A beginner's guide to Critical Literary Analysis 

I feel like one of the biggest reasons people struggle with literary analysis is because the purpose of studying literature is not made clear to students. Most literature classes often end up feeling like a stage for teachers to rant and rave over trivial details. Does it really matter what so and so did on page xyz in a novel written by an author who died 50 years ago? No it does not. But what does matter is your ability to make logical connections between different plot points, use critical thinking to form arguments based on evidence, and to understand how a literary work reflects aspects of reality and comments on society and/or the human condition. Before this was made clear to me I too thought studying literature was a bit frivolous and would often be confused on what exactly my teachers expected from me. It seemed that I was just making wild guesses as to what the teacher finds important and why. But once I actually understood the field of literature and its purpose I gained such a great appreciation for it. I honestly think it should be mandatory for literature teachers to throughly explain to students the point of studying the subject every year or semester so students understand what is expected of them. Literary analysis can still be difficult but if teachers and professors at least explain its importance students would be more encouraged knowing they aren’t simply playing a game of “guess what the teacher’s thinking” for months on end. This is just my opinion though lol but I think people like you are definitely helping to clear the confusion around studying literature.

Using a (very cute) children's book is a great idea to teach the basics of critical literary analysis. I can't believe I've never had a teacher use this technique in formative school. I feel like it would be a great point to start and to get people interested in really understanding stories instead of jumping right away in old classic literature which is overwhelming when you're just getting into analysis

it took me seven and a half minutes to realise I couldn't read the covers because the camera inverts the image. I thought I was having a stroke sjdnfndbs

I was reccomended this video randomly and clicked it for funsies and am very, very impressed. You summarized some very complex concepts better than most lit professors I've had

Not you making me cry over Edward the emu😭😭

I have a writing degree, but I find it so helpful to return to the basics and refresh my understanding of critical analysis. This is great!!

Hello Moon! Literary analysis is something that I've always been intimidated of, but I realised that I've been scared of people telling me that I'm 'wrong' or that my analysis is 'incorrect'. But after watching your video (absolutely amazing one, by the way) I'm determined than ever to try it out!! Thank you for this very easy to follow beginner's guide ♥️

I’ve always had a difficult time framing what I wanted to convey in my analyses that they ended up being really weak and unorganized lol. You’re a great teacher, moon! Thank you for this! Can’t wait for your video on poetry analysis because I STRUGGLE with that 😭

This video showed up in my recommended at just the right time! I’ve been reading _Crime and Punishment_ lately and I’m fairly certain I’ve been missing a lot of literary symbolism and whatnot…

you’re doing such valuable work here. i think the way that english is taught in schools is so soul-crushingly boring that it turns off most students, for whom it is never made clear what the point of english classes even are, despite their value. that and the structure of english classes (at least in my experience) tends only to confuse people, as these more ground-level concepts of english are never explained. it makes it so that even i, with my personal love for english as a subject, ended up coasting through my most recent couple years of school, despite having taken subjects i should’ve enjoyed. hopefully the advice in this video reaches many people so that they can organically grow a passion for english - and so they have a strong base of understanding with which to combat boredom or burnout like the kind that happened to me. again, great work!! :))

I feel like the Finnish education system taught this pretty well. At least they made it clear why we're studying it in the first place and why it's so important to be able to analyze litarature from different perspectives. It wasn't just classic books that we studied but also media texts and even videos wich helped me understand how the things I learned (critical thinking skills and analyzing the full context) apply to pretty much everything. I used to love reading and writing as a child but stopped some years ago after I got bullied for it constantly. This year I finally got the motivation back and I'm looking forward to your deep dive videos about this!

