Literary Analyses / 253on wolves, to sleep in an ice cave, to learn to knap flint, to study glaciers. Her ongoing research
gives the reader technical details about medicinal plants, poisonous plants, even birth-control
plants; details about woolly mammoths, wild horses, cave lions, wolves, and hyenas; details
about glacier flow, glacier melt, and glacier atmosphere. Her characters can discuss in detail
the attributes of certain flint for certain tools. Through the characters, the reader also learns
how to hunt certain game, find plants for food, store both to sustain life during the long, excruci-
ating winters, and provide for other necessities of life: clothing, footwear, bedding, cooking and
storage utensils, shelter, and fire. Every amenity must be found, caught, processed, drilled,
woven, braided, cut, or somehow altered to suit the purpose. It is the science of prehistoric
man: botany, biology, geology, anatomy, and archaeology.
Within the scientific research, however, Auel emphasizes that all three novels’ events grow
from her imagination. Valley represents Auel’s fictionalized version of how people first learned
all manner of skills: to ride a horse, to make fire with flint, to hunt animals too big and too fast
to kill with sling or spears, to use animals to help carry a heavy load, to traverse wide rivers,
to make boats, to improve shelters from simple caves to man-made structures, to make more
sophisticated tools. Valley also represents Auel’s fictionalized version of evolution, including the
reason for the demise of the Neanderthals and the success of the Cro-Magnons. Auel’s guess
as to how tribes moved across Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age in the midst of the
changing geography makes fascinating reading. Her speculation of their relationship with the
spiritual world, their burial customs, their preparation for the afterlife, their use of hallucinogens
for contacting the spirits—all show Auel’s imagination at play with sketchy facts. Her interpreta-
tion of anthropological evidence lays the foundation for the novel.
Indeed, The Valley of the Horses as well as other books in the Earth Children series may be
the most unusual example of science fiction to appear on modern book shelves. Taking the
reader to a fictionalized, alien civilization situated in a scientifically correct environment, Valley
does what Auel says she likes in books: “I like stories that pick me up and put me down some-
where else. ‘What if’—that’s the great thing fiction writers work with.” The “what if” in The Valley
of the Horses results in a blend of science and fiction of a different vintage!ANALYSIS of THE SAMPLE LITERARY ANALYSIS of A
NoVEL
The literary analysis of a novel can include dozens of aspects. The preceding sample
presents an argument for thinking of a novel as a special kind of science fiction.
Thus, the analysis does several jobs at once: It presents an argument supported by
details from the book; it presents an analysis of science-fiction characteristics as they
appear in the book; and it includes the general characteristics for a literary analysis
of a novel. Note the following details:
• The introduction includes the vital information and establishes the basis for
the argument that the book is a special kind of science fiction.
• The thesis sentence points out, in the order to be discussed, the three main
ideas the writer will develop in the three body paragraphs.
• Each paragraph is supported by details from the novel, all of which appear as
paraphrases, even list-like series. Quotations are omitted for brevity.