The Elements of Literature for a good interpretation of literature

1. ELEMENTS OF FICTION

 • The Story, whether it is a short story, novel or fork tale, has the following general elements that are used to analyze any written story:

 -Author 

-Setting 

-plot 

-Themes 

-Characters 

-Style 

-Language

1.1. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (AUTHOR) 

       Author: This is the writer of any written work of art or fiction. It is very important to not only know the name of the author, but you should also understand and appreciate his or her background. This will help you the reader to understand what, how and why the author writes any story or novel. For example, authors have different writing styles in their works, and they are motivated variously in their writing the story. Once you appreciate these things about the author, it most likely that you shall understand and enjoy the story you are reading and analyzing.

1.2. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (SETTING) 

 • This is the place and time in which the story unfolds or takes place. 

• Setting is important in understanding the background and impact of the story or incidents in the story. If a story is well told, we will recall the setting later, long after we have put the story aside. Where the setting threatens the characters, it creates the conflict which is as important in fiction writing or literature. 

• So, in interpreting or reviewing a setting of a story, you may have to ask and answer such questions as: How does the setting or atmosphere influence the work? Where do the events of story take place? When do they occur? What was the mood when the incident took place?

1.3. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (PLOT) 

        This is a series or chain of related events that tells us ‘what happens’ in a story. When a plot is well mapped out, it ‘hooks’ us, that is, it catches our curiosity (interest) about what will happen next. A good plot draws us along after the narrator, just as a fish is hooked and played and reeled in by an expert fisherman. The first thing to recognize about plot is the nature of that hook which pulls us along and keeps us reading. What the hook grabs is our own curiosity, making us wonder about the outcome of a conflict. When a story is strong, you can be reasonably sure its conflict is strong.

1.3.1. ELEMENTS OF PLOT 

• Let us explore this idea of conflict further because it is a core or basic element of plot in the story. It is conflict or struggle that gives any story its energy.

 • This conflict can be between one person or animal and another, one person or animal and a group of persons or a whole society, one person or animal and nature, or one person or animal with something in the person or animal such as fear, shyness, homesickness, or just an inability to make a decision.

1.3.2. ELEMENTS OF PLOT CONFLICT

 • A conflict can be external, as when a person struggles with another person, or with an angry warthog or with a hurricane. On the other hand, a conflict can be internal, that is, it can take place inside a person’s mind or heart. This might happen when a character has to make a hard decision, or struggle against fear, or resist an urge to poke his nose into everyone’s business.

• More conflicts in a story result into complications that develop as you read the story that require resolutions. In most cases, these complications are full of suspense that builds up as you anticipate what happens next in the story. This leads to a climax in the story, that is, the most emotional moment or the tensest mood of the story (breath-taking). Lastly, every story with conflicts should come to a resolution or an end. Sometimes the story may end in suspense, leaving you to guess what happens at the end of the story. However, most stories especially short stories will often have a resolution or conclusive end. In other words, your questions are answered at the end of the story whether for good or bad.

 • Therefore, in interpreting or reviewing a plot for the story, you may have to ask and answer such questions as: What is the central conflict of the story? Why does the conflict occur? What larger meaning or picture is suggested by the way the conflict is resolved?

1.4. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (THEME)

 • Theme: This refers to the controlling, main idea or central insight in the novel or short story. Theme answers the question ‘What does it mean?’ a story’s theme is often hard to state, but it is what the author means or what the reader perceives to mean by the whole story. 

• A theme is usually stated in a sentence or statement. This is so because a theme has to say something about the subject rather than just stated as a subject phrase!

 • Mostly, questions are framed in such a way as to let you show that you have learnt one or so lessons from the novel that bear on human interests. These are usually challenging questions because they require you to have a good overview of the text with regard to a wide spectrum of issues raised in the novel or short story. Such questions may be asked and answered as: What central idea or insight into life does the work convey? How do other elements help illustrate or reveal this idea or insight?

1.5. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (CHARACTERS) 

• Characters: These are persons or animals involved in a story in order to show entertain and show us some truth about human experience and ourselves. A good character should be ‘alive’ to help us appreciate the story well. In a story, we can recognize a character by his/her/its appearance, actions and thoughts, reactions of others (what other characters say or do in relation to the character), and direct statement of the author (comments made by the writer of the story as the narrator). 

• However, the best story is one in which the narrator doesn’t tell much directly about what the character is like. Instead, you learn about the character indirectly by how the character acts and how others act toward him/her, and by noticing what he/she thinks and says.

