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How to Write the AP Lit Prose Essay + Example

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What is the ap lit prose essay, how will ap scores affect my college chances.

AP Literature and Composition (AP Lit), not to be confused with AP English Language and Composition (AP Lang), teaches students how to develop the ability to critically read and analyze literary texts. These texts include poetry, prose, and drama. Analysis is an essential component of this course and critical for the educational development of all students when it comes to college preparation. In this course, you can expect to see an added difficulty of texts and concepts, similar to the material one would see in a college literature course.

While not as popular as AP Lang, over 380,136 students took the class in 2019. However, the course is significantly more challenging, with only 49.7% of students receiving a score of three or higher on the exam. A staggeringly low 6.2% of students received a five on the exam. 

The AP Lit exam is similar to the AP Lang exam in format, but covers different subject areas. The first section is multiple-choice questions based on five short passages. There are 55 questions to be answered in 1 hour. The passages will include at least two prose fiction passages and two poetry passages and will account for 45% of your total score. All possible answer choices can be found within the text, so you don’t need to come into the exam with prior knowledge of the passages to understand the work. 

The second section contains three free-response essays to be finished in under two hours. This section accounts for 55% of the final score and includes three essay questions: the poetry analysis essay, the prose analysis essay, and the thematic analysis essay. Typically, a five-paragraph format will suffice for this type of writing. These essays are scored holistically from one to six points.

Today we will take a look at the AP Lit prose essay and discuss tips and tricks to master this section of the exam. We will also provide an example of a well-written essay for review.  

The AP Lit prose essay is the second of the three essays included in the free-response section of the AP Lit exam, lasting around 40 minutes in total. A prose passage of approximately 500 to 700 words and a prompt will be given to guide your analytical essay. Worth about 18% of your total grade, the essay will be graded out of six points depending on the quality of your thesis (0-1 points), evidence and commentary (0-4 points), and sophistication (0-1 points). 

While this exam seems extremely overwhelming, considering there are a total of three free-response essays to complete, with proper time management and practiced skills, this essay is manageable and straightforward. In order to enhance the time management aspect of the test to the best of your ability, it is essential to understand the following six key concepts.

1. Have a Clear Understanding of the Prompt and the Passage

Since the prose essay is testing your ability to analyze literature and construct an evidence-based argument, the most important thing you can do is make sure you understand the passage. That being said, you only have about 40 minutes for the whole essay so you can’t spend too much time reading the passage. Allot yourself 5-7 minutes to read the prompt and the passage and then another 3-5 minutes to plan your response.

As you read through the prompt and text, highlight, circle, and markup anything that stands out to you. Specifically, try to find lines in the passage that could bolster your argument since you will need to include in-text citations from the passage in your essay. Even if you don’t know exactly what your argument might be, it’s still helpful to have a variety of quotes to use depending on what direction you take your essay, so take note of whatever strikes you as important. Taking the time to annotate as you read will save you a lot of time later on because you won’t need to reread the passage to find examples when you are in the middle of writing. 

Once you have a good grasp on the passage and a solid array of quotes to choose from, you should develop a rough outline of your essay. The prompt will provide 4-5 bullets that remind you of what to include in your essay, so you can use these to structure your outline. Start with a thesis, come up with 2-3 concrete claims to support your thesis, back up each claim with 1-2 pieces of evidence from the text, and write a brief explanation of how the evidence supports the claim.

2. Start with a Brief Introduction that Includes a Clear Thesis Statement

Having a strong thesis can help you stay focused and avoid tangents while writing. By deciding the relevant information you want to hit upon in your essay up front, you can prevent wasting precious time later on. Clear theses are also important for the reader because they direct their focus to your essential arguments. 

In other words, it’s important to make the introduction brief and compact so your thesis statement shines through. The introduction should include details from the passage, like the author and title, but don’t waste too much time with extraneous details. Get to the heart of your essay as quick as possible. 

3. Use Clear Examples to Support Your Argument 

One of the requirements AP Lit readers are looking for is your use of evidence. In order to satisfy this aspect of the rubric, you should make sure each body paragraph has at least 1-2 pieces of evidence, directly from the text, that relate to the claim that paragraph is making. Since the prose essay tests your ability to recognize and analyze literary elements and techniques, it’s often better to include smaller quotes. For example, when writing about the author’s use of imagery or diction you might pick out specific words and quote each word separately rather than quoting a large block of text. Smaller quotes clarify exactly what stood out to you so your reader can better understand what are you saying.

Including smaller quotes also allows you to include more evidence in your essay. Be careful though—having more quotes is not necessarily better! You will showcase your strength as a writer not by the number of quotes you manage to jam into a paragraph, but by the relevance of the quotes to your argument and explanation you provide.  If the details don’t connect, they are merely just strings of details.

4. Discussion is Crucial to Connect Your Evidence to Your Argument 

As the previous tip explained, citing phrases and words from the passage won’t get you anywhere if you don’t provide an explanation as to how your examples support the claim you are making. After each new piece of evidence is introduced, you should have a sentence or two that explains the significance of this quote to the piece as a whole.

This part of the paragraph is the “So what?” You’ve already stated the point you are trying to get across in the topic sentence and shared the examples from the text, so now show the reader why or how this quote demonstrates an effective use of a literary technique by the author. Sometimes students can get bogged down by the discussion and lose sight of the point they are trying to make. If this happens to you while writing, take a step back and ask yourself “Why did I include this quote? What does it contribute to the piece as a whole?” Write down your answer and you will be good to go. 

5. Write a Brief Conclusion

While the critical part of the essay is to provide a substantive, organized, and clear argument throughout the body paragraphs, a conclusion provides a satisfying ending to the essay and the last opportunity to drive home your argument. If you run out of time for a conclusion because of extra time spent in the preceding paragraphs, do not worry, as that is not fatal to your score. 

Without repeating your thesis statement word for word, find a way to return to the thesis statement by summing up your main points. This recap reinforces the arguments stated in the previous paragraphs, while all of the preceding paragraphs successfully proved the thesis statement.

6. Don’t Forget About Your Grammar

Though you will undoubtedly be pressed for time, it’s still important your essay is well-written with correct punctuating and spelling. Many students are able to write a strong thesis and include good evidence and commentary, but the final point on the rubric is for sophistication. This criteria is more holistic than the former ones which means you should have elevated thoughts and writing—no grammatical errors. While a lack of grammatical mistakes alone won’t earn you the sophistication point, it will leave the reader with a more favorable impression of you. 

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Here are Nine Must-have Tips and Tricks to Get a Good Score on the Prose Essay:

• Carefully read, review, and underline key instruction s in the prompt.
• Briefly outlin e what you want to cover in your essay.
• Be sure to have a clear thesis that includes the terms mentioned in the instructions, literary devices, tone, and meaning.
• Include the author’s name and title  in your introduction. Refer to characters by name.
• Quality over quantity when it comes to picking quotes! Better to have a smaller number of more detailed quotes than a large amount of vague ones.
• Fully explain how each piece of evidence supports your thesis .  
• Focus on the literary techniques in the passage and avoid summarizing the plot. 
• Use transitions to connect sentences and paragraphs.
• Keep your introduction and conclusion short, and don’t repeat your thesis verbatim in your conclusion.

Here is an example essay from 2020 that received a perfect 6:

[1] In this passage from a 1912 novel, the narrator wistfully details his childhood crush on a girl violinist. Through a motif of the allure of musical instruments, and abundant sensory details that summon a vivid image of the event of their meeting, the reader can infer that the narrator was utterly enraptured by his obsession in the moment, and upon later reflection cannot help but feel a combination of amusement and a resummoning of the moment’s passion. 

[2] The overwhelming abundance of hyper-specific sensory details reveals to the reader that meeting his crush must have been an intensely powerful experience to create such a vivid memory. The narrator can picture the “half-dim church”, can hear the “clear wail” of the girl’s violin, can see “her eyes almost closing”, can smell a “faint but distinct fragrance.” Clearly, this moment of discovery was very impactful on the boy, because even later he can remember the experience in minute detail. However, these details may also not be entirely faithful to the original experience; they all possess a somewhat mysterious quality that shows how the narrator may be employing hyperbole to accentuate the girl’s allure. The church is “half-dim”, the eyes “almost closing” – all the details are held within an ethereal state of halfway, which also serves to emphasize that this is all told through memory. The first paragraph also introduces the central conciet of music. The narrator was drawn to the “tones she called forth” from her violin and wanted desperately to play her “accompaniment.” This serves the double role of sensory imagery (with the added effect of music being a powerful aural image) and metaphor, as the accompaniment stands in for the narrator’s true desire to be coupled with his newfound crush. The musical juxtaposition between the “heaving tremor of the organ” and the “clear wail” of her violin serves to further accentuate how the narrator percieved the girl as above all other things, as high as an angel. Clearly, the memory of his meeting his crush is a powerful one that left an indelible impact on the narrator. 

[3] Upon reflecting on this memory and the period of obsession that followed, the narrator cannot help but feel amused at the lengths to which his younger self would go; this is communicated to the reader with some playful irony and bemused yet earnest tone. The narrator claims to have made his “first and last attempts at poetry” in devotion to his crush, and jokes that he did not know to be “ashamed” at the quality of his poetry. This playful tone pokes fun at his childhood self for being an inexperienced poet, yet also acknowledges the very real passion that the poetry stemmed from. The narrator goes on to mention his “successful” endeavor to conceal his crush from his friends and the girl; this holds an ironic tone because the narrator immediately admits that his attempts to hide it were ill-fated and all parties were very aware of his feelings. The narrator also recalls his younger self jumping to hyperbolic extremes when imagining what he would do if betrayed by his love, calling her a “heartless jade” to ironically play along with the memory. Despite all this irony, the narrator does also truly comprehend the depths of his past self’s infatuation and finds it moving. The narrator begins the second paragraph with a sentence that moves urgently, emphasizing the myriad ways the boy was obsessed. He also remarks, somewhat wistfully, that the experience of having this crush “moved [him] to a degree which now [he] can hardly think of as possible.” Clearly, upon reflection the narrator feels a combination of amusement at the silliness of his former self and wistful respect for the emotion that the crush stirred within him. 

[4] In this passage, the narrator has a multifaceted emotional response while remembering an experience that was very impactful on him. The meaning of the work is that when we look back on our memories (especially those of intense passion), added perspective can modify or augment how those experiences make us feel

More essay examples, score sheets, and commentaries can be found at College Board .

While AP Scores help to boost your weighted GPA, or give you the option to get college credit, AP Scores don’t have a strong effect on your admissions chances . However, colleges can still see your self-reported scores, so you might not want to automatically send scores to colleges if they are lower than a 3. That being said, admissions officers care far more about your grade in an AP class than your score on the exam.

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How to Write the AP Lit Prose Essay with Examples

March 30, 2024

AP Lit Prose Essay Examples – The College Board’s Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Course is one of the most enriching experiences that high school students can have. It exposes you to literature that most people don’t encounter until college , and it helps you develop analytical and critical thinking skills that will enhance the quality of your life, both inside and outside of school. The AP Lit Exam reflects the rigor of the course. The exam uses consistent question types, weighting, and scoring parameters each year . This means that, as you prepare for the exam, you can look at previous questions, responses, score criteria, and scorer commentary to help you practice until your essays are perfect.

What is the AP Lit Free Response testing? 

In AP Literature, you read books, short stories, and poetry, and you learn how to commit the complex act of literary analysis . But what does that mean? Well, “to analyze” literally means breaking a larger idea into smaller and smaller pieces until the pieces are small enough that they can help us to understand the larger idea. When we’re performing literary analysis, we’re breaking down a piece of literature into smaller and smaller pieces until we can use those pieces to better understand the piece of literature itself.

So, for example, let’s say you’re presented with a passage from a short story to analyze. The AP Lit Exam will ask you to write an essay with an essay with a clear, defensible thesis statement that makes an argument about the story, based on some literary elements in the short story. After reading the passage, you might talk about how foreshadowing, allusion, and dialogue work together to demonstrate something essential in the text. Then, you’ll use examples of each of those three literary elements (that you pull directly from the passage) to build your argument. You’ll finish the essay with a conclusion that uses clear reasoning to tell your reader why your argument makes sense.

AP Lit Prose Essay Examples (Continued)

But what’s the point of all of this? Why do they ask you to write these essays?

Well, the essay is, once again, testing your ability to conduct literary analysis. However, the thing that you’re also doing behind that literary analysis is a complex process of both inductive and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning takes a series of points of evidence and draws a larger conclusion. Deductive reasoning departs from the point of a broader premise and draws a singular conclusion. In an analytical essay like this one, you’re using small pieces of evidence to draw a larger conclusion (your thesis statement) and then you’re taking your thesis statement as a larger premise from which you derive your ultimate conclusion.

So, the exam scorers are looking at your ability to craft a strong thesis statement (a singular sentence that makes an argument), use evidence and reasoning to support that argument, and then to write the essay well. This is something they call “sophistication,” but they’re looking for well-organized thoughts carried through clear, complete sentences.

This entire process is something you can and will use throughout your life. Law, engineering, medicine—whatever pursuit, you name it—utilizes these forms of reasoning to run experiments, build cases, and persuade audiences. The process of this kind of clear, analytical thinking can be honed, developed, and made easier through repetition.

Practice Makes Perfect

Because the AP Literature Exam maintains continuity across the years, you can pull old exam copies, read the passages, and write responses. A good AP Lit teacher is going to have you do this time and time again in class until you have the formula down. But, it’s also something you can do on your own, if you’re interested in further developing your skills.

AP Lit Prose Essay Examples 

Let’s take a look at some examples of questions, answers and scorer responses that will help you to get a better idea of how to craft your own AP Literature exam essays.

In the exam in 2023, students were asked to read a poem by Alice Cary titled “Autumn,” which was published in 1874. In it, the speaker contemplates the start of autumn. Then, students are asked to craft a well-written essay which uses literary techniques to convey the speaker’s complex response to the changing seasons.

The following is an essay that received a perfect 6 on the exam. There are grammar and usage errors throughout the essay, which is important to note: even though the writer makes some mistakes, the structure and form of their argument was strong enough to merit a 6. This is what your scorers will be looking for when they read your essay.

Example Essay 

Romantic and hyperbolic imagery is used to illustrate the speaker’s unenthusiastic opinion of the coming of autumn, which conveys Cary’s idea that change is difficult to accept but necessary for growth.

Romantic imagery is utilized to demonstrate the speaker’s warm regard for the season of summer and emphasize her regretfulness for autumn’s coming, conveying the uncomfortable change away from idyllic familiarity. Summer, is portrayed in the image of a woman who “from her golden collar slips/and strays through stubble fields/and moans aloud.” Associated with sensuality and wealth, the speaker implies the interconnection between a season and bounty, comfort, and pleasure. Yet, this romantic view is dismantled by autumn, causing Summer to “slip” and “stray through stubble fields.” Thus, the coming of real change dethrones a constructed, romantic personification of summer,  conveying the speaker’s reluctance for her ideal season to be dethroned by something much less decorated and adored.

Summer, “she lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,/ And tries the old tunes for over an hour”, is contrasted with bright imagery of fallen leaves/ The juxtaposition between Summer’s character and the setting provides insight into the positivity of change—the yellow leaves—by its contrast with the failures of attempting to sustain old habits or practices, “old tunes”. “She lies on pillows” creates a sympathetic, passive image of summer in reaction to the coming of Autumn, contrasting her failures to sustain “old tunes.” According to this, it is understood that the speaker recognizes the foolishness of attempting to prevent what is to come, but her wishfulness to counter the natural progression of time.

Hyperbolic imagery displays the discrepancies between unrealistic, exaggerated perceptions of change and the reality of progress, continuing the perpetuation of Cary’s idea that change must be embraced rather than rejected. “Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips/The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd”, syntax and diction are used to literally separate different aspects of the progression of time. In an ironic parallel to the literal language, the action of twilight’s “clip” and the subject, “the days,” are cut off from each other into two different lines, emphasizing a sense of jarring and discomfort. Sunset, and Twilight are named, made into distinct entities from the day, dramatizing the shortening of night-time into fall. The dramatic, sudden implications for the change bring to mind the switch between summer and winter, rather than a transitional season like fall—emphasizing the Speaker’s perspective rather than a factual narration of the experience.

