A/L Literature
Prose
Non-fictional prose is written to persuade, explain or record. Analysing it means showing how it does that — and whether it is fair.
What to look for in a prose passage
- Purpose. Is the writer explaining, persuading, describing, remembering, attacking or defending? Everything else follows from this.
- Audience. Who is being addressed, and how can you tell? Assumed knowledge, shared values and forms of address all give it away.
- Voice. What kind of person does the writing construct itself as being — authoritative, modest, angry, amused, reasonable? The voice is chosen.
- Structure of the argument. Where is the claim made? Where is the evidence? Is the strongest point first or last? Is a concession made, and what does it buy?
- Sentence movement. Long accumulating sentences and short blunt ones do different work. A short sentence after several long ones lands like a verdict.
- Diction. Which words are loaded? A writer who calls a group concerned residents rather than protesters has made an argument without appearing to.
Rhetorical devices, and what they achieve
- Rhetorical question
- A question asked for effect, not for an answer.
- Example: It makes the reader supply the conclusion themselves, which is more persuasive than being told it.
- Tricolon
- A group of three.
- Example: Three sounds complete and memorable in English. Notice when a writer sets up a three and then breaks it — the break is emphatic.
- Anaphora
- Repeating the same opening words in successive clauses.
- Example: It builds rhythm and insistence, and marks a passage as public and spoken in character.
- Antithesis
- Balanced opposition within a sentence.
- Example: It makes a claim sound reasoned and inevitable, whether or not it is.
- Concession
- Admitting part of the opposing case.
- Example: It purchases the reader's trust cheaply, and makes the writer seem fair. Ask what is conceded and, more revealingly, what is not.
- Understatement and irony
- Saying less than is meant, or the opposite.
- Example: Both invite the reader into complicity — the reader who understands feels clever, and an agreeing reader is a persuaded reader.
- Appeal to authority, emotion and reason
- The three classical means of persuasion.
- Example: Identify which the passage relies on most, and whether the reliance is honest.
Writing about a prose passage
Organise by effect, not by paragraph. Do not walk through the passage from top to bottom; group your observations into two or three effects the writing achieves, and draw evidence from anywhere in the passage.
Be prepared to evaluate. At A/L you may legitimately say that an argument is more persuasive than it is sound, or that a concession is a rhetorical move rather than a real one. That kind of judgement, supported by evidence, is exactly what advanced analysis of prose means.