Girl, you're better than my critical concepts' teachers. Your video just popped up on my feed and I clicked it by pure curiosity, but I learned so much from you that I am doubting now the university's usefulness :)))

As someone who always failed literature and language related subjects (except English as a second language) I was always so discouraged from literary analysis, but bsd makes me want to get into it sooooo badly! Videos like these where someone can break the process down are a treasure! Seriously, thank you! 😭💖 While listening to the story, my immediate thought was "omg, that's a people pleaser finding someone who doesn't need to be catered to" because that was my entire experience in middle school, just changing core personality traits that people told me where "undesirable". Only proof I have is the way Edward immediately jumps into a new role the moment he hears just one person say they prefer something else. It's the classic "not everyone is gonna like everyone" lesson. Some people prefer the lions, others prefer the snakes and others the seals, not necessarily because they hate emus, that's just their preference. But at the end of the day, Edward's an emu and he can't make all of these people happy at the same time. But there are those who prefer the emu and those people are worth his affection, because they like him the way he is. This is my first time trying to put my thoughts in order like this, I don't know if I'm doing good at all, but attempts were made😂 A friend lent me "The Raven and other short stories" by E.A.P. and he's struggling with these things too so I thought it would be fun to annotate it for him once I was done reading it, maybe it would motivate him to actually pick it up himself, but obviously this is gonna be very difficult. I also really wanna get Chuuya's poem collections, basically because I've looked up a few things about him and he peaked my interest as a person so much and I feel that reading and understanding his poems will help me learn even more things about him, but if I'm struggling with simple stuff, imagine what poetry will do to me💀 So I can't wait for the poetry analysis video, that's gonna be my lifesaver💖

this guide is something i wish i had in my critical lit class! i was never straight out told that i'm supposed to argue about genre or character. I knew i was supposed to write about an element of the story. no wonder my essays would get my professors confused!

me personally, i was looking at the story through the lens of the black experience, typically in non-black spaces and how edwina reminds me of little black kids who look up to elders in the community. i loved this video so much, thank you for sharing!!

This is by faaaaaar the best beginner's explanation I've ever listened to! and I'm pretty sure it's better than my own, so I'm going to share your video with my students. Keep it up! I'm looking forward to your next videos! :)

Oh my goodness you’d make a such phenomenal english teacher !!! Thank you so much for this i had trouble grasping some of the concepts my teacher tried to convey and this helped me so much!! Deffo sharing with friends!!

I always loved literary analysis but was never that good so this helps a lot thank you ! I had to do multiple for school without improving but I never thought of using children's books like you did for practicing :) As for Edward the Emu, I also thought about using a disabled person's lense for analysing the story because we do feel unloved by parents or teachers etc. but there are always people that actually like how our brains can think or just live differentely. (from an autistic pov)

Although I love reading just for fun, I want to connect with and understand what I’m reading on a deeper level and this seems helpful, especially considering the fact that English isn’t my first language

Having to write commentaries for a modern languages degree, I feel like no one had actually explained the basics to me in a clear way. This video was perfect for me and, I imagine, many others - thank you!

I've wanted a video like this for so long-thank you for creating this!

I would love to see full analysis videos from you! You explain well and with lots of passion. So, it would be cool to see a video where you deep dive in one of your favourite novels :)

This was a WONDERFUL video. You clearly love what you do and have a talent for teaching it. Thank you! I look forward to watching the rest of the series!

Awesome video. Love the animated slides where you wrote down the main points im between explaining the different points you bring across!