She says “the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head/Against the earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost”. Implying pride and defeat, and the word “witched,” the speaker brings a sense of conflict, morality, and even good versus evil into the transition between seasons. Rather than a smooth, welcome change, the speaker is practically against the coming of fall. The hyperbole present in the poem serves to illustrate the Speaker’s perspective and ideas on the coming of fall, which are characterized by reluctance and hostility to change from comfort.

The topic of this poem, Fall–a season characterized by change and the deconstruction of the spring and summer landscape—is juxtaposed with the final line which evokes the season of Spring. From this, it is clear that the speaker appreciates beautiful and blossoming change. However, they resent that which destroys familiar paradigms and norms. Fall, seen as the death of summer, is characterized as a regression, though the turning of seasons is a product of the literal passage of time. Utilizing romantic imagery and hyperbole to shape the Speaker’s perspective, Cary emphasizes the need to embrace change though it is difficult, because growth is not possible without hardship or discomfort.

Scoring Criteria: Why did this essay do so well? 

When it comes to scoring well, there are some rather formulaic things that the judges are searching for. You might think that it’s important to “stand out” or “be creative” in your writing. However, aside from concerns about “sophistication,” which essentially means you know how to organize thoughts into sentences and you can use language that isn’t entirely elementary, you should really focus on sticking to a form. This will show the scorers that you know how to follow that inductive/deductive reasoning process that we mentioned earlier, and it will help to present your ideas in the most clear, coherent way possible to someone who is reading and scoring hundreds of essays.

So, how did this essay succeed? And how can you do the same thing?

First: The Thesis 

On the exam, you can either get one point or zero points for your thesis statement. The scorers said, “The essay responds to the prompt with a defensible thesis located in the introductory paragraph,” which you can read as the first sentence in the essay. This is important to note: you don’t need a flowery hook to seduce your reader; you can just start this brief essay with some strong, simple, declarative sentences—or go right into your thesis.

What makes a good thesis? A good thesis statement does the following things:

• Makes a claim that will be supported by evidence
• Is specific and precise in its use of language
• Argues for an original thought that goes beyond a simple restating of the facts

If you’re sitting here scratching your head wondering how you come up with a thesis statement off the top of your head, let me give you one piece of advice: don’t.

The AP Lit scoring criteria gives you only one point for the thesis for a reason: they’re just looking for the presence of a defensible claim that can be proven by evidence in the rest of the essay.

Second: Write your essay from the inside out 

While the thesis is given one point, the form and content of the essay can receive anywhere from zero to four points. This is where you should place the bulk of your focus.

My best advice goes like this:

• Choose your evidence first
• Develop your commentary about the evidence
• Then draft your thesis statement based on the evidence that you find and the commentary you can create.

It will seem a little counterintuitive: like you’re writing your essay from the inside out. But this is a fundamental skill that will help you in college and beyond. Don’t come up with an argument out of thin air and then try to find evidence to support your claim. Look for the evidence that exists and then ask yourself what it all means. This will also keep you from feeling stuck or blocked at the beginning of the essay. If you prepare for the exam by reviewing the literary devices that you learned in the course and practice locating them in a text, you can quickly and efficiently read a literary passage and choose two or three literary devices that you can analyze.

Third: Use scratch paper to quickly outline your evidence and commentary 

Once you’ve located two or three literary devices at work in the given passage, use scratch paper to draw up a quick outline. Give each literary device a major bullet point. Then, briefly point to the quotes/evidence you’ll use in the essay. Finally, start to think about what the literary device and evidence are doing together. Try to answer the question: what meaning does this bring to the passage?

A sample outline for one paragraph of the above essay might look like this:

Romantic imagery

Portrayal of summer

• Woman who “from her golden collar… moans aloud”
• Summer as bounty

Contrast with Autumn

• Autumn dismantles Summer
• “Stray through stubble fields”
• Autumn is change; it has the power to dethrone the romance of Summer/make summer a bit meaningless

Recognition of change in a positive light

• Summer “lies on pillows / yellow leaves / tries old tunes”
• Bright imagery/fallen leaves
• Attempt to maintain old practices fails: “old tunes”
• But! There is sympathy: “lies on pillows”

Speaker recognizes: she can’t prevent what is to come; wishes to embrace natural passage of time

By the time the writer gets to the end of the outline for their paragraph, they can easily start to draw conclusions about the paragraph based on the evidence they have pulled out. You can see how that thinking might develop over the course of the outline.

Then, the speaker would take the conclusions they’ve drawn and write a “mini claim” that will start each paragraph. The final bullet point of this outline isn’t the same as the mini claim that comes at the top of the second paragraph of the essay, however, it is the conclusion of the paragraph. You would do well to use the concluding thoughts from your outline as the mini claim to start your body paragraph. This will make your paragraphs clear, concise, and help you to construct a coherent argument.

Repeat this process for the other one or two literary devices that you’ve chosen to analyze, and then: take a step back.

Fourth: Draft your thesis 

Once you quickly sketch out your outline, take a moment to “stand back” and see what you’ve drafted. You’ll be able to see that, among your two or three literary devices, you can draw some commonality. You might be able to say, as the writer did here, that romantic and hyperbolic imagery “illustrate the speaker’s unenthusiastic opinion of the coming of autumn,” ultimately illuminating the poet’s idea “that change is difficult to accept but necessary for growth.”

This is an original argument built on the evidence accumulated by the student. It directly answers the prompt by discussing literary techniques that “convey the speaker’s complex response to the changing seasons.” Remember to go back to the prompt and see what direction they want you to head with your thesis, and craft an argument that directly speaks to that prompt.

Then, move ahead to finish your body paragraphs and conclusion.

Fifth: Give each literary device its own body paragraph 

In this essay, the writer examines the use of two literary devices that are supported by multiple pieces of evidence. The first is “romantic imagery” and the second is “hyperbolic imagery.” The writer dedicates one paragraph to each idea. You should do this, too.

This is why it’s important to choose just two or three literary devices. You really don’t have time to dig into more. Plus, more ideas will simply cloud the essay and confuse your reader.

Using your outline, start each body paragraph with a “mini claim” that makes an argument about what it is you’ll be saying in your paragraph. Lay out your pieces of evidence, then provide commentary for why your evidence proves your point about that literary device.

Move onto the next literary device, rinse, and repeat.

Sixth: Commentary and Conclusion 

Finally, you’ll want to end this brief essay with a concluding paragraph that restates your thesis, briefly touches on your most important points from each body paragraph, and includes a development of the argument that you laid out in the essay.

In this particular example essay, the writer concludes by saying, “Utilizing romantic imagery and hyperbole to shape the Speaker’s perspective, Cary emphasizes the need to embrace change though it is difficult, because growth is not possible without hardship or discomfort.” This is a direct restatement of the thesis. At this point, you’ll have reached the end of your essay. Great work!

Seventh: Sophistication 

A final note on scoring criteria: there is one point awarded to what the scoring criteria calls “sophistication.” This is evidenced by the sophistication of thought and providing a nuanced literary analysis, which we’ve already covered in the steps above.

There are some things to avoid, however:

• Sweeping generalizations, such as, “From the beginning of human history, people have always searched for love,” or “Everyone goes through periods of darkness in their lives, much like the writer of this poem.”
• Only hinting at possible interpretations instead of developing your argument
• Oversimplifying your interpretation
• Or, by contrast, using overly flowery or complex language that does not meet your level of preparation or the context of the essay.

Remember to develop your argument with nuance and complexity and to write in a style that is academic but appropriate for the task at hand.

If you want more practice or to check out other exams from the past, go to the College Board’s website .

Brittany Borghi

After earning a BA in Journalism and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa, Brittany spent five years as a full-time lecturer in the Rhetoric Department at the University of Iowa. Additionally, she’s held previous roles as a researcher, full-time daily journalist, and book editor. Brittany’s work has been featured in The Iowa Review, The Hopkins Review, and the Pittsburgh City Paper, among others, and she was also a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee.

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Definition of Prose

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

Common Examples of First Prose Lines in Well-Known Novels

Examples of famous lines of prose, types of prose, difference between prose and poetry, writing a prose poem, prose edda vs. poetic edda, examples of prose in literature, example 1: the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck.

A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.

Example 2: This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Example 3: Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Synonyms of Prose

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, writing a prose essay.

I've got an assignment to write a prose essay, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. Can any of you help me understand the definition of a prose essay and maybe some tips on how to write one?

A prose essay is a type of essay written in prose, which is a natural, flowing form of language, as opposed to verse or poetry. Essentially, when you're asked to write a prose essay, you're being asked to write an essay in complete sentences, organized into paragraphs, that clearly communicates your thoughts and ideas.

To write a prose essay, follow these steps:

1. Understand the prompt: Read the essay prompt or question carefully and make sure you fully comprehend what is being asked of you. Ask your teacher if you're unclear about what the point of the question is.

2. Brainstorm and outline: Jot down your thoughts and ideas related to the prompt and begin organizing them into a logical structure. Create an outline to serve as the framework for your essay, with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.

3. Introduction: Start with an engaging opening line that grabs the reader's attention and introduces the topic. Provide some background information and outline the main points you plan to cover in the essay.

4. Body paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on a single main point that supports your overall argument. Use evidence, examples, and analysis to back up your claims and explain how they connect to the essay's central theme.

5. Transitions: Smoothly transition between paragraphs and ideas with appropriate phrases and sentences. This will help improve the readability and flow of your essay.

6. Conclusion: Summarize the most important points made in the body paragraphs and restate the thesis or main argument. Offer some insight or thoughts about the implications of your analysis.

7. Edit and revise: Carefully review your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors—even small typos may give your reader the impression that you don't care all that much about what you're writing about. Make necessary changes to improve readability and ensure that your essay effectively addresses the prompt. Reading your essay out loud can sometimes be a good way of identifying snag points.

Finally, remember to keep your language clear and concise, while still using a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary to make your essay more engaging. Good luck with your prose essay assignment!

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What Is Prose In Writing? Find A Definition And Examples

As a creative writing teacher, a common question I get asked is “what is prose?” The term prose simply refers to spoken or written language. In the context of writing books, it describes a style of written words, distinct from poetry, numbers and metrics.

One of the biggest tasks many writers face is improving their ability to write prose. This guide offers the quickest and easiest solutions.

Below, we take a look at the different styles of writing prose, examples of each one, and advice from expert writers on getting better.

You can jump to the section you’re most interested in below:

Choose A Chapter

What is prose writing an easy definition, what are the main styles of prose, orwellian prose: the clear pane of glass, florid prose: the stained glass window, can you use a hybrid approach, examples of different styles of prose, 13 tips to help you write clear prose, learn more about writing prose, frequently asked questions (faq), join an online writing community.

So what is prose ?

It’s spoken or written language that does not rhyme or contain numbers. How we think, speak and write would be described as prose. When we write prose, we often apply a grammatical structure.

How Are Prose And Poetry Different?

Prose and poetry are different because poetry applies a rhythmic structure whereas prose follows a more standard mode of written language that follows natural speech patterns—an example being this very article you’re reading now.

Prose and poetry are therefore considered opposites.

What Is Purple Prose In Writing?

Purple prose is when a writer uses too many fancy words or describes things in a flowery, exaggerated way. It’s like adding too much frosting on a cupcake; it might look pretty, but it’s too much and can make it hard to enjoy.

There are a few main styles of writing prose. They are:

• Clear, concise prose, referred to as ‘Orwellian’, or the ‘clear pane of glass’, and;
• Florid, literary prose, referred to as the ‘stained glass window’.
• A hybrid of the two, which is an approach I favour. 

First, we’ll have a look at each, before looking at some examples.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “good prose is like a window pane” and wanted to know the meaning behind it, here it is.

George Orwell in his essay, Politics and the English Language , set out what he thinks good prose writing ought to consist of, all the while attacking the British political system for the destruction of good writing practices.

Orwell was very much against the over-complication of language, which at the time (1946), was the direction politics was taking, and unfortunately still takes today.

Orwell believed prose should be like looking through a clear pane of glass at the story unfolding on the other side. It should be clear to understand. The writing should be invisible, drawing as little attention to itself as possible. The reader shouldn’t have to stop to re-read a sentence due to poor construction or stumble over a word used in the wrong way.

Words should be chosen because of their meaning, and to make them clearer, images or idioms, such as metaphors and similes, should be conjured. He encouraged the use of ‘newly invented metaphors’ which “assists thought by evoking a visual image”. Orwell encouraged writers to use the fewest and shortest words that will express the meaning you want.

“ Let the meaning choose the word.” 

If you can’t explain something in short, simple terms, you don’t understand it, was his argument. 

A change in the language used by politicians provoked Orwell to write his essay. Pretentious diction, as he called it—words such as phenomenon, element, objective, eliminate and liquidate—is used to dress up simple statements. He blamed politics for this, and how politicians adopt hollow words and phrases, mechanically repeating them over and over until they become meaningless.

I’m sure we can all agree we’re fed up of hearing such phrases. Orwell used ‘stand shoulder to shoulder’ as an example, and more recently we’ve seen Theresa May butcher the phrase ‘strong and stable’. These phrases are vague and bland and do not evoke any imagery, and if you’re a writer, they’re things you ought to avoid, Orwell argued.

Orwell’s Six Rules For Achieving Clear Prose

Orwell provided six rules to remember when writing prose. In following them, he argued, you could achieve clear prose that could be understood and enjoyed by all readers:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print;
• Never use a long word where a short one will do;
• If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out;
• Never use the passive [voice] where you can use the active;
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent;
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

So in summary, Orwellian prose is writing which is short, simple and understandable. And if you’re looking for a simple and effective method of how to write good prose, this is it.

They’re great guidelines to test out with short stories. With that type of narrative writing you need to make every word count, so they’re a great way to get used to them. It’s also a more preferred prose form among many literary agents, publishers , and editors.  

A Video Explainer On Orwellian Prose

If you’d like a more visual explainer on writing Orwellian prose, check out this brilliant video from bestselling author, Brandon Sanderson.

When we explore answers to the question, what is prose writing, one approach we inevitably turn to is the stained glass window—the antithesis to Orwell’s clear pane method.

With a stained glass window approach, you can still see the story on the other side, but the stained glass is colouring it in interesting ways. Language and structure are therefore florid and more creative. And it also tends to lean more heavily on the side of descriptive writing.

It’s used more in literary fiction and requires a mastery of language to pull off well. Brandon Sanderson refers to it as the artist’s style of prose, whereas Orwellian prose he regards as the craftsman’s style.

Above we mentioned the phrase ‘purple prose’. This is an attempt at creating a stained glass window, but the description and structure are poor , rendering the prose incomprehensible.

A blend of the clear pane and stained pane can work well. JRR Tolkien often adopted this, particularly with his descriptions, and other writers, Sanderson and David Gemmell to name but two, like to start chapters in a florid way before transitioning into the clear pane. Sometimes it can depend on the scene.

In fight scenes , for example, simple language is best adopted so the reader’s flow isn’t disrupted. When describing places, people or settings colourful language works well to liven up what would otherwise be quite mundane passages.

My personal preference is toward Orwellian prose writing. Writing should be clear and accessible to all. As writers, that’s what we want—to have our stories read and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

Having spent years working as a lawyer I know it’s not the case, and Orwell’s fears back in 1946 continue to materialise. In the end, I regarded my role as a lawyer as more of a translator of legal jargon. Writing shouldn’t be this way.

So we’ve taken a look at the different styles of prose writing. Now let’s take a look at some examples to better illustrate the different approaches. 

Examples Of A Clear Prose Style

One of my favourite writers of clear prose is Ernest Hemingway. His stories are immersive and gripping because they’re simple to follow. A clear pane of glass approach if ever there was one. 

Here’s an extract from Old Man And The Sea:

“He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve coils. As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man’s fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.”

You can see here how clear the language is. “Imperceptible” may be the most difficult word used, but it almost doesn’t matter because what has come before it is so clear and vivid, we can picture the scene in our minds. 

Examples Of Flowery Prose

On the other side of the coin, we have flowery prose. One of my favourite writers of florid prose is JRR Tolkien. Some people find The Lord Of The Rings quite challenging to read when they first begin, and I was one of them, and it’s down to Tolkien’s unqiue voice. But once you grow accustomed to it, there’s something quite enchanting about it.

