Unsure how to structure your analysis for the AP English Literature exam? What if you get a poem or excerpt you've never seen before? If you can answer these four questions, you'll blow away the graders.
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Here's one more practical example from Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper":
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity-but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
1. What? A woman is staying in a large estate for the summer with her husband. She thinks something might be strange about the manor. The husband laughs at the wife.
2. Why? "Ancestral halls" sets us up for a gothic, strange, or ghostly story set in the past. Phrases like that create a slightly uneasy tone. The woman hopes the manor is haunted, which suggests she enjoys fantasy/creepy things. Perhaps she lets fantasy and reality blend in her mind. She "proudly declares" there's something strange about the place, right after she imagines it might be haunted. "One expects that in marriage" suggests her relationship with her husband is not equal. He thinks less of her.
3. How do you know? All of the points I made above can be corroborated by other evidence further into the short story.
4. So what? This is a story about how women are not taken seriously, and how that is detrimental to their mental health. The story is the creepy, entertaining diary of a woman going mad (blending reality and fantasy) to underline the point that women aren't getting the care they need because men don't take them seriously (laugh at them.)
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