Literary Analyses / 251letters, journals, and diaries. Even newspaper and magazine articles fall into the non-
fiction genre. Frequently, then, a literary analysis of a nonfiction work will focus on
author style—the characteristics of sentences and paragraphs and their effect.
The following sample illustrates this very kind of analysis. The subject, like that in
the preceding literary analysis of a drama, is the biography of Emily Dickinson. The
writer focuses on the techniques of writing nonfiction.
Emily Dickinson: The Peculiar One
In his biography of Emily Dickinson, Van Wyck Brooks uses a vocabulary that enhances his
obvious attitude toward Dickinson, that she is peculiar. His expressions suggest the mysterious.
“She spoke from the shadows,” he writes, and follows with, “These letters were also peculiar,”
thereby suggesting that speaking from the shadows is peculiar. He includes a description of
clipped and pasted letters used to address the envelopes and thus reinforces the attitude.
Descriptions of her meeting Colonel Higginson, the poet who she hoped would be her mentor,
include her “soft, breathless voice” toward a man certain “there was something abnormal about
her.” Other phrases Brooks uses include a description of Emily as a “hurrying whiteness,” and
a reference to her vanishing “like a ghost or an exhalation.” The reader sees Emily “fluttering
about the porch like a moth in the moonlight,” a woman with a “microscopic eye” whose “imagi-
nation dwelt with mysteries and grandeurs.” While Brooks no doubt reports on his research
accurately, his vocabulary creates what is an apparently conscious effort to mystify rather than
demystify Emily Dickinson to his readers.ANALYSIS of THE SAMPLE LITERARY ANALYSIS of
NoNfICTIoN
The single paragraph analyzing Brooks’ style is a typical example of a literary analy-
sis of a piece of nonfiction. While nonfiction often includes characters, plot, setting,
and many of the other literary elements, much of what makes nonfiction successful
(as the author must rely on unalterable facts) is author style. The preceding para-
graph includes these characteristics:
• The topic sentence, here the first, combines with other details to introduce the
paragraph.
• The many details in the paragraph support the purpose announced in the topic
sentence.
• By showing, through details both quoted and paraphrased, rather than telling,
the writer allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
• Varied transitional devices prevent tedium.
• A concluding sentence makes reference to the topic sentence without repeating
it and also clarifies the writer’s point about Brooks’ biography.
• Sentence structure maintains a formal style and simultaneously shows variety
both in structure and length.
• The present tense, maintained throughout, serves the analysis well.