So to illustrate this style, here’s an extract from The Lord of The Rings (Book One):

So far in this guide on how to write prose, we’ve looked at the different approaches. Now we’re looking at the practical side of things—how we actually write great prose. Here are a few writing tips to help you achieve a clear style :

• Resist the temptation to get fancy . We all do it. Only the other day I was going through a story of mine with a friend. I’d written the phrase “after thrice repeating the words,” and he pulled me up on it, and rightly so. “Why not just say ‘after the third time’?” he asked. Simpler, more effective.
• Make good use of nouns and verbs, and refrain from indulging in adjectives and adverb s. Check out my 7 nifty editing tips which look at the impact too many adjectives and adverbs can have on your writing.
• Show don’t tell . This has cropped up a few times on the blog over the past few weeks, and for good reason. Telling the reader how a character feels is boring! Show it! 
• Behead the passive voice . Seek to use active verbs. But this can be harder than it looks. Check out my full guide to passive voice here.
• Use effective dialogue. You can find dialogue writing examples here 
• Try poetry and flash fiction . These facets of the craft will teach you the importance of each and every word. You’ll learn the power a single word can have, how it can provoke images, emotions or memories in the reader’s mind.
• Try using deliberate line breaks . Not only does this break up the wall of text to make it easier on the eye for the reader, it can help you emphasise key points as well as a structural device to build tension and suspense.
• Varying line lengths and sentence structure . This is a good one to help you build rhythm to your writing. Go back through your written prose and see how long each sentence is. If your sentences have similar strcutures, it can help to mix them up. Shorter sentences can help build suspense, longer sentences are useful for explanations and description. Keep this in mind as you go back through and edit, breaking up longer sentences into shorter ones or joining others together.  
• Cut out extraneous words. Remove unnecessary words that balloon sentences. Let’s look at some prose writing examples:

He quickly crossed to the opposite side of the road.

He crossed the road.

Remember Orwell’s rule: if you can cut out a word, do it. When it comes to writing clear prose, less is more . That’s a good guideline to remember.

• Be specific and concrete . Seek to conjure vivid images and avoid vague phrases. Orwell provides a wonderful example from the book Ecclesiastes of how specificity can create vivid images:

“… The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet the bread to the wise, nor yet the riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill …”

• Pay attention to sentence structure, a.k.a. syntax. Sentences of a similar structure disrupt the flow and creates an awful rhythm. Short sentences increase the pace as well as tension, are effective at hitting home points, or signalling a change in tone. A short sentence I’d say is one less than half a line. Be warned: do not overuse them. A short sentence packs a punch, and you don’t want to bludgeon your reader. For an example of short sentences used well, check out Anna Smith Spark’s debut novel The Court of Broken Knives . Then come the medium-length sentences—one to two lines—which keeps the pace at a steady level. Anything over two lines and I’d say that’s a pretty long sentence. Long sentences are useful for pieces of description, slowing the pace or reducing tension. You can even be clever and use them to throw the reader off-guard. Watch out for your use of commas too and keep an eye on syllables. Read your work aloud to reveal these problems.
• Trust your reader . At some stage, we’ve all been guilty of holding the reader’s hand. Seek to create intrigue by withholding details.
• Avoid clichés and be mindful of tropes . It cheapens your writing and gives the reader the impression of laziness.
• What am I trying to say?
• What words will express it?
• What image or idiom (a group of words that establish a meaning that a single word cannot) will make it clearer?
• Is the image/idiom fresh enough to have an effect?
• Could I put it more shortly?
• Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

I’ve included a few other materials for you to further your reading.

Check out this English literature writing guide by the University of Edinburgh

If you’d like to study creative writing , check out this writing course offered by the University of East Anglia. If you’d like more resources like this, you can also check out my online writing classes .

To learn more about using the 5 senses in writing , which is a vital part of prose, check out this guide.

For some of the best tips around on writing a book for the first time , head here. You can find lots of brilliant advice for first time authors. 

A great way to improve your prose is by writing short stories . Head here for a complete guide

Learn about sensory language examples here which can immensely improve your prose.

And head here for advice on when to rewrite your story .

And for more on character development and how to write a plot , head here.

Prose relates to ordinary everyday speech, so it’s arguably easier to write than poetry. However, many writers fall into the trap of writing ‘purple prose’, which is easy to write but not very good to read.

Prose carries with it no formal or set structure. It does, however, apply the general principles of grammar. It often reflects common or conversational speech.

Prose means the ordinary, everyday language that’s spoken or written. It is often distinguished from poetry due to its lack of a rhythmic structure.

In writing, prose relates to any form of written work in which the general rules of grammar and structure are followed. This is distinct from poetry, which follows a more rhythmic structure.

In the context of writing, prose refers to words assembled in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise describe as poetry or non-rthymic.

Written in prose simply means that a piece of text has been written down in a non-rhythmic way.

There are two main types of prose style—George Orwell’s the clear pane of glass, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, the stained glass window. Orwell believed in clear and simple, plain language. The stained glass window, on the other hand, opts for a more florid style.

Thank you for reading this guide on how to write prose. Hopefully, this post has shed light on the mysteries of prose and how you can achieve that clear, readable style.

If you’d like more help with your writing or would like to connect with like-minded writers, why not join my online writing community. There are hundreds of us all sharing advice, tips, calls for submissions, and helping each other out with our stories.  We congregate on Facebook and Discord. To join, just click below. 

If you need any more help with your prose writing, get in contact .

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richiebilling

About author, related posts, how to write a premise for your story, brilliant adjectives to describe a person, adjectives that start with 'r', 14 comments.

Reblogged this on Richie Billing and commented:

For my 50th post I thought I’d take a look back at the past 5 or so months at what I’ve thrown out into the world for your enjoyment. I was going to share the most popular post to date, but instead I’ve decided to share my personal favourite—the one that’s helped me the most in researching and writing it. So here it is, my guide to writing Orwellian prose.

Thank you to everyone who’s so far subscribed to this blog. It means a hell of a lot. In the months to come I’ll be looking to giveaway more free content and of course keep the articles coming. Here’s to the next 50!

Guess I”m more George Orwel than John Milton … 🙂 Just one thing (from a Jesuit-trained Old Xav with penchant for Latin grammar) The Passive voice gets a lot of ‘bad press’ which IMHO is often undeserved. You use an Active verb when you’re doing somehing. But you still need a Passive verb when someone is DOInG SOMETHING to you! Also: it’s almost impossible to write a grammatical French sentence without using a Reflexive verb. The Reflexive (s’asseoir, ‘to sit’ OR se plaire, ‘to please’) is a variation on Passive. They also use what in English grammar is called the subjunctive Mood, particularly in speech and even when Grammar insists that an Active verb is required … you can’t trust the French! LOL

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Prose: Understanding, Examples & Writing Tips

What is prose.

• Prose classifications
• Examples of prose
• How to write prose
• Tips for writing effective prose

Ever wondered what makes a piece of writing engaging, readable, and relatable? A lot of it has to do with its structure and form. One such form of writing is prose. In this blog, we'll unravel the definition of prose, its various classifications, examples, and even some handy tips for writing effective prose. So, let's jump right in!

At its simplest, the definition of prose refers to any form of writing that doesn't have a strict metrical structure. Unlike poetry, which often relies on rhythm and rhyme, prose follows the natural patterns of everyday speech. Now, let's explore some key characteristics and types of prose.

The Characteristics of Prose

Prose is a versatile form of writing with several distinct characteristics:

• Ordinary Language: Prose uses everyday language, the kind you use when chatting with friends or writing an email. It's easy to understand, without any fancy or poetic elements.
• Structured Sentences: Sentences in prose follow grammatical rules and have a clear beginning, middle, and end. This structure makes prose easy to read and comprehend.
• No Rhyme or Rhythm: Unlike poetry, prose doesn’t have to rhyme or follow a specific rhythm. It flows naturally, just like spoken language.

Types of Prose

Prose can take on many forms, depending on its purpose. Here are a few you may recognize:

• Narrative Prose: This type of prose tells a story. It's what you'll find in novels, short stories, and biographies.
• Nonfiction Prose: This form of prose shares real-life experiences, facts, or ideas. Think newspaper articles, essays, and textbooks.
• Dramatic Prose: Dramatic prose is used in plays and scripts. It's written to be performed, rather than read silently.

Now that we've covered the definition of prose and its types, you're well on your way to understanding this versatile form of writing. Next, we'll look at some examples of prose to solidify your understanding. But we'll save that for our next section. Stay tuned!

Prose Classifications

Having grasped the basic definition of prose, let's move on to the various ways prose can be classified. Understanding these classifications can help you better appreciate the depth and diversity of prose in literature.

Literary Prose

Literary prose is a term often used to describe works of fiction and certain types of creative nonfiction. This classification includes:

• Novels: Long works of fiction with complex plots, subplots, and well-developed characters.
• Short Stories: Brief works of fiction, typically focusing on a single event or character.
• Essays: Short pieces of nonfiction that explore a particular topic from the author's perspective.

Functional Prose

Functional prose refers to writing that serves a practical purpose. This includes:

• Instruction Manuals: Guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to use a product or perform a task.
• Reports: Formal documents that relay information or results in a structured format.
• Business Letters: Professional correspondence often used in the corporate world.

Conversational Prose

Conversational prose emulates the style and tone of everyday speech. Some examples include:

• Dialogues: Conversations between characters in novels, short stories, or plays.
• Personal Letters: Informal written communication between friends, family, or acquaintances.
• Blog Posts: Informal articles written in a conversational tone, such as this one!

With these classifications in mind, you'll start to see the breadth of prose in everyday life—from the books on your shelf to the instruction manual for your coffee maker. But how do these different types of prose come to life? Let's delve deeper into some examples in our next section. Stay tuned!

Examples of Prose

Now that you've got a solid understanding of the different types of prose, let's dive into some examples. This should help cement your understanding and give you a more tangible sense of what the definition of prose really entails.

Examples of Literary Prose

When it comes to literary prose, one can't help but think of classic novels. Take, for example, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." In this novel, Austen's prose is elegant, witty, and deeply revealing of her characters' inner lives. Another example is "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, where the prose is simple yet powerful, and carries a heavy emotional impact.

Examples of Functional Prose

An example of functional prose could be the instruction manual included with your microwave. It's direct, clear, and serves a practical purpose—helping you figure out how to heat up your leftovers! Another example is a business report, such as a quarterly earnings report for a company, which provides structured and factual information about the company's financial performance.

Examples of Conversational Prose

In conversation, we use prose all the time without even realizing it. Think about the last text message you sent—it's likely a great example of conversational prose. Or consider the dialogue in your favorite sitcom. The characters' conversations are examples of prose that are designed to sound natural and spontaneous.

Hopefully, these examples have brought the definition of prose to life for you. Now, onto the fun part: how to write your own prose.

How to Write Prose

Writing prose isn't about fancy words or complex sentences. It's about clarity, rhythm, and meaning. If you've been wondering how to apply the definition of prose to your own writing, here are some steps to get you started.

Choose Your Purpose

First, decide why you're writing. Are you trying to entertain readers with a gripping story? Convey information in a clear and concise way? Or engage in a casual conversation? Your purpose will help shape the style and tone of your prose.

Plan Your Message

Next, consider your message. What do you want your readers to understand, feel or do after reading your prose? Keep this message in mind as you're writing—it will guide your choice of words and sentence structures.

Write with Clarity

When you write prose, strive for clarity. Use simple, everyday words. Make your sentences short and to the point. And remember, it's not about how complicated you can make the sentence, but how easily your reader can understand it.

Revise and Refine

Finally, always take the time to revise and refine your prose. Look for ways to make your writing more clear, concise, and engaging. Remember, the more you practice, the better you'll get at writing prose.

Now, you're ready to take your understanding of the definition of prose and put it into practice. But before you do, let's look at a few tips to make your prose even more effective.

Tips for Writing Effective Prose

Now that you've got a handle on the definition of prose and how to write it, let's delve a little deeper. Here are a few tips that can help make your writing more engaging and effective.

Use Active Voice

Active voice makes your writing more direct and engaging. So, instead of writing "The cake was eaten by the dog," write "The dog ate the cake." It's a simple change, but it can make a big difference in how your writing is received.

Keep Sentences and Paragraphs Short

Long sentences and paragraphs can be hard to follow. So, try to keep your sentences short and sweet. And break up your paragraphs into smaller chunks. This makes your writing easier to read and understand.

Choose the Right Word

Every word matters when you're writing prose. So, choose your words carefully. Use words that are precise and clear. And avoid jargon or overly complicated terms. Remember, your goal is to communicate, not to confuse.

Add Variety to Your Sentence Structures

Varied sentence structures can make your writing more interesting. So, don't be afraid to mix things up. Use short sentences. Use long sentences. Use sentences that start with "And" or "But." The key is to keep your reader engaged and interested.

By applying these tips, you'll be able to write prose that is clear, engaging, and effective. And remember, the best way to improve your prose is to write, write, and write some more. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start writing!

If you enjoyed this blog post on prose and want to further expand your writing skills, we recommend exploring Daisie's classes . Our platform offers a wide range of workshops and classes, led by experienced professionals, that will help you hone your craft and take your writing to the next level.

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• Literary Terms
• When & How to Write a Prose
• Definition & Examples

How to Write Prose

There’s just one rule for writing prose: don’t write verse by mistake. If you grew up in the modern world, chances are you’ve been writing prose since the day you started stringing sentences together on a page. So all you have to do now is keep it up!

• In general, prose does not have line breaks; rather, it has complete sentences with periods or other punctuation marks.
• There’s another very important kind of line break that makes your prose easier to understand: paragraph breaks. Paragraphs break up your writing into manageable chunks that the reader can digest one at a time as they read. This is especially important in essays , where each paragraph contains a single “step” in the argument. Without paragraph breaks, prose becomes pretty ugly: just a huge block of words without any breaks or structure at all!

When to Use Prose

Unless you’re writing poetry, you’re writing prose. (Remember that prose has a negative definition.) As we saw in §2, essays use prose. This is mainly just a convention – it’s what readers are used to, so it’s what writers use. In the modern world, we generally find prose easier to read, so readers prefer to have essays written that way. The same thing is true for stories – we have an easier time following the story when it’s written in prose simply because it’s what we’re accustomed to.

So you can use prose pretty much anywhere – poetry is the only kind of writing that frequently uses verse, meaning prose covers everything else . And even poetry, as we’ve seen, can be written in prose. So when should you use prose? The answer is: all over the place.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

All Subjects

AP Lit Prose Analysis Practice Essays & Feedback

26 min read • july 11, 2024

Candace Moore

Writing essays is a great way to practice prose analysis and prep for the AP exam! Review student responses for an essay prompt and corresponding feedback from Fiveable teacher Candace Moore.  

The Practice Essay Prompt

Here’s the prompt:   the 2013 exam prompt with a passage from  The Rainbow.

D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915): The following passage focuses on the lives of the Brangwens, a farming family who lived in rural England during the late nineteenth century. Read the passage carefully.

Then write an essay in which you analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices to characterize the woman and capture her situation.

Try to give yourself a timer to do this – 45 minutes

Keep in mind everything about setting and social environment, diction as choice, and symbolism of spaces and thoughts.

Your completed essay should include:

• introduction optional
• thesis for sure
• at least two body paragraphs
• organized for complexity instead of by device
• a conclusion
• broader context application for sophistication

Student Responses and Teacher Feedback

Student response 1.

In D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, a woman wants to explore urban life but is restricted by her situation. Lawrence’s curious diction and juxtaposition of inquisitiveness and complacency portrays Mrs. Brangwen to be an ambitious yet judgmental woman who looks down on her husband and almost idolizes city people.

By using diction that implies a strong spirit of inquiry, the author establishes the ambiousness of the woman. She looks towards the cities and governments and wonders about the “scope” of man. The land outside of the village being “magic” in her eyes. She proclaims it is where “secrets” are revealed. Such words characterize her curiosity. She wants to know what their secrets are, how far can man go, what can he achieve? The author yet again uses similar descriptors such as “enlarge” and’ “range.” These imply that there’s a plethora of knowledge outside of her rural home in England. Although she is physically limited, her mind constantly wonders about the world outside. Her desires are not met as a wife in a farming and believes there’s other things that will fulfill her interests. Her word choice of describing outside life not only shows admiration for urban life, but her disdain of the village lifestyle.