Sorry, this one's gonna be lengthy, but it's just a little summary of my history with understanding and interpreting stories. I didn't really care about stories at all as I was growing up, because "fiction isn't real". I also didn't understand why the significance of something random like a broken chair on page 57 was so important. As a result, I was never really an active reader. I used to read fantasy books that involved fighting and death because these things intrigued me as a kid. I had fallen in love with the Percy Jackson series and its spin-off, The Heroes of Olympus, but even to this day, despite having read all of the books, I literally CANNOT summarize a single plotline in the book because of how little I actually cared about the story and its writing. I only liked it because "Greek gods fighting = cool" and that's all I ever paid attention to. Even throughout middle school and the first half of high school, I absolutely CANNOT summarize the plot of a single book I had studied in class, regardless of the amount of essays and exams I had taken and done well on, because I didn't care about literature since it's "not real". As a result, my overall interpretation skills when it came to poetry, reading, or even watching a well written show/movie had always lagged behind everyone else's. Then, during my junior year of high school, I got into anime for the first time. Series like Naruto, Attack on Titan, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, etc., had gotten me completely obsessed with their intricately written plots and characters. I finally began to understand why stories are so cool. When I couldn't understand something, there was always a RU-vid video that'd help explain it, and the video, as well as the comments, would also point out other amazing details. I realized how important fiction and literature really is. It allows us to explore aspects of reality and humanity that we normally would not be able to do in real life. It's also such an engaging and entertaining way to convey messages and lessons, which is something I entirely failed to understand as a child. Something that blew my mind back then, and still does now, (VERY MINOR SPOILER about Hunter x Hunter anime) was that out of all the Royal Guards during the Chimera Arc saga, there was only one Royal Guard who didn't have any character development or transformation. This Royal Guard was born as a butterfly, and someone in a RU-vid comment section pointed out that the reason they were chosen to be depicted this way, is BECAUSE they will have no transformation. A caterpillar will have to transform into a butterfly, which is the final stage of its development. Since this character was already born as a one, there was no more development that was left to be had. This is the moment where my mind was seriously blown. There were so many other parts of the Chimera Ant saga that reflected parts of humanity, the innocence and naivety of children, dealing with trauma, and so much more, which I truly appreciate. I began to fall in love with analyzing stories in order to value the art that the author had spent so many hours crafting. However, I was still years behind my peers in being able to interpret stories. Thankfully, I had a phenomenal teacher for my AP English Literature class during my senior year of high school, and I became so much better at reading stories and being able to appreciate them. I even pulled off a 5 on the AP exam (the highest possible score) without studying, all thanks to his teaching. I also read my first ever books in 5 years, fully on my own (not because school forced me to read them) because of that class and how much I had begun to enjoy stories. Now, I'm a sophomore in college, going for a Computer Science degree, so I don't always have time to read, but I try to read a good book whenever I can. I saw a comment earlier on this video, and they mentioned how we need to normalize clarifying the point of literary analysis in schools. I didn't understand why fictional stories and analysis were so important as a kid, and I attribute that failure to the modern school systems. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to able to figure out the importance of literature on my own. But I really think that the people who don't get it are seriously missing out on the deeper aspects of a well-crafted story.

your voice is so soothing! i just started the video and i'm not really a bsd fan, but i always wanted to go deeper into literary analysis, so thank you for covering this topic

It's very important to remember that reading and analyzing it is important skill everybody should acquire and it needs practice . I have read a lot of books and every time I finish one I ask myself "why it was so hard for me to understand the concepts that were explained in this book ?" your video was amazingly helpful for me and I really took notes on how can I critically analyze whenever I will read any literary / complex books in future. Also , reading skills are important when you are also someone who writes , so reading and writing needs practice , skills and determination and people like you are teaching the way to do it . Thank you so much for that and keep it up !

Honestly the BEST video i’ve seen. I haven’t been to school since I was 16 years old and the way you explained it was so simple and concise. Please make more!!!!

As a person who always struggles to analyse literature, this video is the best RU-vid recomendation ever! I not only learned so much but definitely enjoyed it. Thank you so much for such great work and dedication!! 👏💖

i honestly cannot thank you enough for making this video, it's helped me so much - I always have so many ideas but no way of putting it all together, but I rly feel like I've been guided into structuring my arguments better. thank u so much once again

I love your video setups btw like the background, the lighting, your entire look!🙌🏼

I used to hate school, I graduated college and got a job I enjoy working with numbers but now I find myself wanting to learn other things on my own. I love to read as a hobby but now I want to challenge myself … I’m making a goal to really dive deep into literature that challenges me! Thanks for this video and here’s to anyone who just wants to be a student again ❤

Amazing video! You explained everything very clearly and I could see how you used the things you explained in the beginning to analyse the example text, which made me understand everything a lot better! Looking forward to the next video ❤

This video was incredibly helpful. I've been trying to better understand and interpret the novels I have been reading so I might appreciate them more and this video gave me the perfect stepping stone to do that. I have already found it helpful with other mediums like film too. Trying to find something to give me that push into beginning to analyze the content I consume has not been easy but this video did it. You summed everything up concisely, intelligently, and in a very easy-to-understand way. You gave me new notions to consider as I read and I really hope you continue to make content like this.

