Literary Analysis of Two Different Texts

The following sample essay is a literary analysis of two different texts. To read the introduction, body, and conclusion of the essay, scroll down.

The end of semester is just days away. I should be cramming as usual, but my mind just won’t anchor. It drifts from scene to scene unsatisfied at every moment, a restless buoy in a swelling sea. I am a model student – what is the difference this time? The difference this time is that it is the last time.

Once more through the examination mill and then out I pop – an educated graduate. I can’t help but think that I feel more like an Uncle Toby’s Raspberry Roll-Up coming out flat at the other end.The last few years have flown by in a spicy, rebellious fog of cigarette smoke and 5dollar cocktails. I’m not ready for the corporate smoke den. What have really accomplished? A degree. A degree of waste, unhappiness and boredom.

I wanted to study what I loved; instead, I chose what would guarantee my employment. I chose numbers over words, and words over meaning. Now I sit alone with my mistake. Now I have to forge hope out of my beaten-down heart. I haven’t been feeding my soul.

I’ve been poisoning it with convention. Four years of conscientiousness and responsibility.Four years of crowded classes, annoying assignments and exhausting exams. Four years of stellar marks which fail to elicit any feeling of joy. Four years listening to my voice getting smaller and smaller inside of me.

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This is not you this is not you this is not you this is not you … Four years has felt a lot like treading water. It hasn’t taken me anywhere. Except maybe back to myself. Old passions and desires have been brewing just under the surface – boiling like vegetables in a pressure cooker. Getting so hot sometimes, I thought my skin would break.But every time I thought it would, someone released the valve just enough to stop me from exploding. I could give in – admit a waste of time – but was it? If I am able to learn in anew short years what others take a lifetime to discover – that you must follow your desire – then perhaps there was no waste – only a shortcut. I could choose so many paths to follow now, but which is the right one?

A major in Pure Maths, yet I can barely get a grip on the infinite series of possibilities extending out in front of me. A moment ago I was locked in a cell with my mistake and now I see that this prison is self imposed.I am the warden. I hold all the keys. It is an odd feeling, when you realise how many choices you have and that for the most part there will be no dire consequences to face, the extent of that freedom is dumbfounding. Even for my small life, which is so big to me, to think and wade in the luscious possibilities is intoxicating. At the moment, Iam experiencing life as an outsider. I feel like I am holding my breath, swimming underwater and looking around at the landscape. I see myself on the land above, moving through life with effort. I want to rejoin myself and move as effortlessly as I do down here.I know I will have to surface soon. And when I come up for air, and back to the noise, decisions will have to be made. A direction followed. I am ready to stop treading water. I want to swim.

SUMMARY

The writer is a UNI student just about to finish completing her pure maths degree that she has been doing for four years now and she has had enough and is over it. She didn’t study what she loved but instead study what would get her a job the easiest. For the four years she has been studding all she has been hearing herself say it that it isn’t her, she doesn’t belong in this degree.The degree is a degree of wast unhappiness and boredom. But then she realises to herself that she could give in and asks herself if it was really a waste of time, or a lesson that she needed to learn the same lesson that take some people a life time to learn but only took her a few short years, to follow your desires.

CONCEPT OF BELONGING

In the text ‘treading water’ the writer doesn’t belong, she is over school/uni and doesn’t like the subject that she has chosen “I wanted to study what I loved; instead, I chose what would guarantee my employment. And for the four years she has spent doing this degree she has been telling herself “This is not you this is not you this is not you this is not you …” The degree she is doing doesn’t have anything to do with her character and she is not enjoying it at all, and for four years she has been listening to her voice getting smaller and smaller inside of her expressing that this isn’t her, which displays that she isn’t belonging. Now she is left with a beaten down heart. “Now I sit alone with my mistake. ” Now I have to forge hope out of my beaten-down heart. now she has finished the degree she is upset and she has to forge her hope it’s not just going to come from what she has done she has to start some things again. “A degree. A degree of waste, unhappiness and boredom. ” This quote emphasis the point of not caring about the degree she has just gotten and that it was just a degree of waste, unhappiness and boredom. She isn’t going to be able to use this degree joyfully. She also emphasises it through a triple repetition of a word or phrase or sentence style 3 times for effect, waste, unhappiness and boredom.

ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE FEATURES AND STRUCTURES SIMILE

“Once more through the examination mill and then out I pop – an educated graduate. I can’t help but think that I feel more like an Uncle Toby’s Raspberry Roll-Up coming out flat at the other end. ” Creating an image of the choice of food used in this simile which is common food in a playground/school (recess food) so this image is linking to a school image too. The extended metaphor “Old passions and desires have been brewing just under the surface – boiling like vegetables in a pressure cooker.Getting so hot sometimes, I thought my skin would break. But every time I thought it would, someone released the valve just enough to stop me from exploding. ” Emphasis how much she doesn’t belong, referencing to the point that her old passions have still been there while she is doing her degree. She uses a simile to create an image of there being so much pressure on her but she actually wants to just do what she wants to do. “Four years of conscientiousness and responsibility. Four years of crowded classes, annoying assignments and exhausting exams.Four years of stellar marks which fail to elicit any feeling of joy. Four years listening to my voice getting smaller and smaller inside of me. ” This is an exaggeration of the four years she has spent in uni and how much she hates/hated it. She didn’t belong in this course of maths and spent all this time doing it but hating it at the same time because she didn’t want to be there. “Four years” is alliteration to strengthen and reinforce the image of how long she spent doing what she didn’t want to do. stellar” is a strong adjective used to convey that she really doesn’t dig the course she is doing and feels no joy in her from it.