Throughout the excerpt, Mrs. Brangwen’s husband is contrasted with urban men. When describing the farmers day to day life and activities, the author repeats “it was enough”. “Enough” meaning that menial physical activities and mother nature satisfied him. Unlike her husband, the men outside are “dominant and creative.” They strive to answer questions and problems. “whilst her husband looked out to the back at sky and harvest and beast and land, she strained her eyes to see what man had done in fighting outwards to knowledge.” Compared to her husband who enjoys farm life and passes time by looking at the sky and attending to his crops, city men are adventurous. They fight each day to expand their horizons and apprehension: hoping to increase their grasp of the world. Although it’s enough for her husband, it isn’t sufficient for Mrs. Brangwen. She wants to join the “war” with the men. Her husband represents a complacent farming lifestyle while the vicar (city man) represents a superior, inquisive lifestyle. She later expands her views by proclaiming it’s not power or money that makes the vicar a “master” over her husband: it was his knowledge. It’s knowledge that makes him more appealing. She yearns to appease her intellectual curiosity: what her current situation is not providing.

The curious diction and juxtaposition of inquisitiveness and complacency in the passage showcases Mrs. Brangwen’s ambitiousness and longing to obtain more knowledge, though she’s restricted by her rural life. She represent people who want to achieve more in their life, but are tied down by their circumstances.

Teacher feedback:

Very nice! I see that you have tightened your evidence points – these are word by word, as opposed to longer phrases or sentences, and this emphasizes your choice to analyze diction.

Your thesis is written well, although I’m not completely clear on what the situation is, in your argument. You have analyzed her character, and the devices that create it, but not the situation. Be sure to address all parts of the prompt, and if a concept is given (like “situation”), make sure that you qualify it and establish your interpretation. However, your use of 'restricted" implies your understanding. 1/1

Your evidence supports your assertion, but your commentary stops at interpretation of the words. In order to increase the effectiveness of your commentary, you would need to show more clearly not only how the words show her curiosity, but also how that curiosity shows the reader who the woman is. In the second paragraph, you show the contrast, but the paragraph’s focus on the men overshadows your argument about Mrs. Brangwen, although your thesis made a claim about her. This separates your commentary from your thesis, and therefore veers away from your line of reasoning. 2-3/4

I see your application of a broader context, which could have been more present throughout, but does push toward sophistication. But because your line of reasoning and argument are not supported consistently, and a few grammatical mistakes, you haven’t earned the sophistication point. 0/1

Student Response 2

Sometimes, viewing history, we find ourselves drawn into the trap of believing that oppressed groups completely lacked strength and power. This was not so; for years, minorities have fought for their empowerment and found communities within one another, enough to grant them the strength to persevere in a society that rejected them or that attempted to reduce their social power to nothing at all. People are not as altogether weak as we sometimes assume. But that strength can only come from community, from forcibly pulling that power out of the solidarity that comes from co-existing with people who are like you; it cannot exist in isolation. And thus is the plight of the woman in D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow,” who finds herself surrounded by men, forced to live on a farm, and trapped in a life far away from any urban area where she could hope to better herself or find a community of like-minded women. Thus, she begins to idolize the city as a miracle cure for all her ails, growing more and more resentful toward the men who keep her trapped in a life she never wanted nor chose. In “The Rainbow,” D. H. Lawrence characterizes the woman as unsatisfied with her traditional life and desperate to escape it by comparing her attitudes to those of the men, highlighting her interest in the outside world, and revealing her obsession toward the vicar.

Early on in the passage, Lawrence contrasts the woman’s attitudes toward her lifestyle with those held by the men in her family. Particularly, he uses the imagery of staring into the distance. Both the woman and the men, each drawn to certain lifestyles, engage in this action. However, the men stare toward “the sun […] the source of generation,” whereas she faces “toward where men moved dominant and creative.” Interestingly, both the men and the woman are seeking something similar. They are interested in “generation,” and she in creativity, both of which deal explicitly with creation and invention. However, by having them be physically turned in different directions, the author shows us that the woman wants to achieve her desire for creation elsewhere, somewhere where she is not burdened by her obligation to them as a wife and homemaker. Again, this disparity is given a physical description, with the men “faced inwards,” and her “faced outwards.” The repetition of this shared language, modified only slightly by a few letters at the beginning of the second word, helps to establish both the shared desires of the woman and the men, as well as their differences in approach. She seeks to find this “[creativity]” in the outside world, while they are already able to find it within themselves. Interestingly, this language suggests that, on some personal level, the woman is not satisfied with herself, or else she should, supposedly, find strength and meaning internally. Perhaps the problem exists within and cannot be solved by the outside world at all.

Lawrence also characterizes the woman’s dissatisfaction with fanciful language to describe the way that she views the outside world. The author uses the metaphor of a battle, saying that men have “[fought] outwards to knowledge” and that woman wants to be “of the fighting host.” The metaphor of physical conflict is so strong that it shows the extent to which the woman feels trapped in her life, as she is literally being subdued and kept at bay by malevolent enemy forces, rather than by where her family happens to live. For her, living in the city is not just a dream, but a noble fight against all the social norms that keep her down and bound to these men. Furthermore, the repetition of the word “outwards,” already used to interesting effect much earlier in the piece, reinforces the woman’s desperation to find this satisfaction in something outside of herself, something larger and more significant. She has constructed the image of this battle in order to justify that thinking, despite the fact that her desire and feeling of being trapped is something in which she is, as a result of being trapped in the country, utterly alone.

Finally, the author uses the woman’s obsession with the vicar to reveal just how dissatisfied she is with her life and her husband. Observing the vicar, she notes that he is “little and frail,” whereas her husband is like a “bull.” None of these words have especially positive connotations, but “bull” is still much harsher. “Little and frail” have to do with physical observation alone, whereas the word “bull” is very much tied to the imagery of destruction and physical power over intellectual power, such as in the idiom of “a bull in a china shop.” This word alone reveals much about her thoughts toward her husband, whom she also describes as seeming “dull and local” compared to the vicar. Throughout the piece, her husband has been described as having similar, though differently oriented, desires as her, but now we see just how much she has come to resent the situation in which she lives—so much so that her resentment has turned toward people. Yet with the vicar, she observes that he has “power” over her husband, despite his size and physical strength, or lack thereof. She is entranced by this notion, probably because she is envious of him. She, too, wishes to have some power of her husband, as she feels that he represents her trapped state in a rural area. Being a woman, it makes that she herself would also be “little and frail” compared to her husband, and she is astonished that someone like the vicar can be so powerful, in spite of his relative physical weakness. Although she does not make this connection explicitly, it is obvious that her obsession with the vicar comes from a desire to, like him, have such freedom and power that has been denied to her as a result of her gender.

Through the use of comparison between the woman and the men, fanciful language in the woman’s description of the city, and her obsession with the vicar, D. H. Lawrence creates a complicated and nuanced character, struggling to find a place for herself in a world where, isolated from other women, she is forced to become subservient, her opinions not a factor in her own life. The piece is a fascinating look into a time long gone, set almost 200 years in the past. And yet, much of the reality of that time still exists today, with women across the world, irrespective of all other factors, still not granted the same privileges as those given to men. In this way, “The Rainbow” is not simply a spyglass from which to view history, but a mirror to hold up to our own time, even in a world as different from the woman’s as ours today.

Good job bringing broader context into your introduction, which helps to show that it is a part of your line of reasoning. Your thesis establishes an argument about both the woman and her situation. I like that you’ve done so by referencing what the author’s language  does . 1/1

Good insight on the direction of the woman’s attention vs. the men’s. For your analysis, the contrast is stronger as evidence than the imagery, but your commentary does bring it together. The end of your first body paragraph seems slightly disjointed, as you go in various directions in your interpretation of the woman facing inwards, and don’t fully manage to bring them all together to connect to her dissatisfaction wth her traditional life. Your analysis of the diction of conflict is also strong, but the relationship between that language and “outwards” is tenuous. In the final paragraph, you also make clear arguments about the comparison of the vicar and her husband, but your evidence does not connect to your final insight about her desire for power like the vicar. The obsession with the vicar is an inference that you wrote as a device, so your evidence was unable to serve its purpose. Overall, you make plausible arguments, but the evidence is inconsistently supportive of them. Your commentary is therefore much stronger than your selection of evidence. 3/4

You have explored a broader context to this passage, and written persuasively, but the inconsistencies in your analysis/evidence relationship preclude a sophistication point. 0/1

Student Response 3

It is a common saying that knowledge is power. In the passage given, the author follows a woman’s search for dominance to demonstrate that knowledge, and therefore power, is available only to a select few. The author uses grimy imagery and combative but yearning diction to convey the woman’s dissatisfaction with her life on the farm and her ambitious character, which causes her to hopelessly seek power through knowledge and intellectual conquest.

The author begins by presenting dingy images of the mens’ labor on the farm, which portrays the life on the farm as primitive and unpleasant. The men must “ferret[] the rats from under the barn” and “br[eak] the back of the rabbit with a sharp knock of the hand” in order to maintain their lives on the farm. The descriptions of rats and the killing of the rabbits evoke images of disease and death, which are reinforced by the author’s mention of their “teeming life” of “blood-intimacy,” which implies that the woman’s life has been infested by her rural lifestyle. By selecting images that portray the lowliest aspects of farm living, the author illustrates the woman’s belief that her life is primitive, repulsive, and unwanted.

The woman’s dissatisfaction for her life manifests in her deep desire to seek a higher, magical knowledge to feel fulfilled. The author employs combative diction to develop the woman’s ambitious character and her futile attempts to gain knowledge and power. The woman wants to “enlarge [her] own scope and range and freedom” and wage a war “on the edge of the unknown.” She “crave[s]” knowledge of “conquest” as she believes that it will bring her “dominan[ce] and creativ[ity].” The author selects aggressive language that reflects the woman’s longing for control over her life. By implementing both assertive and longing language, the author characterizes the woman as ambitious while demonstrating her yearning for power that she cannot have. The author further develops the woman’s unfulfilled desires by repeating the word “man.” Despite the woman’s ambitious character, she acknowledges that she can only learn about “man[’s]” conquests, and experience “man[’s]” dominance and creativity. The woman craves higher knowledge “not in herself,” but in her children. By repeatedly mentioning mens’ accomplishments and failing to mention the accomplishments of women, the author suggests that men are the only ones capable of being dominant. The woman, therefore, is constrained by her gender and is unable to achieve the knowledge and power that she desires. Thus, by using assertive and longing diction to characterize the woman and by only associating men with knowledge and dominance, the author develops the woman’s unrealistically ambitious character and establishes her unfulfilled desires as the result of her gender.

Through primitive imagery and assertive but longing diction, the author characterizes the woman as ambitious and power-hungry and demonstrates that her gender confines to her distasteful rural lifestyle and prevents her from achieving the knowledge and control over her life that she craves. Much like rats on a farm, the passage reminds readers of the gender inequality that infests society and prevents people from achieving their dreams.

Grimy imagery! Love it. You fit all of the pieces into your thesis, which was quite a task for this prompt, and created a line of reasoning about power and knowledge that could wind through your essay and create a sophistication to your argument. 1/1

In your first body paragraph, I think you gave a solid analysis of the images, but missed the opportunity to make that connection to your argument about the woman, beyond that her life was infested. It would have been strengthened to point out there that the primitive life was good enough for the men, but the woman’s perspective showed her dissatisfaction. In the second paragraph, combative diction is appropriate and analytical, but I wonder if you have overcomplicated your argument by conflating the aggressive and longing language, and then how those show her ambition  and  her yearning. I appreciate how you continued the thread about power and gender, which adds to the insight you planted the seed for in your intro, but your ideas are entangled in each other, muddling your argument. It’s a great idea to have two bold and effective paragraphs, but it’s also a good choice to have your paragraphs be as streamlined as possible, so the diction of yearning and craving could have been its own paragraph. 3/4

However, noting the broader context and acknowledging the complexities of the woman, in addition to your mastery of language, I believe you have earned a sophistication point here. 1/1

Student Response 4

In D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, the author characterizes the woman with her sensible and perceptive observations. The author emphasizes her mental journey and desire for knowledge through figurative language and a third-person limited, inquiry-like narration. The contrasting descriptions between the vicar and the Brangwens further indicate the woman’s desire for a more intellectual life not only for herself but also for her children.

A sense of urgency and conflicting mind can be perceived by the woman’s inquiry-like tone and repeated diction: The passage opens with a parallel structure that describes the mundane farming tasks of the Brangwens. Yet the pervasive descriptions all started with the phrase “it is enough”. These lively scenes are so common to the woman as everyday events on repetition that they are emphasized and imprinted upon the woman’s mind. Though the woman half reserved her comments on those “dominant” tasks, which are full of strong senses and actions and with the “heat of blood”, she believes that her need is much more. The woman desires a greater range of freedom, like town life that is “perceived yet not attained”. The distance between the woman’s expectation and the reality she is living is also underscored by the repeated diction such as “face out”, “look out”, “outwards” and “far-off”. This emphasis on the imagery of “out” further indicates the woman’s pressing need and endless curiosity outside the limited worldview she possesses. She describes Brangwens living on the “desert island”, but that is her true reflection on her feeling about being trapped by the farmhouse.

Lawrence uses an interesting analogy to describe the woman’s passion toward the world beyond her. The writer shows that the woman desires the same level of freedom her husband enjoys: “strained her eyes to see what man had done in fighting outwards to knowledge.” She seeks to be a gladiator or an adventurer who is called out for a battle waged by the knowledge, a conquest of inquisition. The description is mirrored with the opening actions of the Brangwens, painted with masculinity and an “active scope of man”. The reader is able to perceive how the woman breaks the boundary of her social expectation and takes an active role of a woman who is secretly full of desire and makes future plans for her family on the journey toward civility.

The woman’s desire for more education in her household is punctuated by the juxtaposition between the vicar and Brangwens: Lawrence makes deft use of colorful contrast to show the conflicting value between a peaceful village life “pulsating the heat of creation” with a life of inquisition, a broader ambition, and meaningful conquest of knowledge, “waged on the edge of the unknown.” A lively analogy between Brangwens being cattle and the vicar being their master shows the woman’s astute opinion on the power of knowledge. While the vicar is week and frail, his scholarship exceeds the physical boundary of robust Brangwen men. The spiritual existence of the vicar is so appealing to the woman that she makes a final resolution acknowledging the importance of knowledge.

Through the woman’s mental journey, the reader can relate to the woman for not only her desire of knowledge but an elevated expectation for her children, and this cannot be better achieved by Lawrence’s skillful use of figurative language, inquisitive tone through questions she asked, and the contrast between the vicar and the Brangwens.

What a great insight about the narration – that’s a perspective I haven’t seen often. Your thesis is strong on the characterization of the woman, but slight on your argument about her situation, although perhaps her mental journey is her situation? Even with that lack of clarity, you have an argument and the plan for analysis. 1/1

Your body paragraphs are solid, although the first paragraph ends up in a different analytical point than it began. Your analysis of the language establishes your characterization of the woman as seeking and curious, but not urgent or conflicted. The repetition of “it is enough” is misinterpreted as her thought, as opposed to her attribution to the man. This paragraph suffers from an organizational weakness, since your evidence matches your commentary, just not your assertion. The second paragraph, though shorter, is still stronger because it all supports her desire for knowledge beyond her gendered expectations. It seems as though your commentary goes farther than your evidence supports, however, because the idea that she has broken the boundary is beyond the reach of the passage. The third is also slight on commentary, and does not sufficiently explain your own argument. Your commentary is more interpretation of the juxtaposition than application to the woman. Your line of reasoning is not clear throughout the essay, and your commentary is inconsistent in its connection to the thesis and between paragraphs. 2/4

You have reference to a broader context, and you have a line of reasoning about inquiry and knowledge that is introduced and concluded, but the body of your essay is not in line. 0/1

Student Response 5

In life, we often feel confined in our situation and are in a state of utter bewilderment as to how to rectify it. This passage, taken from The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence, speaks of a woman who feels trapped and confused in her calm, simple pastoral life. In the society she lives in, one is meant to pledge allegiance to the vicar and the church, to work the fields, and to stay inward, yet the woman is stuck because she understands that there is more to explore in the world and she wants to get out and see it. She also is not convinced about the vicar’s authority and ponders over the fact that he seems to have all power over her dear husband. The author uses vivid religious imagery, anaphora, and the symbol of light and heat in order to convey the message.