• Characterization refers to the kinds of characters the novel or short story has depending on the level of their development and involvement in the story of the book. For example, are the characters flat or round, protagonists or antagonists, major or minor, stars or backers? 

• So, in most cases, questions come in such a way that you need to compare and contrast, describe, discuss pros and cons of one or more characters with regard to the development of the story or show appreciation of the characters generally. In other words, you can ask and answer such questions as: Why do characters act as they do? What are their motives? Do the characters change? How do they change?

1.6. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (STYLE) 

• This refers to the way the novel or short story is written in order to have a desired effect on the reader or audience. 

• It also refers to the techniques used by the writer of a literary work such as point of view, humor, fantasy, flashbacks, tone, and so on.

 • Style of writing if understood and appreciated well, can help you to analyze the story very well.

 • On rare occasions, questions are asked to test your knowledge and skills in these literary devices or techniques based on a novel or story that you have read. The questions that may help you interpret or review a work of literature include: What stylistic devices does the author use? What effects do they have? How does the tone, or author’s attitude, affect the work of art?

 • Point of View: This refers to the style the writer of a story uses to narrate the story. In other words, writers usually chose who should tell the story or who should be the mouth piece in the story. So, you can tell the story from various angles by using points of view. There are three basic points of view often used in narratives: omniscient, third-person limited, and first-person.

• The omniscient (unlimited) point of view is the point of view of a god-like (all-knowing) being who has created a fictional world and who can tell us everything that is going on in the minds of all the characters. The omniscient narrator is outside the story; he or she is not part of the action at all.

 • The third-person (limited) point of view is where the writer has decided to tell the story from the limited point of view of a single person (participant) in the story. This kind of story reads as if a camera is zooming in on just one character. The writer uses the third person singular (he or she, or the actual name) of the character. This is very close to the omniscient point of view in that the writer still takes a prominent role.

 • And in the first-person (limited) point of view, the narrator speaks as ‘I’, as a character in the story. This character can tell us only what he or she sees and hears and thinks about what is going on. In other words, the narrator is a participant in the story. The writer chooses to tell the story in the name of another fictitious person and uses the first person pronoun ‘I’ as witness and participant in the events that unfold in the story. In this case, the point of view is also limited in that the narrator can only tell what he or she sees or experiences rather than what others do.

 • In order to review the points of view of any story, you may need to ask and answer such questions as:

 • What is the point of view used in the story?

 • Is it consistently used? 

• How does it affect your understanding of the work? 

• Why did the author choose that point of view?

1.7. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (LANGUAGE) 

• Language is part of style but it stands out to be the most important element of any fiction writing.

 • Literary language is often used in fiction writing to ‘relish’ the story so that it is more clear, educative, informative, and indeed interesting or entertaining.

 • Some of these language devices include figures of speech and symbolism such as images, symbols, irony, metaphors, similes, satire, and so on.

• The questions that may help you interpret or review a work of literature include:

•  What figures of speech have been used? What symbols or images does the work include? 
• What do they mean? 
• What do they suggest about the meaning of the work as a whole? 
• You shall learn more about literary language later when we deal with poetry.

Kind of literature

      Generally literature is divided in to two parts namely - 1. Fictional literature  and  2. Non fictional literature.

       Fictional literature is imaginary composed writing or work of art that is meant to provide information, education and entertainment to the reader. In the other words fictional literature is based on the writer’s imagination rather than reality. For example fictional literature include plays, poems, short stories, novels, oral literature, and songs.

      Non fictional literature is factual writing or written work that is gives facts that can be provided as it provides real places, events, characters, times or reality rather than imaginary things. For example Non fictional literature include autobiographies, biographies, essays, diaries and journals, magazine, newspapers, subject text book such as in Geography, History and Civic Education.

Importance of Literature OR Importance to Study the literature

       literature acts as a window or mirror (or both.) Literature as a window allows us to peer out from our lives to learn about what is going on in the lives of people in other times and places.  As mirror literature is that we use to hold up and learn something about ourselves. Sometimes literature allows us to do both, learn about another world and learn about ourselves, too.

      When we study literature, our horizons are broadened, because we can learn about and come to understand people who are different from us. Conversely, we might discover characters or poems that we really identify with—it can be really exciting and validating to discover that your exact thoughts and feelings have also been experienced by someone else. Because of these effects, literature encourages us to be sensitive to the whole spectrum of human experience and to consider this when making decisions in our day-to-day lives. Academically, studying literature also helps us to refine our own writing skills and expand our vocabularies.

