Case Study Essay

The goal of this assignment is for students to write about theme in a novel. To do this, they will complete several close readings of passages that relate to the theme and then write a conclusion based on those studies of longer chunks of dialogue.

I like approaching theme in the following “case study” format because it encourages students to build an understanding of theme over time. They start by understanding that pieces of literature may be about many topics, and that a theme is what an author wants to convey about a topic. I like to explain that a topic is one word, like “family” or “justice,” but a theme would be putting that word in a sentence, like “Families grow deeper bonds when they are faced with challenges,” or “When people don’t feel they are treated justly they become resentful towards authority.” We might begin reading a novel together and brainstorm a list of different topics that the first chapter presents, and then they choose one of those topics to follow closely, marking passages that relate to that topic. Those passages then become the “cases” that they will study in order to draw conclusions about the topic—ultimately getting to a statement of theme.

I do begin by defining "close reading" and "explication," as these are often unfamiliar to students. The assignment overview below is what I introduce to students before we begin any reading or other work, but the steps get broken down over weeks and, while seeing all the instructions at once might seem overwhelming, the tasks are ultimately very manageable.

AI note: Students will write this essay in chunks, as they are reading their novel. The scaffolding is key; they will be guided through each close reading, then guided through brainstorming to make conclusions based on their close readings. The steps and the essential element of making connections between the multiple close readings should prohibit students from attempting to use AI to complete this work.

Case study assignment overview

First, a couple of definitions:

Close reading: a careful study of a text (in our case, a short passage from a novel) that involves re-reading and “picking apart” the passage by looking at details and patterns and their significance.

Explication: the term “textual explication” comes from the French term explication de texte, which essentially means explanation of text. For our purposes, we will use the term “explication” to refer to the writing that you will do about the passages that you study.

You will select three passages from the text to study, all related to a particular topic you’ve noticed in the text. The passages you select should all be on the SAME topic and should be spaced out enough through the book that they represent the topic ACROSS the entire book, rather than just in one section. You will end up turning in TWO of the three close readings/explications that you work on. The purpose of starting with three is that you may find that one of the passages you’ve chosen doesn’t end up working, so you will pare down to two passages for your final draft.

Your short introduction will:

Give context (what was going on in the plot) for each of two passages that you’ve selected. The introduction should be a preview of the paper; after reading your introduction, your reader should understand where in the plot each of your passages is located.
Introduce the main ideas you will discuss in your close readings. This will end up being a thesis, or guiding idea, for your close readings.

The passages you select will:

Be ¼ to ½ page in length
Be typed up and double spaced
Include citation with author’s last name and page number. Example: (Golding 143).
Be annotated by you

Each explication will:

Have an introductory sentence or two that answers the questions: What is the author doing in the passage? How are they doing it? (Or, phrased another way: What is the author’s purpose in this passage? How do they achieve that purpose?)
Be limited to two pages, typed and double spaced
Be full of short quotations, weaving back and forth between the text and your own commentary. (Without lots of quotations, summary happens. We are going for analysis, not summary.*)
Stay focused on the immediate text--don’t add commentary about details of the novel that may be related to the ideas in the passage but are not referred to directly in the passage. (The whole point is to “zoom in” on a chunk of text.)

Your conclusion will:

Discuss the discoveries you made in the study of this theme through your close readings. Aim to leave your reader with new ideas to consider about this theme and how it played out in the novel
- Consider: What similar things emerged when studying the two passages? (Same type of literary device, same use of repetition or other language choice, etc.)
- Did any significant contrasts emerge? Did these point to different understandings?

To access a complete version of this assignment, including fully editable handouts and sample work from each step, including two student samples in final form, visit my store at teacherspayteachers.com.