In the first sentence, the author uses anaphora with the refrain of “it was enough” and the second sentence with “so much”. This paragraph describes the contentment of the men in the society as the author prepares to introduce the woman and contrast her with the members of the opposite gender. These men are simple, and they do not need much in order to be happy. Their duties on the farm, such as plowing, hunting, and harvesting, are of utmost importance to them, but this is their main goal. The paragraph has two mentions of blood which points to this work as a sort of life force for them.

On the other hand, the woman feels that she needs something more than this basic life force of blood in order to feel fulfilled. She wants to see the outside world and see how other people live. It seems that she is tired of her way of life and wants to live a different way. All the men around her have “turned their back on the pulsing heat of creation.” This sentence has the religious imagery of creation and the heat and light energy. As opposed to the men who create with their hands, the woman wants to create with her mind. She feels stifled, as the church may control what people are allowed to think and she does not want to be controlled anymore. The men get their fulfillment of free thinking from working the farm, but she needs to be able to think for herself.

The woman, as we all are, is a product of her society. She presumably was brought up in a farm town, to farmer parents, married off to a farmer and is expected to raise a farming family. However, she deviates from this accepted norm as she wants to live in a city, away from the “magic” of the town. She feels conflicted, and by the end of the passage, she decides that the vicar is to blame. He has the most knowledge out of all the farmers, and this is what makes him superior. This passage brings truth to the cliche, “knowledge is power.”

Your introduction does a great job of establishing your line of reasoning about the woman and her situation – “trapped and confused in her calm, simple, pastoral life”. Your statement on her society also begins to open up a window into the broader context that could be followed through the essay. 1/1

Your analysis paragraphs clearly assert which device you are analyzing, and what the author’s language implies, but fall short of establishing why the author made those choices in his characterization of the woman. In the first body paragraph, you cite the anaphora, and then interpret it as the contrast between the woman and the men, but the commentary does not push deeper into the connection between these instances of anaphora and your line of reasoning about the woman. In the second body paragraph, there is a missing connection between Lawrence’s choice of religious imagery and the woman’s desire, so the line of reasoning is dropped. Because of these gaps in analysis, your evidence loses its relevance to your argument. 2/4

While you have made references to a broader context, that reference does not expand your own argument. 0/1

Student Response 6

Set in the late 20th century, the main character is the wife of a farmer who is satisfied by the routine of a rural farm life. The men are satisfied with the physical work they are performing, however the woman feels as if her life is missing the intellectual stimulation and this is made especially clear when she dotes over the vicar at her home. Through extrapolating the personification of the landscape to an abstract image of intellect and the nonchalant jabs at mens’ spirituality threaded throughout the story, the woman initially appears to be dissatisfied with the routine of being the wife of a farmer. With the introduction of the vicar, she becomes inquisitive and a sense of longing is communicated over her boredom in her current situation.

The story opens with an introduction of the men, although it is the earth that is personified, given living traits of ‘heaving’ and the wind is ‘blowing’ the wheat that the men planted. This structure establishes the static character of the men by drawing attention to the actions of the scenery that the men tend to. The men are static, unwilling and physically unable to change their ways because they are satisfied with their agricultural progress and developments on the farm alone. Despite having invested a significant amount of hard work, it remains that they live the same routine of tending to the crops and animals without intellectual challenge. However, this is what the woman craves. The verbal parallel between her house facing out toward the road, the church, and the earth beyond and herself facing outward highlights her desire to expand her sphere of contact to the outside world, she would feel at home in places that mentally challenge her. However, she herself is shackled to the men who work tirelessly to control the possibilities of the earth to something that they themselves can consume in a cycle for their own benefit. Her longing for adventure, even contingency, is why she is suffocated by the men who do not wonder for more.

For the woman, the vicar was a form of home because of the vast intellectual depth he offers. Emotional cracks in her marriage are hinted at in her comparison of her husband to the vicar, where she declares the vicar the winner if both were stripped and set on a desert island. Her husband Tom Brangwan was of greater physical might and could control the cattle which translated to food, a fundamental need of living, but the woman believes the vicar to be mightier than her husband because he was of greater intellectual and spiritual depth. This reveal hints at the woman being a sapiophile, as she focuses on his knowledge and soul when she decides him as the winner in a true, life-and-death situation of being stripped and thrown into the desert. Her attitude toward the vicar is so admiring because she wanted to be like him, and her stable marriage is something that keeps her from achieving the closeness she wants to feel with the mystique of a universe she does not know. To the woman, the vicar represents the emotional depth that she longs for and because of this, she establishes the vicar to be greater than all the other men she knows.

The woman craves intellectual and spiritual exploration, which is evident in her interest in the vicar despite being the least physically noticeable man in the story. The immediate world she experiences is not of her interest, instead she wants an abstract life and this is highlighted in the juxtaposition of her husband and the vicar. The woman is discontent because of the mens’ secure aims of agricultural tending, and this is expressed through the narrator corresponding action with what is in the landscape rather than the men that tend to it. Her interest in the vicar indicates her shift from mere boredom to someone that desires to know more about the abstraction in the world she lives in.

Through your introduction, you have thoroughly established your interpretation of the woman’s situation, and your argument about her character. 1/1

I strongly recommend using more quoted text as evidence, instead of paraphrase, summary, or even your interpretation. It strengthens your argument when you ground it in the author’s specific words and language devices (evaluated in the rubric), and then make connections between those two essay elements in your own voice. Quoting evidence also helps to distinguish your analysis, and make sure that you are not restating the text as commentary. In this essay, your thesis clearly establishes the woman as dissatisfied and inquisitive, but your analysis paragraphs do not analyze the  creation  of these traits (through the author’s language and devices) as deeply as the  portrayal  of these traits. The second analysis paragraph also is less grounded in the literary language of the text, although it is still making inferences about the character of the woman. Your evidence is not consistently specific, therefore your line of reasoning, while established by the thesis, is not thoroughly supported by the evidence. 2/4

Your style of writing is clear, but you have not analyzed complexity or a line of reasoning that explores broader context, so this essay does not earn a sophistication point.

Student Response 7

Society’s progress has been driven because humanity craves knowledge of the unknown, because it gives them power. When deprived of knowledge, a person is left powerless. This deprivation can stem from many places: youth, willful ignorance, and, most notably, societal expectations. In “The Rainbow,” D. H. Lawrence’s use of contrasting foils, monotonous listing, repetition, and conservative setting convey that the woman longs for knowledge and power, but is trapped in a stagnant situation by the rural area and society’s expectations for women.

The passage first speaks of the men, content with their station in life, not wanting anything more. These men are then used as a foil to contrast their contentment with the woman’s longing for something greater, for knowledge of what is unknown to her. Lawrence writes “Her house faced out from the farm-buildings and fields, looked out to the road and the village with church and Hall and the world beyond.” This by itself characterizes the woman as unsatisfied, yearning for the world beyond her rural life. By contrasting it to the previously mentioned contentment of the men, Lawrence places the woman and her desires on a stark background, highlighting the intensity and bizarreness of her wanting. This is further highlighted by the repeated use of diction meant to indicate longing. Lawrence writes that the woman “strained” to see more than her situation, that the “wanted to know” more, that she “craved to know” and “craved to achieve.” This language is pervasive, appearing throughout the passage. By repeatedly using this language, Lawrence depicts the extent of the woman’s longing and further solidifies that her craving is unique to her, a defining character trait that sets her apart from her surroundings. Additionally, the vicar is used as another foil. Lawrence writes, “the vicar, who spoke the other, magic language, and had the other, finer bearing, both of which she could perceive, but could never attain to,” and later “She decided it was a question of knowledge.” In the first quote, Lawrence sets the vicar aside from the rest men in the area, who are content with their lives and their ignorance. He also establishes that the vicar has what the woman wants, which is, as shown in the latter quote, knowledge. The vicar is characterized as a powerful man, starkly contrasting the woman, who longs for that which the vicar has but cannot attain it. Through character foils and repetitive diction, Lawrence characterizes the woman as someone who longs for knowledge and power.

The woman cannot obtain the knowledge and power she so craves because she is stuck in a stagnant, rural area and chained by conventional gender roles. The stagnancy of her situation is shown when Lawrence lists the life of the men, and then contrasts that to how the woman feels about that life. The listing uses no commas, instead joining each item with “and” or “or”. This gives the writing a dreary feeling, showing the monotonous nature of the woman’s situation. This is partially due to the fact that she is in a rural area, where “the world beyond” and “the battle that she heard” are far from her grasp. This highlights the powerlessness of the woman’s situation, because she is trapped in her house that faces out but cannot go out to see the battles that she has heard of and wishes to take part in. The reader may infer that she cannot take part in these battles because she is a woman, which is forms the other aspect of her stagnant situation. The setting of the passage is the late eighteenth century in rural England. It can be inferred that due to the sentiments of the time, women were not expected to have power or knowledge, showing that the woman was stuck in her powerless situation by gender roles.

Through his use of contrasting foils, dreary listing, fervent repetition, and conservative setting, D. H. Lawrence depicts the woman as someone who wants knowledge and power but cannot achieve it because of her stagnant situation.

My feedback is brief, but this is a very strong essay. Your thesis establishes an argument that is defensible and thorough. 1/1

Your evidence and commentary support the thesis, although some of the devices are analyzed more effectively. Your second paragraph analyzes the syntax succinctly, but the second half of the paragraph is less strong. Your first body paragraph feels a little disorganized, although you have a reference to your argument as both a first and last sentence, which brings the focus back. I don’t think the diction section feels connected to the men and vicar as foils argument in style or content. However, overall, you chose significant evidence and explained its role in the characterization of the woman thoroughly and consistently. 4/4

The essay does not earn a sophistication point, although it strongly meets the criteria for other points.

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Prose: Definition and Helpful Examples of Prose in Literature

You have probably come across the term prose, but are you aware of what it is? In this article, we are going to be looking at exactly what prose is and what it is used for. On top of this, we are going to be taking a look at some examples of prose to allow us to gain a greater understanding of how it works.

Prose Definition

What is prose.

When you read a novel, a newspaper or perhaps even a textbook, you are reading prose. The simplest definition of what prose is is a form of writing which has a natural flow with speech and writing. It is grammatically correct but does not have a metrical structure as something like poetry would have, for example.

However, the prose isn’t limited to written works, it is also, for the most part, how we speak in our everyday language and also how we think. When we talk about prose we are referring to a type of language which does not demonstrate any particular structure but leans more in favour of delivering concise and clear language that can be easily understood. The term prose is derived from the Latin language and translates as meaning ‘straightforward.’

When looking at prose you will notice that it is made up of sentences which are grammatically correct and these form paragraphs . In some instances, however, you might come across another type of prose known as prose poetry which blends the two techniques together.

Types of Prose

There are various types of prose, as follows:

• Nonfiction prose-this type is written work based around facts, you might see this in such pieces of writing such as auto-biographies or an essay .
• Fictional prose-this type is a work of fiction such as a novel or a short story.
• Heroic prose-this is a type of prose which is literary that can be either written or spoken, you might notice this form of prose when looking at myths and legends.
• Prose poetry-a form of prose that is intertwined with elements of poetry.

Prose Examples

Now that we have a greater understanding of what prose is and how it works, we are going to be taking a look at some examples. It is important to bear in mind that there are millions of examples of prose and by studying these examples, you will more easily be able to determine whether something is prose when reading or hearing it.

• By taking the poem ‘ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Night ‘ written by Robert Frost, we can create an example of prose by turning the poetry into prose. It might look like this. “ These woods look beautiful contrasted with the setting dark and as one looks out into the depths of the trees, the feeling to stay a little longer is evident. However, there are things I need to do and much distance I need to cover before I can relax for the evening. “
• Take a look at this extract from the novel David Copperfield written by Charles Dickens, this is an example of prose. “ Whether I will turn out to be my own hero or should that station be held by someone else, these pages will show. “
• When we talk in a casual sense, we are using prose. An example might be a conversation as follows. “ Hi, how are you? ” “ I’m good to thank you, how are you? “
• In his famous speech, Nelson Mandela uses prose to deliver his message, look at the following extract. “ You will notice that there isn’t an easy walk to freedom and a lot of us will need to go through the valley of the shadow of death many times before we can reach our goal. “
• In works of non-fiction, we see many examples of prose, look at the following sentences. “ The largest animal on earth is the blue whale.” “Russia is the largest country by landmass but China takes the lead when it comes to population. “

Prose is the main format of language that we see in our day to day lives, whether this be during a spoken conversation or when reading written works such as newspaper articles, stories, or books.

It is used by putting grammatically correct sentences together to form paragraphs and in some cases can be blended with poetry to create a fusion between the two types of language.

Prose | Image

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The difference between prose and poetry seems easy to explain: one has blocks of text and fully-fleshed characters, the other has line breaks and pretty words. That’s it, right?

Despite their visual quirks, prose and poetry share many similarities: prose can be musical, poetry can have plots and characters, and both are millennia-old traditions. As such, it would be wrong to prescribe a rigid decision tree for writing prose vs. poetry—many writers have both in their toolkits, relying on each form to communicate different truths.

“Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.” —Jean-Paul Sartre

So what is the difference between poetry and prose? And which should you write for which occasions? Again, we won’t give hard-and-fast rules, but we can explore their differences in depth and discuss their possibilities.

First, we’ll discuss the features of prose and poetry independently, then we’ll loop back to examine both their differences and their areas of overlap.

Prose Vs. Poetry: Contents

Prose Versus Verse: Line Breaks

Prose is more functional than poetry, how to read prose, further readings in fiction and nonfiction, artistic definitions of poetry vary, poetry uses language richly, how to read poetry, further readings in poetry, poetry vs. prose: a clear example of each, 5 similar features of prose and poetry, 10 differences between prose and poetry, poetry vs. prose venn diagram, prose vs. poetry: a final note on literary binaries, prose vs. poetry: defining prose.

Prose is the more common writing form that everyone is comfortable reading and writing. This article relies on prose—as do most ( but not all! ) novels, and just about all news stories, instruction manuals, scientific papers, and so on.

The most straightforward rule of thumb for knowing that you’re reading prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks : words go all the way to the edge of the page without “turning back” early.

A rule of thumb for prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks.

Again, that’s how this blog article works, along with most other writing, from tweets to short stories to scientific papers.

So why would you stop writing prose, and move over to the with-line-breaks type of writing known as verse? The line breaks aren’t arbitrary, but reflect an underlying difference in how prose and verse tend to be structured. To quote the always-helpful Wikipedia:

“Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph.”

So is verse (writing with line breaks) always poetry? While two are often used synonymously, defining poetry requires more than just scanning for line breaks: as we’ll discuss below, poetry is also about the rich and musical use of language.

Prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but the counterpart of verse.

So prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but rather the counterpart of verse. So verse is not what strictly defines poetry. In fact, not all poetry is in verse—specifically, prose poetry isn’t. In other words, prose and poetry do overlap, whereas prose and verse don’t.

Most poetry is in verse, but some poetry is in prose.

We go into more detail on line breaks, stanzas, and the use of page space in the sections below.

A helpful pattern in understanding prose vs. poetry is as follows: prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical (that is, working with the inherent rhythms and sonic properties of language) and less densely packed with meanings, literary devices , and associations, than poetry.

As such, prose writing tends to be linear: while a prosaic sentence can twist and turn, it tends to share clear information, generally in a logical order.

Prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical and dense, than poetry.

Again, exceptions exist, notably prose poetry : prose writing—writing with no line endings or defined rhythmic meter—that is highly musical and dense, and that is generally more impressionistic and multifaceted than most prose in the meanings it conveys.

And then there’s prose writing that is enigmatic and dreamlike rather than clear and orderly, such as the stream-of-consciousness prose writing in James Joyce’s Ulysses .

These exceptions prove the rule, though: most other prose, from this blog article your friend’s next Facebook post to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , tends to follow the delineation described here.

We’ll allow Hemingway a last word with a slightly macho, not-applicable-to-every-prose-work, but still helpful description of prose: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

Sound good? To get a stronger feel for prose and further acquaint yourself with prose writing, take a look at the readings below.

This article gives close reading strategies for prose writing.

How to Read Prose: Close Reading Strategies for Prose Writers

The articles below outline helpful practices for numerous kinds of prose writing, from flash fiction to the novel, focusing especially on the common ingredients of storytelling .