CONNECTIONS TO THE SET TEXT (PETER SKRZYNECKI)

The comparison of how long they have been in school (St Patricks College) and UNI (Treading Water) The repetition of “four years” in treading water. “Four years of conscientiousness and responsibility. Four years of crowded classes, annoying assignments and exhausting exams. Four years of stellar marks which fail to elicit any feeling of joy.Four years listening to my voice getting smaller and smaller inside of me. ” The repetition of “eight years” in St Patricks College. This repetition in both of the texts is emphasising how long they have been in school/UNI. In the poem ‘St Patricks College’ Skrzynecki explains that he has been doing the same thing for “eight years” and still nothing is different, he got nothing from being in school and he didn’t enjoy it. Also in the reflection ‘Treading Water’ she emphasises that she has spent “four years” in UNI and hasn’t got any joy, hope or happiness.She isn’t enjoying it and is so excited for the last day but didn’t actually achieve anything. The simile “like a foreign tourist” this simile describes that he feels like a tourist he doesn’t belong at St Patricks College. The cultural barrier stops him from belonging like all the other Australia’s he knows this place because this is where he has grown up but he still doesn’t belong. In ‘Treading Water’ she too does not belong as she doesn’t belong in the degree she is doing, she knows it but she “wanted to study what I loved” and because she didn’t study what she loved “I sit alone with my mistake”.She made a mistake by picking the wrong degree to do because now she doesn’t belong in it.

TEXT 2

Esther chapter 3 verses 8- 15 Then Haman said to King Xerxes, “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them. 9 If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will give ten thousand talents[b] of silver to the king’s administrators for the royal treasury. 10 So the king took his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. 11 “Keep the money,” the king said to Haman, “and do with the people as you please. ” 12 Then on the thirteenth day of the first month the royal secretaries were summoned. They wrote out in the script of each province and in the language of each people all Haman’s orders to the king’s satraps, the governors of the various provinces and the nobles of the various peoples. These were written in the name of King Xerxes himself and sealed with his own ring. 3 Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. 14 A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so they would be ready for that day. 15 The couriers went out, spurred on by the king’s command, and the edict was issued in the citadel of Susa.The king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was bewildered. Esther chapter 4 When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly. 2 But he went only as far as the king’s gate, because no one clothed in sackcloth was allowed to enter it. 3 In every province to which the edict and order of the king came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping and wailing. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes. When Esther’s eunuchs and female attendants came and told her about Mordecai, she was in great distress. She sent clothes for him to put on instead of his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5 Then Esther summoned Hathak, one of the king’s eunuchs assigned to attend her, and ordered him to find out what was troubling Mordecai and why. 6 So Hathak went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate. 7 Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him, including the exact amount of money Haman had promised to pay into the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict for their annihilation, which had been published in Susa, to show to Esther and explain it to her, and he told him to instruct her to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people. 9 Hathak went back and reported to Esther what Mordecai had said. 10 Then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, 11 “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that they be put to death unless the king extends the gold scepter to them nd spares their lives. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king. ” 12 When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? ” 15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me.Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. ” 17 So Mordecai went away and carried out all of Esther’s instructions.

SUMMARY

While at a banquet, King Xerxes summons his wife at the time (Queen Vashti) to parade around and show her beauty to make the Kings advisers jealous and lustful of her. After she refuses King Xerxes banishes her and holds a beauty pageant for all virgins to replace her.He then makes Esther queen without knowing she is a Jew. Mordecai Queen Esther’s cousin, who raised her like a father, finds out that that Haman on behalf of King Xerxes is going to annihilate the Jews. The Jews had all torn their clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes as a way of mourning.

CONCEPT OF BELONGING

She doesn’t belong with King Xerxes as she is lying to him, telling him she is not a Jew when she is, and she continues to lie until she finds out that he is planning to annihilate all the Jews. “6 So Hathak went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate. Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him, including the exact amount of money Haman had promised to pay into the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. 8 He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict for their annihilation, which had been published in Susa, to show to Esther and explain it to her, and he told him to instruct her to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people. ” Esther has now been asked by Mordecai to tell the king that she is a Jew and “to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people” “15 Then Esther sent this reply o Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. ”” She belongs with the Jewish group as she is following a normal Jewish ritual in asking them to fast and pray, until she goes before the king to beg for her people.

ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE FEATURES AND STRUCTURES

The repetition in these two verses, of destruction and annihilation is emphasising how much Haman “the enemy of the Jews. ” Hates and wants the Jews dead and there is nothing they can do about it, and also emphasising how much they hate the Jews.
• “The destruction of the Jews. 8 He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict for their annihilation”
• “Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews” But the Jews know that the Queen Esther is a Jew and that she may be able to stop King Xerxes from having all the Jews killed. Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?. ” The rhetorical question? Is expressing why she has come to this royal position at a time like this and that its God’s plan for her life, to stop them killing of the Jews,