I have been binge watching videos on critical analysis and end up far more confused after watching them than I was to begin with. Yours is the only video that has explained things in a way that makes it easy to understand for someone who has no idea what critical analysis is or where to start. I'm subscribing to your channel right now!! 😃 can't wait to see the videos to come!! And thank you for having made this video 🩷

omg I loved this video so much!!!! I love how you explained everything simply, but the analysis was profound. this inspires me to read and analyze more. I will definitely be coming back to this and other videos!! thank you

honestly,THANK YOU SO MUCH!! you made everything very clear to understand, especially for beginners!! You very talented at explaing concepts and this really help me a lot!! And also all the Bungo stray dog references made it a really fun watch! im def gonna watch your other Bungo stray dog related vids!!

ive been wanting to analyse stuff for quite a while. this video was amazing!

don't be sorry for giving us all these amazing informations. thank you for the video! i'm excited for the next one

Thank you for making this video it is so much easier to follow along with a difficult subject when the person explaining is clearly enjoying the subject😊❤

please do more of these. this is amazing and I love how you did an example with us

The amount of Effort in this video is insane! As an obvious beginner it was so easy listening to you about Lit Analysis and I learned so much! I’m so excited to use this on a new book I started to read, and I’d love to watch a video about poetry analysis!

This actually made me re-evaluate my whole life for a second. This was really good, thank you.

Damn, the education system really did failed us lmao, I've never had a proper literature class like this (I'm from Venezuela), I can analyze a text but only very surface level stuff, and when trying to read something that has too many layers is difficult to completely understand or give a meaning to a text. This is really cool, thank you!

I'm so glad I clicked on this video and found your channel. I studied English Literature in University and am working in a completely different field right now (Business and Consulting) but my foundation in English Literature has helped me write and construct convincing arguments. I thoroughly enjoyed this video and it's reignited my love for literature. Thank you!!!

thank you for making and sharing this!! i'm a university student and i've been working with a lot of literary analysis over the last two years, but it's been difficult to grasp the concepts of analysis itself, and to put together ideas and arguments despite understanding the content the way you demonstrated for the “edward the emu” story. it helped me understand the specifics a little better and i'm hoping to practice more in my own time! :)

I love this. I'm trying to get more into literary analysis and your explanations are just... omg. perfect! you are amazing for this video :)

What a great, simple, and snappy way of introducing literary analysis! Thanks. Keen for the poetry video. Keep them coming, Moon.

i clicked on a whim because i'm procrastinating on writing an essay (who doesn't love to watch videos about doing the thing they're supposed to do instead of actually doing it haha) and i'm blown away by how well you've condensed all this information without watering it down! AND you also included a demonstration!! i'm definitely looking forward to the poetry video ^_^

I'd like to point out edward's false belief system. he thinks as an emu "there was nowhere to go, there was nothing to do." in actuality much like the other animals in the zoo he too can find something to do. the only reason he thinks the other animals have something to do is because its something hes never done. he also tells himself its because of boredom when later on its clear to see its cause of the attention and by the end edwina gives him that. also i think that stems from being alone. the other animals were in plural but edward's surprise when coming back to the cage and finding an emu there might suggest he was expecting it to be empty which suggests he was the only emu there. that ties to the belonging aspect because having nobody like you can be very isolating.

this is super cool!!! i watched the whole thing in normal speed (which is weird cause i usually put it in x2 speed and skip majority of the video), and i didn't find myself getting bored. you're really good at teaching!! i can't wait for your next video :) especially cause i just started literature this year

Very clear and easy to understand. I really look forward to the poetry analysis.