• Crafting a Story Outline
• Freytag’s Pyramid
• Literary Devices in Prose
• Writing Flash Fiction
• Writing the Short Story
• Writing the Novella
• Writing the Novel

Prose vs. Poetry: Defining Poetry

Poetry is the oldest literary form, predating the written word (and therefore, prose) by several millennia. Up until the printing press revolutionized the distribution of literature, poetry was the main form for storytellers, who used meter and rhythm to perform oral retellings of their work.

So, what is poetry? As we’ve seen in our introduction to prose above, most—but not all—poetry is written in verse: writing with line breaks, organized around rhythm or meter rather than grammar. Still, we’ve also seen that verse is not what defines poetry, nor is all poetry based in verse.

So it’s not simply another word for verse. Is there an agreed-upon artistic definition of poetry as a literary form? (Spoiler: No.)

Artistic definitions of poetry change from poetic movement to poetic movement—and from poet to poet.

For example, William Wordsworth said that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings… recollected in tranquility.” This sentiment—largely reflective of the Romantic era—certainly rings true for some poetry. However, New Formalist poets work with poetry to distill and reflect emotion through form and meter: in other words, structure over emotion.

The point is, there’s no singular way to define or understand the artistic aims of poetry. Rather, all poets must define these aims for themselves and write accordingly.

Poets must define the artistic aims of poetry for themselves and write accordingly.

Learning about poetry requires familiarizing yourself with what other poets have already done. This list of poetry movements can jumpstart your understanding of poetry’s complex and various histories.

Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates beyond the merely “prosaic.”

Whatever literary tradition you ascribe to, poetry has a clear job to be rich, musical, evocative. Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates in a way that goes beyond the merely “prosaic,” as in the following poem excerpt by Derek Walcott:

You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.

So poetry, in any tradition, is the “cheesecake of language”: packed to the brim with sonic and expressive power. In poetry, it’s not enough to make a rational point straightforwardly, like the prosaic sentence you’re reading is doing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said this beautifully, and we can give him the last word in defining poetry.

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Cool, right? If you’d like to learn more, check out our guides for reading and understanding poetry.

This article gives close reading strategies for poetry writing.

How to Read Poetry Like a Poet

The articles below outline helpful practices poetry writing, including deep dives on common literary devices in poetry and established poetry forms.

• What is Poetry
• Poetry Forms
• Writing and Publishing a Poetry Book

Let’s cap the definitions of poetry and prose above by simply giving a clear example of each.

Here is some beautiful fiction writing that is definitely prose:

They were nearly born on a bus, Estha and Rahel. The car in which Baba, their father, was taking Ammu, their mother, to hospital in Shillong to have them, broke down on the winding tea-estate road in Assam. They abandoned the car and flagged down a crowded State Transport bus. With the queer compassion of the very poor for the comparatively well off, or perhaps only because they saw how hugely pregnant Ammu was, seated passengers made room for the couple, and for the rest of the journey Estha and Rahel’s father had to hold their mother’s stomach (with them in it) to prevent it from wobbling. That was before they were divorced and Ammu came back to live in Kerala.

—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

And here is some writing that is definitely poetry:

We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

—Shakespeare, The Tempest

Having defined prose and poetry above, the reality is that they can be more similar than you might imagine. We’ll discuss their differences in a moment, but first, it’s important to understand the shared potential that each form holds:

• Musicality and rhythm
• Use of colloquial speech
• Use of literary devices
• Ability to tell stories
• Show, don’t tell

1. Musicality and Rhythm

It’s a common misconception that only poetry can be musical. While rhythm and meter are important aspects of a poem’s construction, musicality begins with language, not with structure.

An immediate example of “musical prose” is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Susan Bell, writer of The Artful Edit , argues that Gatsby finds its success precisely because of the story’s musical, elegant storytelling—certainly, the book has a charged poeticism that feels just as decadent and tasteful as the high society of the Roaring Twenties. Below is some undeniably musical prose:

2. Use of Literary Devices

Things are like other things, which is the essence of literary devices. While some devices are unique to each form—poems have enjambment, prose can begin in media res —a successful piece of writing requires literary devices .

3. Use of Colloquial Speech

Yes, some writing uses lofty and erudite language. However, contemporary prose and poetry writers, from all eras, recognize the importance of speaking to their audience.

Colloquial speech is one way of speaking to your audience. A colloquialism is a turn of phrase with a specific social and temporal context. For example, “groovy” belongs to the American 1970s, Victorian Brits called a brave person “bricky,” and Gen Z’ers “stan” on Twitter.

In literature, Jay Gatsby’s “old sport” is just as colloquial as the poem “A Study of Reading Habits ,” which uses phrases like “right hook” and “load of crap.”

4. Storytelling

Another common misconception is that poetry doesn’t tell stories. While fiction and nonfiction are the genres of prose, poetry also possesses a powerful narrative voice.

Singular poems can tell grand stories, especially poetry in antiquity. The Epic of Gilgamesh , The Odyssey , and Beowulf are all stories in verse, as are novel-poems like Autobiography of Red .

Additionally, contemporary poetry collections often tell stories, just with less linearity. Louise Gluck’s collection Wild Iris is told from the perspective of a flower, and as the seasons change, the flower observes the infinite singularity of mankind, God, and the Universe.

5. Show, Don’t Tell Writing

It’s important for storytellers to demonstrate their ideas without spoon feeding the reader. In other words, writers should Show instead of Tell.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. —Anton Chekhov

We consider “Show, Don’t Tell” a golden rule of writing. Brush up on it here !

We’ve discussed their similarities, but the difference between poetry and prose is usually fairly clear in practice. The following ten items distinguish the two. To help demonstrate our point, we represent each form with a well known piece of literature. Poetry examples were pulled from Dylan Thomas’ “ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night ,” and prose examples come from “ The Cask of Amontillado ” by Edgar Allan Poe.

1. Prose vs. Poetry: Use of Page Space

In prose, a line of text begins and ends at the margins of the page. In poetry, the author uses shorter lines, broken before the page margins to introduce multiple meanings. Line breaks are an enduring feature of what differentiates prose and poetry, adding extra emphasis to certain words and sounds.

You’ll notice in prose that a partial line occurs only before a new paragraph.

In poetry, the line breaks mean something more intentional. The ending words can help uphold meter and rhyme schemes, and it also emphasizes important words: “night” and “light” are repeatedly pit against each other in Thomas’ villanelle .

2. Prose vs. Poetry: Paragraphs vs. Stanzas

Prose passages divide single ideas into sentences, and those sentences go on to form paragraphs. A new paragraph signifies the introduction of new ideas or the continuation of relevant information.

The equivalent of a paragraph in poetry is the stanza. Stanzas are groupings of lines which act as units of meaning, with different stanzas containing different ideas and images.

3. Prose vs. Poetry: Single vs. Multiple Meanings

In prose, the meaning of each word is usually straightforward, with double meanings (like puns and irony) clearly expressed. Most prose relies on clear meanings to deliver clear, linear messages.

By contrast, the language of poetry contains multitudes. One word can hold many different meanings, and ideas can be broken into both sentences and lines.

Take the line “old age should burn and rave at close of day.” The word rave can mean multiple things: it can mean to rant and rave as old people (stereotypically) do, or it can mean to rage and fight against. The pun here is intended to energize the reader,

4. Prose vs. Poetry: Noun-Verb Placements

In Standard English , which is the common (but not default) language of prose, nouns and verbs are found close to each other. This is a facet of “clear communication”—it’s important to know who is doing what as efficiently as possible.

We have bolded the noun-verb pairs in an excerpt from both the poem and prose piece.

Notice how the noun-verb pairs can stray from each other much more easily in poetry. Dylan Thomas inserts a noun-verb pair between a noun-verb pair in each stanza—which is much harder to use effectively in prose.

Notice that, in prose, a noun can have multiple verbs attached to it, but the first verb is almost always next to the noun.

5. Prose vs. Poetry: Rhyme (Sometimes)

There are two types of rhyme: internal and external rhyme. External rhyme occurs at the ends of lines, such as the many “-ight” words in Thomas’ poem.

Internal rhyme refers to words that rhyme with each other inside the same beat. These rhymes are not always intentional or charged with meaning, but they occur, such as in this sentence from Poe’s story:

“We had passed through walls of piled bones , with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs.”

Bones and catacombs aptly rhyme with each other. Note, rhyme is not a necessary feature of any prose and many poems. Though some poetry forms do require rhyme schemes, contemporary poets tend to eschew rhyming.

6. Prose vs. Poetry: Meter (Sometimes)

Like rhyme, meter is an (often) optional component of poetry writing. Meter refers to the stress patterns of syllables and the number of syllables per line. Well-executed meter can give poetry a certain musical quality.

Thomas’ poem is written in iambic pentameter, a requirement of the traditional villanelle form. This means there are 10 syllables in each line, following an unstressed-stressed pattern. To understand syllable stress, read Thomas’ poem out loud, and note how every second syllable is emphasized harder than the first.

Prose does not rely on meter to tell a story.

Prose does not have any metrical requirements, and thank goodness for that. Meter can be extraordinarily tough to impose on a poem, but it also affects how the reader interprets the piece. However, prose does not rely on meter to tell a story, as these poetry devices often instill multiple meanings in a piece.

7. Prose vs. Poetry: Pragmatic vs. Imaginative Focus

On a macro-level, the vision of poets and prose writers tends to differ. Prose has a pragmatic focus, meaning that each word should clearly advance a specific idea or narrative. The focus of prose is storytelling, so the author has a duty to use words diligently.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters. Rather, poetry has an imaginative focus. Words are allowed to break their conventional bounds in the goal of expressing emotions, and ideas can stack upon each other like grains of sand in a sand castle.

So, what’s pragmatic about Poe, and what’s imaginative about Thomas? Every word in Poe’s piece describes details and events that push the reader towards the climax. At no point does the reader jump out of the narrative to speculate or stargaze.

In Thomas’ poem, the words don’t point the reader towards a specific event, but they do encourage the reader to think deeply about abstract ideas. Old or young, the reader will contend with ideas of life, death, justice, goodness, and the judgment against our souls. In 19 lines of mostly concrete images, the poet asks us to read imaginatively—and in the process, to learn what we believe.

8. Prose vs. Poetry: Paraphrasability

A piece of prose can be summarized. If you ask “what is ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ about?”, it is possible to paraphrase the story and get the gist of its deeper meaning. In short, Poe’s story observes a man desperate for revenge, only to find that revenge often hurts both the punisher and the punished.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning. No one can tell you what a certain poem means. They can tell you what it isn’t —for example, “Do Not Go Gentle” is not about heartbreak, war, or the summertime—but deciding what a poem means requires a reader’s own attention.

For example, one could summarize Thomas’ poem as “an ode to Thomas’ dying father, with a vengeful bent against mankind’s eventual death.” But, does saying that invoke Thomas’ juxtaposition of light and dark? His use of rhyme to draw a conceit? His need to believe in the transience of the soul? By the time you’ve summarized the poem, you’ve written something as long as the poem itself. Poetry cannot be paraphrased.

9. Prose vs. Poetry: Point of View

Prose and poetry treat “point of view” in very different ways. A point of view (POV) refers to who is telling the story. The storyteller doesn’t always have a name or a face, but they do inevitably change how a story is read.

In prose, there are 4 main POVs:

• First Person (I): The story is told in the first person, from a character who is either the protagonist or adjacent to the protagonist. The Cask of Amontillado uses the first person POV.
• Second Person (You): The story is told in the second person. Often, the writer will substitute “the protagonist” for “you,” making the story’s actions feel more intimate and personal. Second Person storytelling is rare, but not unheard of.
• Third Person Limited (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and it focuses on the perspective of the protagonist. We have access to most of their thoughts and feelings, but our access to other people is limited by the protagonist’s perspective. Sometimes, writers combine this with the intimacy of 1st person narration, in a technique called free indirect discourse .
• Third Person Omniscient (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and the narrator has access to everyone’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. We can jump from person to person with ease, interweaving webs of complex narratives together.

Some stories will also take a Third Person Mixed approach, meaning the meat of the story is told from the protagonist’s perspective, but the reader occasionally jumps to someone else’s POV or to a historical time period.

While poetry can use the same pronouns (I/You/He/She/They), it uses POV differently. A poem is always told from the perspective of “the speaker.” The speaker can be the poet themselves—Dylan Thomas is certainly the voice behind his poem, and he is certainly talking to his father. However, the correct approach is to always call the poem’s POV “the speaker,” as a poem can inhibit many different voices at once. Finally, poetry is much easier to apply to yourself when the speaker isn’t anyone in particular.

10. Prose vs. Poetry: Concision

Prose and poetry writers should both write concisely. Concise writing eschews redundancies and makes every word count. However, concision means something different for the two forms.

In prose, concision generally means that not a word is wasted in conveying information. Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Of course, good prose can still be long-winded, as long as this heightens the effect of the work. Take this sentence from Poe’s story:

“It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.”

These sentences are 19 and 27 words long, respectively. They can also be summarized as follows: “Fortunato thought my smile bore good-will, not the desire to immolate him.”

What does Poe’s long-windedness afford him? Despite being easily paraphrased, every word does count in these two sentences, because they are a part of the narrator’s characterization. He is a long-winded schemer, and that affects how the story must be told, since Poe has chosen the first person to make us intimate with the narrator’s internal conflict.

Poetry is a different situation. Because poetry has line breaks, stanzas, and (sometimes) rhyme and meter, its concision takes a different form. In a poem, it’s great if every word contains heavy meaning; it’s even greater when words contain multiplicities and challenge the reader’s ideas. Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

If you stretched a poem into prose, it would read like a terrible short story, because the concision afforded to poetry is different than that of prose. Concise prose focuses more on clarity of meaning, and poetry more on maximizing the richness and impact of every syllable.

Any article like this risks making literature seem binary, as though prose and poetry were totally discrete entities; so in closing, it’s good to note again that writers, especially contemporary writers, often work at the intersection of prose and poetry, resulting in genres like the prose poem , the lyrical essay or the poetry novel . (And we haven’t even touched on scriptwriting, which is a different form of communication altogether.)

There is much to explore outside of poetry and prose; this article simply covers the basics. As you advance on your writing journey, don’t be afraid to experiment with words outside of the traditional “prose vs. poetry” binary. You might be shocked by what you can accomplish!

Explore both Prose and Poetry at Writers.com

Whether you’re experimenting with poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, Writers.com has the classes to help you succeed. Take a look at our upcoming courses —and gain valuable insights from our instructors and writing community .

Sean Glatch

Great summary. I write poetry, prose poems, flash fiction and short stories so I’m using the grab bag of everything you said here! Never taught about line breaks, though. I see some poets going willy nilly all over the page. Maybe there just aren’t any rules where this is concerned…

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• Scriptwriting

What is Prose — Definition and Examples in Literature

• What is a Poem
• What is a Stanza in a Poem
• What is Dissonance
• What is a Sonnet
• What is a Haiku
• What is Prose
• What is an Ode
• What is Repetition in Poetry
• How to Write a Poem
• Types of Poems Guide
• What is an Acrostic Poem
• What is an Epic Poem
• What is Lyric Poetry

P rose can be a rather general literary term that many use to describe all types of writing. However, prose by definition pertains to specific qualities of writing that we will dive into in this article. What is the difference between prose and poetry and what is prose used for? Let’s define this essential literary concept and look at some examples to find out.

What is Prose in Literature?

First, let’s define prose.

Prose is used in various ways for various purposes. It's a concept you need to understand if your goal to master the literary form. Before we dive in, it’s important to understand the prose definition and how it is distinguished from other styles of writing. 

PROSE DEFINITION

What is prose.

In writing, prose is a style used that does not follow a structure of rhyming or meter. Rather, prose follows a grammatical structure using words to compose phrases that are arranged into sentences and paragraphs. It is used to directly communicate concepts, ideas, and stories to a reader. Prose follows an almost naturally verbal flow of writing that is most common among fictional and non-fictional literature such as novels, magazines, and journals.

Four types of prose:

Nonfictional prose, fictional prose, prose poetry, heroic prose, prose meaning , prose vs poetry.

To better understand prose, it’s important to understand what structures it does not follow which would be the structure of poetry. Let’s analyze the difference between prose vs poetry.

Poetry follows a specific rhyme and metric structure. These are often lines and stanzas within a poem. Poetry also utilizes more figurative and often ambiguous language that purposefully leaves room for the readers’ analysis and interpretation.

Finally, poetry plays with space on a page. Intentional line breaks, negative space, and varying line lengths make poetry a more aesthetic form of writing than prose. 

