How to Structure Your Commentary

How to Structure Your Commentary

 

A commentary, written or oral, is an analysis of a poem or prose passage.  You, as the analyst, take things apart to examine the individual pieces that make up the whole.

 

A commentary will attempt to explain the significance of a portion of a literary work, BY PROVING SOME SORT OF POINT.  The point you are trying to make may have to do with characterization, plot, theme, style or other literary concerns.

 

Before writing your commentary, you must focus in on what you wish to convey to the examiner about the literary work.  Once you have a focus, you must attempt to make some kind of point about the literary work in your commentary.

 

The point you are trying to make should be the main idea of your commentary.  This is called a THESIS STATEMENT.  Your thesis statement is your opinion; remember, it is not a fact.  The thesis is what you will spend the rest of your commentary trying to prove.  Your job as analyst is to convince the examiner that your opinion is correct; you must prove that your thesis statement is true based ON EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT! 

 

YOUR THESIS STATEMENT (main idea, focus, opinion) MUST BE CLEARLY STATED IN YOUR INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH.  The thesis should be fairly broad.  Stay away from narrow statements of facts that can be easily proven or disproven.  Give yourself a challenge—and the examiner will be engaged.  Usually (but not always), the thesis statement is the sentence that ends your introduction.

 

In the paragraphs which follow the introduction, you must provide evidence (examples) to prove your point.  You must be very specific about how the evidence you are offering supports your opinion.  You cannot prove your thesis (which is an opinion) by offering other opinions.  You must draw your evidence from the text.  You should quote passages from the text to prove your point; just remember that you must explain their significance, explain how they relate to your thesis. When you incorporate evidence into your commentary, you must be sure to explain it adequately.  You must always bring it back to your thesis statement.  You must continually explain HOW and WHY it means what you say it means.

 

Everything in the MAIN BODY of the commentary must relate to the main point you are trying to make—YOUR THESIS.  If you write/say something that has little to do with your thesis, you have two options: expand and modify your thesis to accommodate that information, or do not include it and find other evidence that does support your thesis.

 

Finally, you must write/say a CONCLUSION (a final paragraph), which ties everything together.  The conclusion is essentially a mirror of your introduction.  Just as your introduction led the examiner in to the thesis, the conclusion leads out from it.  Often, the arguments presented in the body are summarized and the thesis is restated as proved.  And somehow you should make your paper sound complete.  It is a lot like the closing statement lawyers make at the end of a trial—a summary of all the evidence presented and a restatement that all the evidence points to the logical conclusion that what they said at the beginning (their thesis that the defendant was either guilty or innocent) is true.  Try leaving the examiner with something additional to think about (but still something that is related to the thesis of the commentary.)

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INTRODUCTION:  (1 PARAGRAPH)—tell the examiner what your paper is about, NOT necessarily in this order.  You need to include the following:

 

§  A way to draw the examiner in

§  The author

§  Title (underlined or italicized, if written)

§  General statement about the literary work (sometimes)

§  Necessary background information about the story (very little!!)

§  Thesis statement (your opinion, main idea, or focus)—this may be controversial—should be fairly broad—has a point to prove

 

 

MAIN BODY:  these paragraphs should answer the question, “why?”  Not necessarily in this order, you need to include the following:

 

§  Specific examples to prove your point

§  Quotations—passages—descriptions—comparisons

§  Explanation of the significance of your examples in terms of your thesis statement (in other words, analyze your examples.  How do they fit in with your main point?

§  Explanation of how your analysis relates to your thesis statement

 

CONCLUSION:  (1 paragraph)—Tell the examiner what you told him/her and leave him/her with something to think about.  Not necessarily in this order, you need to include the following:

 

§  Your thesis, restated to emphasize that you have proven your point

§  A summary of your main points

§  A way to leave the examiner thinking about the marvelous ideas in your commentary

 

ANOTHER PRAGMATIC METHOD TO STRUCTURE YOUR COMMENTARY

 

1.     Create your thesis statement.

2.     Make an outline of how you want to present your commentary.

3.     Address the literary devices.  HOW does the writer create the effect in the passage?

4.     Do color-coding with highlighters.

5.     Make a decision (your point, opinion, focus) and support it.

6.     Highlight 2 different aspects/slants at work in the passage.

7.     Next, articulate the author’s purpose.  (Authors have 3 purposes.)

§  Characterization—to draw characters

§  To establish the setting

§  To elucidate the theme

8.     Next, write the thesis statement.

9.     The Thesis Statement is composed of 3 things: 

§  Define the author’s purpose

§  Identify the 2 slants/aspects in the passage

§  State the purpose and slants/aspects precisely and clearly

10.                       Once you have a clear thesis:

§  Make a topical outline of paragraph development

§  Choose 10 topics of paragraph development

§  Use 6 topics of paragraph development which are applicable to your passage

§  You need 6-8 body paragraphs which are well-developed to both slants/aspects.

§  You need to have at least 2 paragraphs on two main characters where you articulate what each of the 2 characters’ attitudes is.

1.     write maybe two sentences in the introduction and then write your thesis statement

2.     use diction to support characterization

3.     tell what characterization is being revealed to us—this must be rooted in the text!

4.     give tonal quality of dialogue (what’s the tone—use adjective(s) to describe the tone)

5.     is there any juxtaposed positioning of phrasing?

6.     save the last body paragraph for the paragraph on theme (which is the author’s purpose).  Deal with all ramifications of the theme in this paragraph.

§  In the first paragraph, start where the prompt asks you to start.  Use transitional phrases to introduce each of the items you discuss in the succeeding paragraphs.