The quality of the video (editing, memes, lighting, audio…etc) is very good so adding that onto the quality of the content makes me wonder why this video hasn’t gained more popularity and traction! Great work💕

This is so helpful! Good job breaking a lot of the concepts down to laypeople language, I will be sharing this in future with folks who are interested in analysis!

this was so enjoyable to watch, very easy to follow and it kept me interested for long enough to finish the video, which doesn't happen often. well done! and thank you for taking the time to explain something so broad and so important in such a good way :))

This was a truly helpful and well thought out video!! I am looking forward to your next videos and especially one about analyzing poetry✨💖

I’m so happy to see a new video from you!! Thank you!!

This is the video that I have been waiting for my entire life. I cannot thank you enough

randomly got recommended this video and it was a great watch! new sub, im excited for poetry analysis

hi ! i've come across this video randomly and you inspired me so much to read something and analise analyze it myself! thankyu for this video

I've been looking for somebody to put what I do into words. Thank you for this video! It's helped my friends understand why I think the way I think

This was so good!! Thank you for this concise yet, to me (a life long reader who has always felt scared of literary analysis and stopped taking english classes after high school), very educational video! I feel really dumb sometimes when my friend tells me about her theories of a certain tv show we both watch, the things she picks up on, and I hope this series can help me feel more comfortable doing the same.

In little less that 20 mins you thought me something I've been been struggling with for months. Thank you fair human.✨✨

This is SO helpful! thank you I hope you will be able to make more of these videos.

This video was absolutely amazing, you really were able to explain the concepts and personally even though I was pretty familiar with most of them, I still found it super informative and interesting! I had never heard of Edward the Emu before, probably because I'm not from Australia like you, but I loved the story so much and I think you broke the analyses down in a very digestible way. I can't wait to see how you tackle analysing poetry because I find that way harder to do than analysing novels for some reason. Have a great day, moon!!

I've been taught all this in school, or at least learned it there, but never in this kind of concise and approachable way. Thank you for the video, it allowed me to re-structure and revisit a lot of information, and it helped a lot!

This is a wonderful video, very beginner-friendly, just what I needed.

i had marked this video to watch later 4 months ago, i was surprised when i saw it was you! your videos helped me alot in a difficult time in my life, this video was incredible, thank you

Excellent! And thanks for putting up the key points in text, I find listening to just speaking really hard to keep everything clear and remember what went before :) :P

Dude, this is done so well! New subscriber; can’t wait for the new vids in this series! So informative!💜

Thank you for this, I really could have used something like this in university! It really helps having the process of essay-writing more fleshed out.

This video was super informative. Thank you for making it! I really love analyzing media that catches my attention but sometimes I feel like I don’t have the proper vocabulary or thought process to express my ideas properly. One of my resolutions is to get better at that. This helped 😊

in my third year of my english degree and this was on god super helpful. hard to get out of your head when you're working on stuff and it's helpful to go back to basics (especially when none of the lecturers ever explained how to actually write essays properly lol!!)

Looking forward to the poetry analysis video!! Loved loved loved this one! you did a wonderful job, it was perfectly paced. I'd seen you on bsd tiktok before but i thought this video recommendation on youtube was the algorithm appealing to my literary interests. I have been wanting to get formal introduction to the subject for forever and so I was pleasantly surprised to see the BSD references (when i tell you I subscribed in literal milliseconds) in this. A win for the fandom, really. Thank you for making this video!!

Oh my god. How cool this video really was. You have to keep it up! I truly loved what you just did: simple, efficient and crystal clear and of course… Edward. Beautiful example of how analytical reading could and can work. Praising you all the way from México.

Great video moon-san! loved it! Can't wait for the Poetry analysis 101!! keep it up

This was a super helpful video! I’ve been wanting to get into analysis to organize my thoughts and feelings about different literary works. It’s always sort of felt like a chore to me because of how school treats literature as one theme or one idea when it can be endless yknow? Thank you!