Take, for example, the structure of this [Why] by E.E. Cummings. Observe his use of space and aesthetics as well as metric structure in the poem. 

E.E. Cummings Poem

E.E. Cummings may be one of the more stylish poets when it comes to use of page space. But poetry is difference in structure and practice than prose. 

Prose follows a structure that makes use of sentences, phrases, and paragraphs. This type of writing follows a flow more similar to verbal speech and communication. This makes it the best style of writing to clearly articulate and communicate concepts, events, stories, and ideas as opposed to the figurative style of poetry.

What is Prose in Literature? 

Take, for example, the opening paragraph of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye . We can tell immediately the prose is written in a direct, literal way that also gives voice to our protagonist . 

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

From this example, you can see how the words flow more conversationally than poetry and is more direct with what information or meaning is being communicated. Now that you understand the difference between poetry, let’s look at the four types of prose.

Related Posts

• What is Litotes — Definition and Examples →
• Different Types of Poems and Poem Structures →
• What is Iambic Pentameter? Definition and Examples →

Prose Examples

Types of prose.

While all four types of prose adhere to the definition we established, writers use the writing style for different purposes. These varying purposes can be categorized into four different types.

Nonfictional prose is a body of writing that is based on factual and true events. The information is not created from a writer’s imagination, but rather true accounts of real events. 

This type can be found in newspapers, magazines, journals, biographies, and textbooks. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl , for example, is a work written in nonfictional style.

Unlike nonfictional, fictional prose is partly or wholly created from a writer’s imagination. The events, characters, and story are imagined such as Romeo and Juliet , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , or Brave New World . This type is found as novels, short stories, or novellas .

Heroic prose is a work of writing that is meant to be recited and passed on through oral or written tradition. Legends, mythology, fables, and parables are examples of heroic prose that have been passed on over time in preservation. 

Finally, prose poetry is poetry that is expressed and written in prose form. This can be thought of almost as a hybrid of the two that can sometimes utilize rhythmic measures. This type of poetry often utilizes more figurative language but is usually written in paragraph form. 

An example of prose poetry is “Spring Day” by Amy Lowell. Lowell, an American poet, published this in 1916 and can be read almost as hyper short stories written in a prose poetry style. 

The first section can be read below: 

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.

The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air."

While these four types of prose are varying ways writers choose to use it, let’s look at the functions of them to identify the strengths of the writing style. 

What Does Prose Mean in Writing

Function of prose in literature.

What is prose used for and when? Let’s say you want to tell a story, but you’re unsure if using prose or poetry would best tell your story.

To determine if the correct choice is prose, it’s important to understand the strengths of the writing style. 

Direct communication

Prose, unlike poetry, is often less figurative and ambiguous. This means that a writer can be more direct with the information they are trying to communicate. This can be especially useful in storytelling, both fiction and nonfiction, to efficiently fulfill the points of a plot.

Curate a voice

Because prose is written in the flow of verbal conversation, it’s incredibly effective at curating a specific voice for a character. Dialogue within novels and short stories benefit from this style.

Think about someone you know and how they talk. Odds are, much of their character and personality can be found in their voice.

When creating characters, prose enables a writer to curate the voice of that character. For example, one of the most iconic opening lines in literature informs us of what type of character we will be following.

Albert Camus’ The Stranger utilizes prose in first person to establish the voice of the story’s protagonist. 

“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”

Build rapport with the reader

Lastly, in addition to giving character’s a curated voice, prose builds rapport with the reader. The conversational tone allows readers to become familiar with a type of writing that connects them with the writer. 

A great example of this is Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels . As a nonfiction work written in prose, Thompson’s voice and style in the writing is distinct and demands a relationship with the reader.

Whether it is one of contradiction or agreement, the connection exists through the prose. It is a connection that makes a reader want to meet or talk with the writer once they finish their work. 

Prose is one of the most common writing styles for modern writers. But truly mastering it means understanding both its strengths and its shortcomings. 

Different Types of Poems

Curious about learning about the counterpart to prose? In our next article we dive in different types of poems as well as different types of poem structures. Check out the complete writer’s guide to poetry types up next. 

Up Next: Types of Poems →

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What is Prose?

Prose is ordinary language that follows regular grammatical conventions and does not contain a formal metrical structure. This definition of prose is an example of prose writing, as is most human conversation, textbooks, lectures, novels, short stories, fairy tales, newspaper articles, and essays.

Prose can be either fiction or non-fiction. It can be “poetic,” meaning that it has rhythmic structure and contains figurative language. Sermons, political speeches, and modernist writing are good examples of poetic fiction.

How Do you Identify Prose in Writing?

Distinguishing prose from poetry is usually just a matter of recognizing the basic conventions of prose writing: paragraphs and sentences that have proper grammar and mechanics. Poetry, on the other hand, contains lines and stanzas. And while there may be a cadence or rhythm to prose, it contains neither a regular meter nor a deliberate rhyme scheme.

Only one form of writing falls in a gray area, and that is the so-called “prose poem.” As the name suggests, prose poems contain a formal metrical structure but are written out like prose, in sentence and paragraph form.

Examples of Prose

Prose Example 1.  The Hunger Games,  by Suzanne Collins, is a prose novel.

Prose Example 2. “Cinderella” is a prose fairy tale.

Prose Example 3. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a prose story by Charlotte Gilman Perkins.

Prose Example 4. “The State of the Union Address” is a prose speech delivered early in the year by the sitting president of the United States.

Prose Example 5. “The Declaration of Independence” is a prose document signed by prominent American colonists who wished no longer to be under British rule.

(View all  literary devices )

AP® English Literature

How to get a 9 on prose analysis frq in ap® english literature.

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

When it’s time to take the AP® English Literature and Composition exam, will you be ready? If you’re aiming high, you’ll want to know the best route to a five on the AP® exam. You know the exam is going to be tough, so how do prepare for success? To do well on the AP® English Literature and Composition exam, you’ll need to score high on the essays. For that, you’ll need to write a competent, efficient essay that argues an accurate interpretation of the work under examination in the Free Response Question section.

The AP® English Literature and Composition exam consists of two sections, the first being a 55-question multiple choice portion worth 45% of the total test grade. This section tests your ability to read drama, verse, or prose fiction excerpts and answer questions about them. The second section, worth 55% of the total score, requires essay responses to three questions demonstrating your ability to analyze literary works. You’ll have to discuss a poem analysis, a prose fiction passage analysis, and a concept, issue, or element analysis of a literary work–in two hours.

Before the exam, you should know how to construct a clear, organized essay that defends a focused claim about the work under analysis. You must write a brief introduction that includes the thesis statement, followed by body paragraphs that further the thesis statement with detailed, thorough support, and a short concluding paragraph that reiterates and reinforces the thesis statement without repeating it. Clear organization, specific support, and full explanations or discussions are three critical components of high-scoring essays.

General Tips to Bettering Your Odds at a Nine on the AP® English Literature Prose FRQ

You may know already how to approach the prose analysis, but don’t forget to keep the following in mind coming into the exam:

• Carefully read, review, and underline key to-do’s in the prompt.
• Briefly outline where you’re going to hit each prompt item — in other words, pencil out a specific order.
• Be sure you have a clear thesis that includes the terms mentioned in the instructions, literary devices, tone, and meaning.
• Include the author’s name and title of the prose selection in your thesis statement. Refer to characters by name.
• Use quotes — lots of them — to exemplify the elements and your argument points throughout the essay.
• Fully explain or discuss how your examples support your thesis. A deeper, fuller, and more focused explanation of fewer elements is better than a shallow discussion of more elements (shotgun approach).
• Avoid vague, general statements or merely summarizing the plot instead of clearly focusing on the prose passage itself.
• Use transitions to connect sentences and paragraphs.
• Write in the present tense with generally good grammar.
• Keep your introduction and conclusion short, and don’t repeat your thesis verbatim in your conclusion.

The newly-released 2016 sample AP® English Literature and Composition exam questions, sample responses, and grading rubrics provide a valuable opportunity to analyze how to achieve high scores on each of the three Section II FRQ responses. However, for purposes of this examination, the Prose Analysis FRQ strategies will be the focus. The prose selection for analysis in last year’s exam was Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge , a 19th-century novel. Exam takers had to respond to the following instructions:

• Analyze the complex relationship between the two characters Hardy portrays in the passage.
• Pay attention to tone, word choice, and detail selection.
• Write a well-written essay.

For a clear understanding of the components of a model essay, you’ll find it helpful to analyze and compare all three sample answers provided by the CollegeBoard: the high scoring (A) essay, the mid-range scoring (B) essay, and the low scoring (C) essay. All three provide a lesson for you: to achieve a nine on the prose analysis essay, model the ‘A’ essay’s strengths and avoid the weaknesses of the other two.

Start with a Succinct Introduction that Includes Your Thesis Statement

The first sample essay (A) begins with a packed first sentence: the title of the work, author, named characters, and the subject alluded to in the prompt that will form the foundation of the upcoming argument — the strained relationship between father and daughter. Then, after summarizing the context of the passage — that tense relationship — the student quotes relevant phrases (“lower-class”, “verbal aggressions”) that depict the behavior and character of each.

By packing each sentence efficiently with details (“uncultivated”, “hypocritical”) on the way to the thesis statement, the writer controls the argument by folding in only the relevant details that support the claim at the end of the introduction: though reunited physically, father and daughter remain separated emotionally. The writer wastes no words and quickly directs the reader’s focus to the characters’ words and actions that define their estranged relationship. From the facts cited, the writer’s claim or thesis is logical.

The mid-range B essay introduction also mentions the title, author, and relationship (“strange relationship”) that the instructions direct the writer to examine. However, the student neither names the characters nor identifies what’s “strange” about the relationship. The essay needs more specific details to clarify the complexity in the relationship. Instead, the writer merely hints at that complexity by stating father and daughter “try to become closer to each other’s expectations”. There’s no immediately clear correlation between the “reunification” and the expectations. Finally, the student wastes time and space in the first two sentences with a vague platitude for an “ice breaker” to start the essay. It serves no other function.

The third sample lacks cohesiveness, focus, and a clear thesis statement. The first paragraph introduces the writer’s feelings about the characters and how the elements in the story helped the student analyze, both irrelevant to the call of the instructions. The introduction gives no details of the passage: no name, title, characters, or relationship. The thesis statement is shallow–the daughter was better off before she reunited with her father–as it doesn’t even hint at the complexity of the relationship. The writer merely parrots the prompt instructions about “complex relationship” and “speaker’s tone, word choice, and selection of detail”.

In sum, make introductions brief and compact. Use specific details from the passage that support a logical thesis statement which clearly directs the argument and addresses the instructions’ requirements. Succinct writing helps. Pack your introduction with specific excerpt details, and don’t waste time on sentences that don’t do the work ahead for you. Be sure the thesis statement covers all of the relevant facts of the passage for a cohesive argument.

Use Clear Examples to Support Your Argument Points

The A answer supports the thesis by qualifying the relationship as unhealthy in the first sentence. Then the writer includes the quoted examples that contrast what one would expect characterizes a father-daughter relationship — joyous, blessing, support, praise — against the reality of Henchard and Elizabeth’s relationship: “enigma”, “coldness”, and “open chiding”.

These and other details in the thorough first body paragraph leave nothing for the reader to misunderstand. The essayist proves the paragraph’s main idea with numerous examples. The author controls the first argument point that the relationship is unhealthy by citing excerpted words and actions of the two characters demonstrating the father’s aggressive disapproval and the daughter’s earnestness and shame.

The second and third body paragraphs not only add more proof of the strained relationship in the well-chosen example of the handwriting incident but also explore the underlying motives of the father. In suggesting the father has good intentions despite his outward hostility, the writer proposes that Henchard wants to elevate his long-lost daughter. Henchard’s declaration that handwriting “with bristling characters” defines refinement in a woman both diminishes Elizabeth and reveals his silent hope for her, according to the essayist. This contradiction clearly proves the relationship is “complex”.

The mid-range sample also cites specific details: the words Elizabeth changes (“fay” for “succeed”) for her father. These details are supposed to support the point that class difference causes conflict between the two. However, the writer leaves it to the reader to make the connection between class, expectations, and word choices. The example of the words Elizabeth eliminates from her vocabulary does not illustrate the writer’s point of class conflict. In fact, the class difference as the cause of their difficulties is never explicitly stated. Instead, the writer makes general, unsupported statements about Hardy’s focus on the language difference without saying why Hardy does that.

Like the A essay, sample C also alludes to the handwriting incident but only to note that the description of Henchard turning red is something the reader can imagine. In fact, the writer gives other examples of sensitive and serious tones in the passage but then doesn’t completely explain them. None of the details noted refer to a particular point that supports a focused paragraph. The details don’t connect. They’re merely a string of details.

Discussion is Crucial to Connect Your Quotes and Examples to Your Argument Points

Rather than merely citing phrases and lines without explanation, as the C sample does, the A response spends time thoroughly discussing the meaning of the quoted words, phrases, and sentences used to exemplify their assertions. For example, the third paragraph begins with the point that Henchard’s attempts to elevate Elizabeth in order to better integrate her into the mayor’s “lifestyle” actually do her a disservice. The student then quotes descriptive phrases that characterize Elizabeth as “considerate”, notes her successfully fulfilling her father’s expectations of her as a woman, and concludes that success leads to her failure to get them closer — to un-estrange him.

The A sample writer follows the same pattern throughout the essay: assertion, example, explanation of how the example and assertion cohere, tying both into the thesis statement. Weaving the well-chosen details into the discussion to make reasonable conclusions about what they prove is the formula for an orderly, coherent argument. The writer starts each paragraph with a topic sentence that supports the thesis statement, followed by a sentence that explains and supports the topic sentence in furtherance of the argument.

On the other hand, the B response begins the second paragraph with a general topic sentence: Hardy focuses on the differences between the daughter’s behavior and the father’s expectations. The next sentence follows up with examples of the words Elizabeth changes, leading to the broad conclusion that class difference causes clashes. They give no explanation to connect the behavior — changing her words — with how the diction reveals class differences exists. Nor does the writer explain the motivations of the characters to demonstrate the role of class distinction and expectations. The student forces the reader to make the connections.

Similarly, in the second example of the handwriting incident, the student sets out to prove Elizabeth’s independence and conformity conflict. However, the writer spends too much time re-telling the writing episode — who said what — only to vaguely conclude that 19th-century gender roles dictated the dominant and submissive roles of father and daughter, resulting in the loss of Elizabeth’s independence. The writer doesn’t make those connections between gender roles, dominance, handwriting, and lost freedom. The cause and effect of the handwriting humiliation to the loss of independence are never made.

Write a Brief Conclusion

While it’s more important to provide a substantive, organized, and clear argument throughout the body paragraphs than it is to conclude, a conclusion provides a satisfying rounding out of the essay and last opportunity to hammer home the content of the preceding paragraphs. If you run out of time for a conclusion because of the thorough preceding paragraphs, that is not as fatal to your score as not concluding or not concluding as robustly as the A essay sample.

The A response not only provides another example of the father-daughter inverse relationship — the more he helps her fit in, the more estranged they become — but also ends where the writer began: though they’re physically reunited, they’re still emotionally separated. Without repeating it verbatim, the student returns to the thesis statement at the end. This return and recap reinforce the focus and control of the argument when all of the preceding paragraphs successfully proved the thesis statement.

The B response nicely ties up the points necessary to satisfy the prompt had the writer made them clearly. The parting remarks about the inverse relationship building up and breaking down to characterize the complex relationship between father and daughter are intriguing but not well-supported by all that came before them.

Write in Complete Sentences with Proper Punctuation and Compositional Skills

Though pressed for time, it’s important to write an essay with crisp, correctly punctuated sentences and properly spelled words. Strong compositional skills create a favorable impression to the reader, like using appropriate transitions or signals (however, therefore) to tie sentences and paragraphs together, and making the relationships between sentences clear (“also” — adding information, “however” — contrasting an idea in the preceding sentence).

Starting each paragraph with a clear, focused topic sentence that previews the main idea or focus of the paragraph helps you the writer and the reader keep track of each part of your argument. Each section furthers your points on the way to convincing your reader of your argument. If one point is unclear, unfocused, or grammatically unintelligible, like a house of cards, the entire argument crumbles. Excellent compositional skills help you lay it all out neatly, clearly, and fully.

