Get Behind Your Quote
Getting Behind Your Quotation
Analysis Strategy
Purpose:
▪ to improve your use of evidence from a text
▪ to improve your focus on the language and meaning of the quotes you use
▪ to avoid storytelling (just giving the plot of the story and not analysis)
▪ to add depth and strength to a paragraph
Steps:
▪ Prepare your reader for a quote by signaling the context or reason for the quote: this is called the pre-text or introductory statement.
▪ Quotation
▪ Comment on the significance, language used, implications of the quote (tying it to your thesis)
▪ This may lead you into your next sentence.
Suggestions:
When writing your introduction to the quotation, be careful not to have pre-text and quotation performing the same function.
Example:
Ultimately, Proctor wants to protect his name, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! . . . How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” (143)
(weak because the quotation and the pre-text are the same thing)
Better:
Miller shows the anguish in Proctor’s final decision before the whole court. Proctor follows his conscience in his cry, the cry of his “whole soul” to Danforth: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! . . . How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” (143)
(strong because it focuses on what the author is doing, puts the quotation in context, and gives an attribute to John Proctor’s character, conscience)
Even better:
Now really strengthen it by commenting on the quotation itself:
Miller shows the anguish in Proctor’s final decision before the whole court. Proctor follows his conscience in his cry, the cry of his “whole soul” to Danforth: “How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” (143) In this case, Proctor’s name stands for his identity and his only chance for goodness. If he signs away his name, he has not only sold out himself, but also his friends, and he has lost the chance to redeem himself. Proctor chooses death and redemption. Through Proctor, Miller expresses the human need to be good and pure, a need even more urgent than life.
Reminder:
All of the evidence you use, whether it’s a direct quote or a paraphrased example should have this kind of intro/pre-text and commentary
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