our practice one), don't be stupid and say the tiger seems scared and so does the kid. Analyze the reasons for what's going on in the excerpt.
Going into the paper, expect that you won't know the novel the except is from or what's happening in a broader sense in the novel. As a result, don't make generalizations. Heck, those generalizations aren't important. Being psychic and predicting what happened before the excerpt doesn't demonstrate your intelligence. However, analyzing does.
This is how I like to think on English papers. It's like links in a chain:
link 1: the boat is sinking and tiger is too (obviously)
link 2: the tiger is scared (clearly implied by text)
link 3: fear is an emotion, therefore the tiger is experiencing human emotions (low level thinking)
link 4: if the tiger is experincing human emotions, the author is trying to humanize the tiger (slightly higher level thinking)
link 5: why is the author humanizing the tiger? perhaps the tiger is supposed to be a metaphor for a concept (higher level thinking)
link 6: what is the concept and what are the author's reasons? (thesis statement)
link 7: since these emotions are humans, there is personification going on (more higher level thinking)
^Go from there.
It's not easy, but it works.
