Writing About Literature
Oedipus the King

The first, and many feel most difficult, task is to find something to write about.

You may be used to reading a story and writing a summary or a bit about the author or a review (thumbs up /thumbs down), but that will not do for this class; this is a class in literary analysis. That means you need to look at some significant idea or issue or theme or technique (I'd not recommend looking at technical elements of style unless you've got some solid background in analyzing fiction) of the work. Yes, I understand that this is a lot harder than just writing a plot summary, but analysis requires you to show your thinking (not your likes/dislikes) about a subject, your ability to find substance and thought in what you read. Analyzing a children's novel is the same task as analyzing Shakespeare's The Tempest or Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. You will need to develop a thesis, which means you will need some point to argue and support.

A thesis USUALLY is developed as an answer to a series of questions you ask about the work (in this case, the book). After reading Oedipus the King you might wonder:

1. In what way is this character heroic when he is clearly self-destructive and has character traits (arrogance, rashness) that are not typically heroic?

2. How can the play be viewed as tragic when fate (and the gods and goddesses) play such a major role in Oedipus's downfall?

Both of these questions are excellent because they look at ideas that almost demand answers which are open to interpretation; they are not simple fact questions (such as what is the name of the blind prophet in the play), and the answers will require looking at various parts of the novel for support. They require explanation, are open to debate, must be expanded on--all what you will need to develop a four-full-page (minimum) essay.

Here's the next step: look for answers to your questions; look for patterns in the book; eventually you should find some single area you can explore in a paper. Your thesis might be, for example,

One of the chief conflicts in Sophocles's Oedipus the King is the battle between the human intellect and divine prophesy; the play suggests that for the Greeks fate and the will of the gods and goddesses was much more powerful than the individual.

Yes, this is a long sentence. You WANT a long and very-specific (focused) sentence that clearly states an idea that (and here I'll repeat myself) requires explanation and expansion, that requires examples from the book, play, poem for support. The thesis does something else; it determines what will or will not be in your paper. For example, a long discussion of the origin of Oedipus's name has nothing to do with this thesis and does not belong in your paper. Looking at Oedipus trying to avoid killing the man he believes is his father and marrying the woman he believes is his mother by running away from home, however, does fit this thesis because it's an example of an individual trying to thwart "fate and the will of the gods and goddesses."

So at this point you can consider what bits of the book relate to your argument (notice that a thesis is an argument; it's a claim that something very specific it being suggested by the book). You can/should go back through the book and note passages that you will want to quote as you develop your paper on this one key idea. I hope you take good notes when you read the works :)

With a little research you can discover that Sophocles wrote the play, in part, as an attack on the atomists and sophists whose ideas were finding favor in Athens in the 5th century B.C. Faith in reason and scientific discovery were replacing the traditional religious values of Sophocles and earlier generations. There are several scene in Oedipus the King where Oedipus and Jocasta dismiss prophesy and fate and depend on human intellect. After all, Oedipus uses his intellect to avoid the prophesy he's overheard that he's doomed to murder his father and marry his mother. His wit and reasoning also allow him to solve the ancient riddle of the sphinx, to free Thebes, to win the kingship and marriage to the queen. Of course we realize the dramatic irony of the situation (we are aware that his reasonable attempts to avoid his fate have actually caused the prophesy to come true). He and Jocasta do not initially have that awareness; instead, they are constantly trying to bolster one another by relying on intellect and logic.

After you build up a healthy list of examples which support your thesis, you'll craft your essay using the observation-quotation-explanation method; in essence, you will make some statements (your observations), back them up with examples (documented quotations from the text), and discuss how they develop your thesis (explain them in relation to the point of the paragraph or to the point of your essay as a whole). Here's an example:

Mainly, you want to stay away from simple biography and plot summary. You are trying to look for ideas and issues in the works you read. The days of book reports are long past.

Following are links (one a Word document, the other a Rich-Text format document, in case you cannot open the Word document) to an excerpt from a student paper in the B+/A- range. It is not technically perfect, but it is a clear. focused analysis of a single idea in a play, and it is supported with lots of documented quotations from the play Lysistrata (this was for Writing Assignment 2). Take a look so that you have another idea of what analysis is all about: