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How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~ Annie Dillard

This pages contains information and hints which will be helpful to you as you write your Critical Biography.

Analysis of any kind involves a particular way of thinking. It is the systematic examination of something in order to:

• determine its parts,
• examine the relationships that exists among these parts,
• determine the relationship of the parts to the whole.

You can analyze almost anything. You can search for the component parts of a tree, a symphony, an interview, or anything else in human experience.  For example, you can analyze a joke into:

• the opening line: "How many bodybuilders does it take to change a light bulb?"
• the topic: the strange practice of creating separate exercise routines for each part of the body and performing them only particular days of the week;
• the characters: a serious weight lifter, and possibly, a light bulb;
• and the punch line: "Only one, but she has to wait until 'Arm day'".

Or you can analyze the parts of the day into categories like "dawn, forenoon, noon early afternoon, evening and midnight". Then you can examine the relationships among these parts and their relationship, in turn, to the whole day.

In each case, analysis proceeds by:

• examining something,
• dividing it up into its constituent parts,
• identifying the relationships among the parts and their relationships to the whole

IMPORTANT:  It is possible to analyze something in more than one way.

• One person might see four parts to a joke while another might see seven or eight.
• A day can be analyzed into large units like "evening" and "morning" or divided into 86,400 seconds

Analysis usually results in the identification of patterns:  relationships (between the different parts OR between some of the parts and the whole) that appear again and again, and that seem to have some meaning.  Finally, the person doing the analysis then explores what they think those patterns mean.

By now you’ve probably heard a lot about analysis. You’ve probably also heard that your writing in college should contain an abundance of it. The difference between analysis and summary is probably not obvious to most first-year students. Even experienced readers and writers often struggle to develop strong analysis. Most students say that analysis involves "breaking things down," but often have a difficult time articulating what it really means to "break something down."

While you may not yet feel comfortable distinguishing between analysis and summary, the following are a few distinctions to help you understand the difference between them.

Summary is a description of something. When you summarize, you are restating information in your own words. For example, if your are given the statistic that females are more likely, on average, to attend college than are males, you would be summarizing that information if you said that more females go to college than do males.

Analysis involves applying your own interpretation to information. For example, if you took the statistic above and used it in an economic context, this would be analysis. The result might look something like this: Despite greater rates of college attendance, women still earn less money than males for comparable positions. This is analysis because in this example you are interpreting and applying the data.

You could also analyze this data differently and claim that higher rates of college attendance for women indicate the increased social power that women hold. This analysis differs from the one before it in that it is used to support a theory rather than provide quantifiable evidence.

The key point to remember about analysis is that the fact is broken down and expanded; it is given meaning by the interpreter.

Once you've identified the theme of your paper, you'll frame your theme as an argument. One of the hardest parts in writing a long paper is developing and maintaining an argument.

In simple terms, an argument is the point of view that you assert and back up with evidence. An opinion is a simply a point of view. The critical difference between an opinion and an argument is the evidence. An argument is a statement or theory that someone else could disagree with, but still follow your logic.

In a Critical Biography, your best evidence is a quotation (from your interview or a scholarly source) or a specific example from your subject's life.

In other words, an argument isn't simply pointing out something that is obvious, and it isn't a statement of you or your subject's opinion on a topic. An argument is the development of a case demonstating that your interpretation of evidence, events, or situations is valid.

Having said this, it is clear that it is best to break down this process into two parts:

1. Making an Argument
2. Proving an Argument

Be clear about your focus: What is the argument you're trying to make? Remember, an argument is not a summary, a restatement of facts. An argument is not a description. If you confuse argument with summary or description, you will not be able to develop a paper. For example, if you make as your argument,

You can "prove" this by supplying evidence in the form of quotations that show that (a) Ms. Doe is a teacher at Hamilton primary school and (b) Ms. Doe is happy with her career because she said in the interview she loves teaching.

These quotations provide evidence that Ms. Doe is a schoolteacher and she likes her job, but this information is not interpreted by you. It is a summary of the interview and a description of Ms. Doe's personality. It provides no basis for development of a theme.

Now look at this example of a solid argument:

This is an interpretation of the interview subject's life that demonstrates an analysis of the facts, not a simple restatement of them. This argument can be "proven" with quotations that illustrate how Ms. Doe learns from her students and quotations pertaining to situations in which she learned something about herself as a result of an experience in the classroom.

If you’ve been told that your Critical Biography lacks an argument, or if you need additional help making and proving arguments, consider the following:

• When you develop a theme into an argument, you are indicating to your reader that you’ve formed an interpretation of something; in the case of the Critical Biography, this is your interview subject’s life.
• To develop an argument, you need to interpret what education has meant to your interview subject.

Answering the following questions can help you form an argument:

• From your point of view, how has education shaped your interview subject’s life?
• Where can you see places where education has a shaped her life in a way that she does not acknowledge?
• In other words, are there life events to which you will ascribe meaning that your interview subject may not, or to which she may give a different meaning than you do?

You probably realize by now that quotations are a necessary part of college writing, but using them well is often difficult.

When we talk about "using quotations," we mean including them in your paper, and analyzing and contextualizing them. Let’s look first at analysis.

Analyzing Quotations

The first step in analyzing quotations is in picking quotations substantive enough to analyze. To locate substantive quotations, a good first step is to go back over your reading notes or transcript and to look at the passages that you noted, or other passages that you think might be in some way relevant. Quotations help you to expose a dimension of the author’s argument that you might otherwise overlook. Consider the following:

• What information does this quotation contain that makes it more important than any other that you could select?
• How does this quotation complicate your understanding of the author’s point?

Contextualizing Quotations

Another aspect of using quotations well is contextualizing them in your paper. When you use quotations in your paper, you need to say at what point in the reading (and later, in the interview) the quotation originated. This does not mean that you need to summarize, but you should include a sentence or two that make it clear where in your interview the quotation appeared. Sometimes you can contextualize with a sufficient introduction to your quotation.

Take a look at these two examples:

When I asked Ms. Doe how long she had been teaching and why she moved to a new school district, she replied "quotation would go here."

Several times during our interview, my interview subject discussed the importance of her family in shaping her view of education. For her, family "quotation would go here."

All students struggle to work effectively with quotations. If you are having difficulty working with quotations, try the following.

1. Try introducing the quotation.
2. Be sure that the quotation choice says something substantive.