For example, the A response begins the essay with “In this passage from Thomas Hardy”. The second sentence follows with “Throughout the passage” to tie the two sentences together. There’s no question that the two thoughts link by the transitional phrases that repeat and reinforce one another as well as direct the reader’s attention. The B response, however, uses transitions less frequently, confuses the names of the characters, and switches verb tenses in the essay. It’s harder to follow.

So by the time the conclusion takes the reader home, the high-scoring writer has done all of the following:

• followed the prompt
• followed the propounded thesis statement and returned to it in the end
• provided a full discussion with examples
• included quotes proving each assertion
• used clear, grammatically correct sentences
• wrote paragraphs ordered by a thesis statement
• created topic sentences for each paragraph
• ensured each topic sentence furthered the ideas presented in the thesis statement

Have a Plan and Follow it

To get a nine on the prose analysis FRQ essay in the AP® Literature and Composition exam, you should practice timed essays. Write as many practice essays as you can. Follow the same procedure each time. After reading the prompt, map out your thesis statement, paragraph topic sentences, and supporting details and quotes in the order of their presentation. Then follow your plan faithfully.

Be sure to leave time for a brief review to catch mechanical errors, missing words, or clarifications of an unclear thought. With time, an organized approach, and plenty of practice, earning a nine on the poetry analysis is manageable. Be sure to ask your teacher or consult other resources, like albert.io’s Prose Analysis practice essays, for questions and more practice opportunities.

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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nonfictional prose , any literary work that is based mainly on fact, even though it may contain fictional elements. Examples are the essay and biography.

Defining nonfictional prose literature is an immensely challenging task. This type of literature differs from bald statements of fact, such as those recorded in an old chronicle or inserted in a business letter or in an impersonal message of mere information. As used in a broad sense, the term nonfictional prose literature here designates writing intended to instruct (but does not include highly scientific and erudite writings in which no aesthetic concern is evinced), to persuade, to convert, or to convey experience or reality through “factual” or spiritual revelation. Separate articles cover biography and literary criticism .

Nonfictional prose genres cover an almost infinite variety of themes, and they assume many shapes. In quantitative terms, if such could ever be valid in such nonmeasurable matters, they probably include more than half of all that has been written in countries having a literature of their own. Nonfictional prose genres have flourished in nearly all countries with advanced literatures. The genres include political and polemical writings, biographical and autobiographical literature, religious writings, and philosophical, and moral or religious writings.

After the Renaissance, from the 16th century onward in Europe, a personal manner of writing grew in importance. The author strove for more or less disguised self-revelation and introspective analysis, often in the form of letters, private diaries, and confessions. Also of increasing importance were aphorisms after the style of the ancient Roman philosophers Seneca and Epictetus, imaginary dialogues , and historical narratives, and later, journalistic articles and extremely diverse essays. From the 19th century, writers in Romance and Slavic languages especially, and to a far lesser extent British and American writers, developed the attitude that a literature is most truly modern when it acquires a marked degree of self-awareness and obstinately reflects on its purpose and technique. Such writers were not content with imaginative creation alone: they also explained their work and defined their method in prefaces, reflections, essays, self-portraits, and critical articles. The 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire asserted that no great poet could ever quite resist the temptation to become also a critic : a critic of others and of himself. Indeed, most modern writers, in lands other than the United States , whether they be poets, novelists, or dramatists, have composed more nonfictional prose than poetry, fiction , or drama. In the instances of such monumental figures of 20th-century literature as the poets Ezra Pound , T.S. Eliot , and William Butler Yeats , or the novelists Thomas Mann and André Gide , that part of their output may well be considered by posterity to be equal in importance to their more imaginative writing.

It is virtually impossible to attempt a unitary characterization of nonfictional prose. The concern that any definition is a limitation, and perhaps an exclusion of the essential, is nowhere more apposite than to this inordinately vast and variegated literature. Ever since the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers devised literary genres , some critics have found it convenient to arrange literary production into kinds or to refer it to modes.

Obviously, a realm as boundless and diverse as nonfictional prose literature cannot be characterized as having any unity of intent, of technique, or of style. It can be defined, very loosely, only by what it is not. Many exceptions, in such a mass of writings, can always be brought up to contradict any rule or generalization. No prescriptive treatment is acceptable for the writing of essays, of aphorisms, of literary journalism , of polemical controversy, of travel literature, of memoirs and intimate diaries. No norms are recognized to determine whether a dialogue , a confession, a piece of religious or of scientific writing, is excellent, mediocre , or outright bad, and each author has to be relished, and appraised, chiefly in his own right. “The only technique,” the English critic F.R. Leavis wrote in 1957, “is that which compels words to express an intensively personal way of feeling.” Intensity is probably useful as a standard; yet it is a variable, and often elusive , quality, possessed by polemicists and by ardent essayists to a greater extent than by others who are equally great. “Loving, and taking the liberties of a lover” was Virginia Woolf ’s characterization of the 19th-century critic William Hazlitt ’s style: it instilled passion into his critical essays. But other equally significant English essayists of the same century, such as Charles Lamb or Walter Pater , or the French critic Hippolyte Taine , under an impassive mask, loved too, but differently. Still other nonfictional writers have been detached, seemingly aloof, or, like the 17th-century French epigrammatist La Rochefoucauld, sarcastic. Their intensity is of another sort.

Prose that is nonfictional is generally supposed to cling to reality more closely than that which invents stories, or frames imaginary plots. Calling it “realistic,” however, would be a gross distortion. Since nonfictional prose does not stress inventiveness of themes and of characters independent of the author’s self, it appears in the eyes of some moderns to be inferior to works of imagination. In the middle of the 20th century an immensely high evaluation was placed on the imagination, and the adjective “imaginative” became a grossly abused cliché. Many modern novels and plays, however, were woefully deficient in imaginative force, and the word may have been bandied about so much out of a desire for what was least possessed. Many readers are engrossed by travel books, by descriptions of exotic animal life, by essays on the psychology of other nations, by Rilke’s notebooks or by Samuel Pepys’s diary far more than by poetry or by novels that fail to impose any suspension of disbelief. There is much truth in Oscar Wilde ’s remark that “the highest criticism is more creative than creation and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not.” A good deal of imagination has gone not only into criticism but also into the writing of history , of essays, of travel books, and even of the biographies or the confessions that purport to be true to life as it really happened, as it was really experienced.

The imagination at work in nonfictional prose, however, would hardly deserve the august name of “primary imagination” reserved by the 19th-century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to creators who come close to possessing semidivine powers. Rather, imagination is displayed in nonfictional prose in the fanciful invention of decorative details, in digressions practiced as an art and assuming a character of pleasant nonchalance, in establishing a familiar contact with the reader through wit and humour. The variety of themes that may be touched upon in that prose is almost infinite. The treatment of issues may be ponderously didactic and still belong within the literary domain. For centuries, in many nations, in Asiatic languages, in medieval Latin, in the writings of the humanists of the Renaissance, and in those of the Enlightenment, a considerable part of literature has been didactic . The concept of art for art’s sake is a late and rather artificial development in the history of culture , and it did not reign supreme even in the few countries in which it was expounded in the 19th century. The ease with which digressions may be inserted in that type of prose affords nonfictional literature a freedom denied to writing falling within other genres. The drawback of such a nondescript literature lies in judging it against any standard of perfection, since perfection implies some conformity with implicit rules and the presence, however vague, of standards such as have been formulated for comedy, tragedy, the ode, the short story and even (in this case, more honoured in the breach than the observance) the novel . The compensating grace is that in much nonfictional literature that repudiates or ignores structure the reader is often delighted with an air of ease and of nonchalance and with that rarest of all virtues in the art of writing: naturalness.

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The Twists and Turns of Language

Natasha Trethewey’s life in poetry and prose

Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose

A work of biography, an essay on literature and memory and the South, a prose poem full of lyrical dexterity, Trethewey’s latest book is like all of her others: a master study of the self.

If, as Zora Neale Hurston once argued, racial prejudice is a loss not for her but for those who embrace it, then one has to wonder how much the United States has forfeited on account of its perennial anti-Blackness. “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry,” Hurston wrote. “It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is sprinkled with wry aphorisms like this that slice through the layers of early-20th-century American racism. Riddled with anecdotes and Southern charm, it is also not only about Hurston celebrating her Blackness but turning the mirror back onto white Americans, who, she insists, miss a lot about themselves, too.

Books in review

The house of being.

The art of showing Americans what they have missed and who they are—in particular by offering acute portraits of the South—sits at the center of Natasha Trethewey’s poetry and prose. Her accolades alone testify to her acumen. She is a griot, a former US poet laureate, and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But what has made her so vital to American literature is that she has cast back the image of a fragmented America to her readers not so much to affirm it as to offer a lament, much as Hurston did, for what has been lost—especially in the South.

This sense of hope and loss is fully displayed in her new book, The House of Being . Weaving together memoir and history, poetry and prose, intimate details from her life and more general observations about the South, the book is a testament to Trethewey’s command of language and her willingness to confront those difficult periods in her life that transformed her. A monologue, a work of biography, an essay on literature and memory, a prose poem full of lyrical dexterity, and a reflection on who she is in a society that has actively tried to partition people based on race, The House of Being is ultimately a study of maturation, of becoming an adult, and of how the early experiences of life can shape you for years to come.

Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, Trethewey begins her story at the beginning—with her parents’ marriage. Her Black mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was from Gulfport; her white father, Eric Trethewey, was from Canada. In 1967, an interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, brought a Supreme Court case against Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, hoping that their marital union could be recognized—and to the surprise of many Americans, they won. But Turnbough and Trethewey had married two years earlier, and the poem “Miscegenation,” which their daughter republishes in The House of Being , captures what was at stake:

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi; they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

Trethewey’s subsequent birth, while not illegal in its own right, also posed a provocation to the Southern social order: For if her parents’ marriage was deemed illegitimate in the eyes of the State of Mississippi, so was young Natasha. White people in Mississippi would stare at her parents with detestation, and some would call her “mongrel” and “half-breed.” To overcome their animosity, young Trethewey turned to literature: “I learned then from the experience of Odysseus… that it would take cleverness to outpace whatever obstacles stood before me.” The twists and turns of language captivated her. The sinewy words of her mother and grandmother speaking African American vernacular sparked an unending interest in how humans express themselves. At the same time, she thought she could see how society’s racial hierarchies mapped onto the languages spoken around her.

Trethewey’s first home was an intergenerational amalgamation that included her parents and grandmother. Slightly outside Gulfport’s city limits, the family house was in a community once known as Griswold, land settled by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. It was in this vicinity that Trethewey and her parents were exposed to the fungibility of a semi-rural landscape: red-wing blackbirds soaring through the sky, cows grazing near her backyard, or even the “cracked shell on an old turtle.”

After her parents divorced, Natasha and her mother moved to Atlanta so that her mother could begin graduate school. While her memories of her father during these years were idyllic, those of her stepfather were different. He physically abused her mother, which Natasha only found out about years later—but even then, she sensed something was wrong, and in the years to come she would be haunted by it. As she writes in her poem “What Is Evidence,”

Not the fleeting bruises she’d cover with make-up, a dark patch as if imprint of a scope she’d pressed her eye too close to, looking for a way out

The worst, however, was still to come: In 1985, her stepfather murdered her mother. These moments of sorrow reappear and add to her unrelenting desire to write about her past.

From these early experiences in a South slowly shedding its Jim Crow past, the young Trethewey became an adult—and a writer. She not only understood “the sanctity of books” but felt at home through the concealments of metaphor and the ambiguities of language. In other words, she also became a poet.

Trethewey studied English literature at the University of Georgia and earned an MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While her educational course might sound conventional for a contemporary writer, as one probes deeper into her story in The House of Being , one begins to see how unusual her literary education was. Along with her early exposure to her mother and grandmother’s way of speaking, she also had a poet in the family: her father. As a child, Trethewey recalls, her father would read stories to her that “must have taken root in my psyche, establishing early on the pattern to which my own journey would conform.”

The experiences of her mother in the South also contributed to Trethewey’s interest in writing and her skills as a poet. Her mother, she recalls in The House of Being , was always “showing me how to signify, how to use received forms to challenge the dominant cultural narrative of our native geography.”

Flannery O’Connor once wrote: “Where you came from is gone. Where you thought you were going to never was there. And where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.” For Trethewey, the dislocation of her early years led her to find a home in the written word. Poetry became a way to create regions for herself; it was also a way to examine the cyclical anguish, the loss, the trauma, and the hopes of living in a region and a country more generally that was legally and then structurally defined by the experience of race.

Over the years, Trethewey became a memoirist and poet determined to render meaning out of these facts of her life. In her collection Thrall , she probed the afterlife of captivity. In Native Guard , she mourned her mother’s death and considered the Southern world they shared. Lines in her poetry tend to jostle between life and history, relationships and regions, the experience of race and the making of it. The death of her mother would in particular come to haunt her, and she turned to prose to make sense of that, as well. In Memorial Drive , her 2020 memoir, she told the story of her mother’s life and death. A study of her relationship with her mother, the book was also a study of her mother’s relationships, of the moments of domestic bliss and the harrowing ones of domestic violence—about race-making in America and how Black women become vulnerable to abuse. “If I was with my father, I measured the polite responses from white people, the way they addressed him as ‘Sir’ or ‘Mister.’ Whereas my mother would be called ‘Gal,’ never ‘Miss’ or ‘Ma’am,’ as I had been taught was proper.” The polarizing experiences of her parents were part of an accruement of observations about the linguistic practice of racial identity—how people are read or made.

In The House of Being , Trethewey revisits many of these early memories, but from a different angle: She is primarily interested in telling the story of her native region, the South. “The ‘Solid South,’” she writes, “was a society based on the myths of innate racial difference, a hierarchy based on notions of supremacy, the language used to articulate that thinking was rooted in the unique experience of white southerners.” As with her mother’s story, so, too, with the story of the South: It has haunted her ever since she was a young person pushing against the Confederate realities and fictions that persisted in the region—whether through Jim Crow laws or groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy or the monuments memorializing the glory of Southern Civil War generals.

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In The House of Being , Trethewey seeks to break through these myths and tell a different story about the South. “I am reminded again of the moment in Black Boy when Richard Wright declares he wants to be a writer,” she writes, “and what it means to have someone with a kind of dominion over you try to diminish you by telling you what you cannot do or be.” Like Wright, and much like Hurston before him, Trethewey wants to show what has been lost by telling only one story about the South, and what might be gained by telling another.

Trethewey does this in several bold and original ways. Literalizing her interest in her home region, she considers how the design of Southern homes was influenced by African and Afro-Caribbean architecture. Her grandmother’s shotgun house conveys a story not just about the period it was made in, but also a much longer history. “The long-house format,” she notes, “is a legacy of West African architecture, brought to America by both free and enslaved peoples who arrived in New Orleans from Haiti, after the Revolution in 1804.”

Trethewey also describes the darker side of the American South during the height of the civil rights movement. One of her first memories of “domestic terrorism” occurred at a young age, well before she congealed every incident that happened during the 1960s. After the African American church adjacent to her grandmother’s house led a voter registration drive in Gulfport, an unknown person (most likely white) burned a cross on the plot of land that bordered the church and her grandmother’s house. This racially coded act of hatred was frightening and had a clear message in terms of the violence it conveyed, but it was also ambiguous: It left Trethewey retroactively wondering whether it was motivated by the voter drive or by her interracial household. Such ghosts stalk The House of Being , rambling through its corridors and stairways. Memories, Trethewey reminds us, raise questions that do not always have answers. The South is a place that is simultaneously welcoming and inimical, a home to millions and yet also a hostile land.

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At times, I wondered if The House of Being needed a more cohesive narrative arc—a clear beginning, middle, and end. The text is often elliptical, circling back on memories and skipping ahead to new and unfamiliar territory. Often it invokes previous books and poems that Trethewey has written, as well as pasts that some of us may need to be more familiar with. This can be invigorating but also frustrating. Yet for Trethewey, the labyrinthine nature of the book is intended to match form with content: Her desire is not to offer a clean and linear narrative. Instead, she wants to tell a story about the South that is full of messiness and confusion. “Writing,” Trethewey notes near the end of the book, “is a way of creating order out of chaos, of taking charge of one’s own story, being the sovereign of the self by pushing back against received knowledge and guarding the sanctity of the dwelling place of the imagination.”

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