      Literature is also a form of time travel that helps put today in context. All those apocalyptic lamentations about how "things used to be so much better" are controverted in literature of the last generation, the last century, all the way back to Shakespeare and beyond. Conversely, reading about how people lived in the past can really make you appreciate what humanity is able to accomplish and endure. In the classics, you may read about political battles, domestic abuse, prejudice and civil rights, unwanted pregnancy, binge drinking on college campuses, gangs and juvenile crime, homelessness, nationwide economic crises caused by speculation--as Solomon wrote thousands of years ago, there is nothing new under the sun. History tells us what people did; literature tells us what they were thinking.

     Literature in general is very important to a readers although you may not take literature in English as an examinable subject at school. Reading is infact very much part of language learning. This will among other thing, improve your command of the English language if you read widely.

• In short we can say that -

1. Literature improves your command of language.

2. It teaches you about the  life, cultures and experiences of the people in other parts of world. literature also teaches us many lessons that have universal themes, such as love, war, desire, justice and many more. When we read these topics, we become much more sophisticated in our thinking and our view of the world expands. This makes us better citizens

3. It gives you information about other parts of the world which may never be able to visit lifetime.

4.It entertains you and provides useful occupation in your free time. It makes you wiser and more experienced person by forcing you to judge, sympathize with, or criticize the characters you read about. So  literature also makes us think, as we might not necessarily agree. We will have to form opinions and convictions of our own and the reading of English literature can aid us in the process.

5. It gives information which may be useful in other subjects, for example in Geography, Science, History, Social Studies and so on. And the English literature tells us about the history of the English speaking world. In other words, through this literature, you are able to learn about ourselves and our history.

Definition and Characteristics of Literature

Defination of Literature - 

  “the body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age, or the body of writings on a particular subject (scientific, art, etc.)” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus).

        Usually we believe that whatever is written is literature. On the other hand, different writing such as Railway Time Table, History, Economics or News items is not considered as a literature.

      Literature can be defined as ‘pieces of writing that are valued as works of art, especially novels, plays and poems’.  (Oxford Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary).

        Literature is a special kind of writing which different from the other writing. Literature is that kind of writing which is charged with human interest. It is characterize by permanence colour of imagination and artistic embellishment. It’s still with the life of man and his destinies on the earth. It expresses thought, feeling, emotion and attitude toward the life which are permanent and universal, in the other word they do not change with the change of the time. And it’s this permanence and universality makes literature different from the other writing, such as Journalism or advertisement. The views and thoughts are expressed in the news paper makes to be forgotten after some time, while those of literature go on appealing through the corridors of time. The report of earthquake in Gujarat before few years was appealing and emotional but people of certainly have forgotten it’s very soon. The dramas of William Shakespeare more than hundred years are still interesting and appealing even the Ramayana and the Mahabharata written before the five thousand year ago are still later of interesting and appealing.

So the literature is the production of a unique mind as well as it superior to other writing. It contains certain characteristic. The other writing gives us only information or knowledge while literature gives knowledge as well as pleasure. There are four remarkable features of literature such as –

(1) Sincerity  (2)  Life Likeness (3) Suggestiveness (4) Originality

• Sincerity

      Literature is a unique art. It needs almost sincerity and seriousness. It is believed that writer is inspired by the news than the write. The activity of literature writing is kind of mediation. The writer makes sincere effort and thus creates unique work of art because of this sincerity. Literature has quality like permanence and universality. Shakespeare’s plays, Wordsworth’s poems are with the sincerity. Such literature creates good impact upon others.

• Life Likeness

      Literature is a genuine record of human life. Though it is more imaginative, it has the ground reality of life. At a centre the writers write about what they see, what their experience and what they know about the life.  Thus there is life likeness. In the literature Shakespeare’s tragedies were written before many years ago, though they are about English society, they are accepted by the whole world. We find the similar experience in life, as they are found in those tragedies.

• Suggestiveness:

     Since the literature aims at to please to move and to teach, it must be capable to having certain qualities. Literature is directly connected with the human life, and so it is highly suggestive. Many works of literature have hidden meanings. The writers use different symbols to convey the meaning because of suggestiveness. Literature is complex and difficult to write or to understand. T. S. Eliot’s ‘The west Land’ W. B. Yeast’s Poetry and novels of Dickens’s are full of suggestiveness. 

• Originality:

      The critic like Plato believes that literature is merrily to copy of copy it has no reality or originality. But we don’t agree with the Plato. Actually literature is a unique creation. It connected with the human and emotions and life. Every writer has a unique personality. He may be inspired but his ideas are original. We like to read Shakespeare’s tragedies, Dickens’s novel or poems of Wordsworth. The originality of literature appeals to every human being, the incidents may be probable but they are universally accepted.