今天来给大家介绍一下美高英语课比较常见的一种文体：literary analysis——文学分析。文学分析，顾名思义，就是对文学作品进行更深入研究的文章。结构化的文学分析主要集中在主题、情节、背景、人物和作者用来创造作品真正意义的其他几种文学修辞手法上。记住要清楚地讨论你分析的本质和基于主题的中心思想。
一篇文学分析遵循与大多数其他论文相同的格式，分为一个文章开头introduction，一个论点thesis statement，几个正文自然段body paragraphs（包含大量的论据evidence和分析analysis）和一个文章结论conclusion。
下面附上我写的一篇literary analysis，分析的是法国作家莫泊桑写的著名短篇小说《项链（The Necklace）》。运用文学手法，结合故事中心，去探讨文中人物塑造的重要意义。
If a person’s desire for wealth is beyond reason, then it will become a constant pain and turmoil. In the short story The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, Mathilde, who wants to look nice for a party, borrows a diamond necklace from her wealthy friend, Madame Forestier. After the party, Mathilde discovers the diamond necklace is gone. The Loisels, unable to locate it, are taking out loans to purchase a replacement. Mathilde and her husband spend the next decade paying off their debts. Because of the hard work, Mathilde ages prematurely. When Mathilde eventually informs Mrs. Forestier that the lost necklace is a replacement, Mrs. Forestier pitifully remarks that it was a fake. The fake necklace symbolizes the desire for what one can’t have and that appearance can be deceiving. The wife, Mathilde Loisel in The Necklace is a flat character who is portrayed as unrealistic/extreme which can be seen through her husband, her obsession with delicacies and luxuries, and her suffering of life.
First of all, Mathilde’s husband, Monsieur is a foil to Mathilde by showing qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of his wife to create the image of her character. When the couple seat themselves for dinner, Monsieur, the husband “uncovered the tureen with a delighted air,” saying, “ ‘Oh, the good pot pie! I know nothing better than that.’ ” Monsieur thinks pot pie for dinner is great and almost everything is great. He always celebrates things because he is an optimistic character—compared to Mathilde, and he clearly understands their financial situation. Contrarily, Mathilde only sees things like “the tablecloth had been used for three days” and she will think of “elegant dinners, of the shining silver, of the tapestries peopling the walls with ancient personages and rare birds in the midst of fairy forests.” Mathilde is always imagining things she doesn’t have and which she believes she deserves. In another instance, Monsieur asks his wife why she is acting strangely recently, and she responds that she has nothing to adorn herself with, so she would prefer not to go to the party. Monsieur thinks it is an easy problem to solve, so he replies, “you can wear some natural flowers. At this season they look very chic. For ten francs you can have two or three magnificent roses.” But Mathilde is not convinced. Monsieur cannot understand why his wife must wear expensive jewelry to the party instead of flowers. Because in his view, they cannot afford expensive jewelry is simply a fact of their life, not something to complain about. In addition, Monsieur “pays” a lot—not just about money—to buy the new necklace. As written in the story, “he compromised his whole existence, in fact, risked his signature, without even knowing if he could make it good or not, and, harassed by anxiety for the future, by the black misery which surrounded him, and by the prospect of all physical privations and moral torture.” Monsieur is the one who devises the plan of acquiring a new replacement for the lost necklace. Although this decision costs him ten years of hard work, he does not lament nor does he envision an alternate fate. It is as if his desire does not exist—or that it is meaningless compared with Mathilde’s. Therefore, Monsieur, being a foil character, highlights the extreme traits of Mathilde as he gives up his life so that she can enjoy her moment of happiness.
Equally important, Mathilde’s obsession with frocks and jewels establishes her as a flat character who does not change her unrealisticness from beginning to end. Maupassant portrays Mathilde as a woman who is desirous and jealous of wealth. In the text, Mathilde suffers endlessly, “feeling herself born for all delicacies and luxuries.” The word “all” is an extreme word that can have two interpretations here. First, “all” means everything: Mathilde wants all of it which is definitely an absurd idea. Second, “all” refers to only, all the time: Mathilde feels that her birth is entitled to all the luxuries. From the quote, it is clear that she is very disconnected from reality. Similarly, Maupassant emphasizes Mathilde’s unreasonable characteristic in the description, “she felt that she was made for them.” The wording here is very intriguing and noteworthy because the author uses “she was made for them” instead of “they were made for her”' which is how it should normally be phrased. This implies that Mathilde’s existence is to own frocks and jewels. Additionally, because Mathilde is a very pretty and charming lady, her appearance makes her think that she deserves all the wealth in the world. But unfortunately, she is born into a family of clerks so she possesses none of frocks and jewels, and in the story, it is said that “she loved only those things.” “Only” is also a word that expresses extremity. It infers that Mathilde doesn’t love anything else—even her husband who loves her so blindly that he will do anything to make her happy even at great cost, even for reasons he doesn’t understand. Throughout the story, Mathilde is portrayed with the same trait due to her irrational craving for frocks and jewels.
In the same fashion, Mathilde’s suffering towards life sets her character as only being extreme and unrealistic throughout the story. For example, specific word choices in The Necklace can support Mathilde’s characteristics. Maupassant chooses the words “incessantly” and “tortured” to describe Mathilde’s feelings and attitudes of life. “Incessantly” is the strongest word for duration, which means “all the time” that she never stops suffering. “Tortured” is the strongest word to reflect pain. If one is tortured, it is hurt by the most gruesome things in the English language. If these two words are used and put together, what it wants to express will be very serious and intense indeed. The contrast of simply not being rich to “incessantly tortured” is just like a very strong response provoked by a very minor problem, which is very foolish. Another instance happens where the author describes Mathilde’s social aspect of life, “she had a rich friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, whom she did not like to visit, she suffered so much when she returned. And she wept for whole days from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and disappointment.” It is noticeable that Maupassant utilizes the phrase “whole days” to show that her crying is nonstop for days and every day she spends the whole day weeping. That is an unbelievable amount of crying out of despair. What is even more irrational is the fact that the couples are actually not as poor as what Mathilde imagines, in fact, they are rich. In the story, it is mentioned that “they sent away the maid” to reduce expenses which infers that they have a maid before. Moreover, the couples have to pay for the new necklace which costs them around $500,000-700,000 after tax to pay every year for ten years. And they still have enough money left to sustain life, at that time period, they can be considered upper-class. Evidently, Mathilde’s misery of life builds her as a flat character who doesn’t change much.
In essence, Mathilde Loisel, the protagonist, in The Necklace is a flat character depicted as unrealistic that can be deduced from her husband, her craving of delicacies and luxuries, and her miserable attitude towards life. Mathilde’s husband, Monsieur acts as a foil who contrasts with her by possessing entirely different character traits. Mathilde’s fascination upon frocks and jewels marks her character as extreme, and her disappointment with life shapes her characteristics as unrealistic. From beginning to end, Mathilde’s intense desire to be rich does not change. Just like Mathilde can't tell the difference between a genuine and a fake—the actual value of the necklace by appearance, either can she distinguish in real life the values of her husband, her family, and the values of frocks and jewels. If one is oblivious to the small pleasures that one’s life once affords one, then one is also oblivious to the fact that one’s greed and deception are what finally seal one’s fate.
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