This is a great introductory video for critical analysis, I think it being "Too easy" would be a good thing, and this could appeal to people of multiple skill levels. Nice video! If I was a teacher struggling with my students i'd probably send this video their way. It had good examples that current students can relate to and you were very open and friendly the whole time. anyhoo nice stuff

watching this to hopefully not fail the handwritten literary analysis essay portion of my english lit exam next week, thank you so much for explaining everything that the professors of my course have failed to explain!

This is such a good video and it helped me a lot! I'm looking forward to your next one :))

Thank you so much for making this video! I love English lit classes and I love the idea of analyzing texts, but I usually feel stuck at the very beginning. Questions like: “how do I do it” “is my idea even good” “what do I need to say to prove what I’m thinking” have always caused me to procrastinate writing papers. This video was so so helpful and I cannot wait for the next installments in the series. ❤

Your voice sounds so soft :0 As a person with big sencory issues i really appreciate that, you're just nice to listen (and video is good itself too, of course!)

This was such a fun and informative video! Was really helpful even with someone who studied english at university, great refresher that’s simple but not patronising!

Love how easy to understand this video was!! Pls do more!!

Really well done. Great way to make this topic understandable! Thank you.

I love this video so so much, this was such a great beginner video. I’m currently doing Literature in A levels and I’m honestly so pleasantly surprised from what this has taught me, it was really refreshing and seems to be a much more enjoyable approach than just listening to what my teacher deems is important in a text or not.

This is awesome, I study a level literature and your video is super informative and concise!

From one human being to another, I am glad you exist. Helped me so much, thank you!

This was a really good breakdown on the topic and Edward the Emu was such a cute story :3 Looking forward your next videos, specially if you do one on poetry, bc I've always found it hard not to read it as a literal story.

I loved this video! I loved your take on this and the way you explained it with a small illustrated book. I just wish you had more videos like this on your page :)

Thank you so much for this video! It gave such and interesting and comprehensive intro to literary analysis that I honestly needed for years! I love the way you structure it all and the clear explanations/examples for each point! I’m excited for your poetry vid as I like poetry but many times I feel a bit lost into how I can understand deeper what is being said :)

I am so greatfull that i was recommended this video. I really needed it. Thank you!!!❤❤

You are really amazing at explaining!! Its was really helpful

I know it’s hard for you to constantly post with everything you have on your plate but please consider posting the second part of this series. I loved it and would love to see more of these. Your videos made it so easy to understand the concept of literary theory and would be really appreciated if you continue making these🥹❤️❤️. Thank you.

i have a literature class and critcal thinking, the teacher didn't teach us how to analysis and being critical so me and my friends feeling so lost in the class, thank you so much for making this video

I absolutely love analyzing things, but because of my lack of vocabulary and low comprehension I can’t really put into words how I feel about some media I deeply care about, or just wanna analyze. That’s why I look into RU-vid for those kinds of videos and I love them so dearly because it’s so interesting to see other people’s perspectives, but also some things I wanted to express that I couldn’t or didn’t think of but felt. I haven’t read a lot of books in my lifetime because I don’t have lot of books I’m interested in, but it’s something I wanna get into because my love for perspective and human nature or just amazing themes that resonate with me. I just freaking love analysis and I really really appreciate you doing a fun and short video about it which is sure to reach a lot of people hopefully!

Wow this is extremely helpful! Thank you very much for explaing evedything so simply!

This is a perfect video and intro to critical analysis. I want to learn more from you so keep making more videos please!

wonderful video! a very easy guide for anyone who wants read more critically. personally i have just slowly learn how to read critically and overall thoroughly these past few years. i don't know why this is not taught in school at all. this would help so much students in the long run. thank you for making this, i would love to see another video that dives deeper on the topic. :D

Thanks for making the video ☺️. This really helped me understand critical literary analysis.