Analysis

What is Analysis?

First of all, let's start with an example: what makes a car a car? Well, a car has wheels, an engine, a steering wheel, a chassis, axles, a windshield, heating and cooling systems, a gas tank, pedals, seats, and hundreds of other parts. Analyzing a car (the whole) means recognizing what ingredients make up a car (the parts) and then explaining how these parts function. So why does a car need an engine? What happens to a car when the engine stalls or the steering wheel falls off?

Being able to answer those questions means you're able to analyze.

The Steps of Analysis

• Step 1: Identify the whole (the thing you want to analyze, like a car)
  
• Step 2: Break the whole into its parts (the pieces that make up the whole, like the car’s steering wheel)
  
• Step 3: Explain how each part functions to create the whole (what happens if the steering wheel falls off?)

Let’s think about each of these steps in turn.

Step 1: Identifying the Whole

Even though the process of analysis is fairly straightforward, actually writing an analysis can be challenging. For example, how do you identify the whole?

Sometimes the whole is identified for you. A teacher may have given you the assignment to explore a particular theme within a novel, so the theme becomes the “whole” and your task is to figure out what parts of the novel develop that theme–what role does the main character play? Does the villain contribute to the theme? What about key scenes? How does the plot develop?

Other times you’ll have to identify the whole on your own, and you’ll quickly realize that pretty much anything can be the whole, like the engine of the car or the main character of the novel. The whole is always the thing you’re analyzing, so if you’re analyzing a car, the car’s engine is simply a part of the whole. However, what if you need to explain how the engine works? Well, now you need to analyze the engine, so now you’re breaking an engine (the new whole) into its parts, like pistons, ball bearings, oil, and belts.

Identifying the “right” whole: This is where analysis can get tricky–how do you know you’re identifying the “right” thing?

It may help to remember that the entire goal of analysis is to inform yourself and others, so when choosing what whole to analyze, keep in mind this simple question: what do you and your audience need to understand? If you or your audience don’t understand how cars are made, analyze the car. If you or your audience get steering wheels and cooling systems but don’t know much about engines, analyze the engine.

Step 2: Breaking the Whole into its Parts

If step 2 is difficult, it’s probably because we need some sort of technical expertise to understand whatever we’re analyzing. Automotive engineers may perfectly understand cars while novelists may be able to deconstruct Shakespeare in their sleep, but ask engineers to write a dissertation on Shakespeare and novelists to break down an engine, and you start to realize that analysis itself isn’t the challenge–it’s our familiarity with the thing we’re analyzing.

Key point: Don’t fall into the trap of believing that analysis is difficult in and of itself; it’s a simple process, and if you understand the process you can build your ability to analyze by studying the parts. If I don’t know what an engine’s made of, I can research (and research, and research some more) until I understand pistons, the science behind internal combustion, gasoline, and so forth.

Step 3: Explaining how each Part Functions

This final step is crucial and, sadly, the step writers often skip. A mark of inexperienced writing is writing that assumes the connection of the whole and its parts, i.e. writing that stops short of telling readers why pistons matter to an engine or why we need to dissect plot to identify a theme.

• Incomplete Analysis: “Maynard Dixon’s Forgotten Man makes an important argument about the challenges of the Great Depression–society had forgotten the individual, especially the poor, because society was unable or unwilling to ‘see’ the individual (the whole). This message is, perhaps, best illustrated by the artist’s use of contrast (one part), in which Dixon shows the ‘forgotten man’ sitting on the curb, alone, while several others pass on around him.”

If we stop here, the analysis is incomplete. Why? Because this example stops short of telling us how the contrast of a man on a curb against “several” others passing by equates to the theme of “society had forgotten the individual, especially the poor . . .”

Key point: you can’t simply identify the whole and its parts, you have to tell me why each part matters. What does the part do? What does it mean? How does it function?

• Better Analysis: “Maynard Dixon’s Forgotten Man makes an important argument about the challenges of the Great Depression—society had forgotten the individual, especially the poor, because society was unable or unwilling to ‘see’ the individual (the whole). This message is, perhaps, best illustrated by the artist’s use of contrast (one part), in which Dixon shows the ‘forgotten man’ sitting on a curb, alone, while several others pass on around him. Key to this analysis is how Dixon contrasts 1). an identifiable and named man against 2). an unidentifiable and unnamed society–a ‘world’ of other people represented simply by multiple pairs of shoes and legs. Dixon doesn’t show us who owns the shoes: we don’t see any faces, any hands, any eyes looking down, or any mouths opening up to address the man or ask if he needs help. All we see are shoes and legs moving in the same direction, away, as though Dixon is telling us that society is too caught up in its own rush toward progress to maintain any sense of the individual. The pairs of shoes are a social monolith, nameless and blind; the forgotten man is a social irony, named but unseen. Similar to the fact that we cannot understand ‘tall’ without contrasting it against ‘short,’ or ‘sweet’ without contrasting it against ‘bitter,’ the contrast of a blind monolith against a named individual makes Dixon’s argument obvious: society was forgetting the poor and needy because society was unable (or unwilling), to see those who were ‘kicked to the curb,’ so to speak.’” (the how).

Key note: Though imperfect, this second analysis tries to explain how Dixon’s use of contrast (the part) helps viewers understand the painting’s main argument (the whole) by explaining that Dixon contrasts one element against another, and does so with obvious intent (the fact that we’re forced to see two contrasting elements: the named and the nameless, the seeing and the blind).

Final Thoughts

Your analysis might not focus on the most obvious argument about the thing you’re analyzing. While flashier cars like Cadillacs or Corvettes still transport people comfortably, they have additional features, like shiny paint, more powerful motors, sleek designs, and leather seats, all of which contribute to another possible argument about a car: it’s a status symbol that communicates something about its owner to his neighbors.

You probably won’t be analyzing cars for most writing assignments, but poems, speeches, novels, and works of art can be analyzed in a similar way. Each is made up of parts—metaphors and rhymes in a poem, stories or alliteration in a speech, characterization or plot in a novel, color and form in a painting—that contribute to its whole. By analyzing the evidence you’ve provided and explaining how it supports your claim, you can strengthen your argument by showing the reader your analytical thoughts.

And finally, when you write an analysis, be careful to avoid slipping into summary. Summary, the act of retelling or presenting information contained in a source, can be a useful way to provide evidence, but it lacks the interpretation that analysis offers. It’s ok to tell your audience that a car has wheels, but without an explanation of why the wheel matters, they won’t necessarily understand how those wheels help the car to move. Remember, summary = identifying the whole and the maybe even the parts; analysis = telling us why or how the parts function, why they matter, what changes without them, etc.

• Summary 1: cars (the whole) have wheels (a part).
• Summary 2: chocolate chip cookies (the whole) need butter (a part).
• Analysis 1: cars (whole) have wheels (parts), which allow the car to move forward or backward by creating a friction between the wheel and the ground, propelling the car in whatever direction the wheels are spinning (explanation of how the parts function).
• Analysis 2: chocolate chip cookies (the whole) need butter (a part) to rise–creamed butter has air pockets that work with baking soda to create a puffed texture (explanation of how the parts function).

See the difference? For the most part, summary is just naming the whole and / or the parts. Analysis takes that one final step of explaining the function of the part–just remember, you’re analyzing because your reader doesn’t understand how something works.