15+ Analytical Essay Examples for Students- Tips & PDF Included

Essay Type

Purpose

Approach

Analytical

Examine how/why

Break down + interpret

Argumentative

Persuade

Take position + defend

Descriptive

Create picture

Sensory details

Narrative

Tell Story

Personal experience

Literary Analysis Example:

INTRODUCTION

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" employs the green light as its most potent symbol, representing Gatsby's dreams, the corruption of the American Dream, and the impossibility of recapturing the past. Through examination of the light's appearances throughout the novel, this essay demonstrates how Fitzgerald uses one concrete image to convey multiple layers of meaning about desire, disillusionment, and the American experience.

BODY

The green light first appears when Nick observes Gatsby "stretched out his arms toward the dark water" reaching toward "a single green light" across the bay (Fitzgerald 21). This physical reaching symbolizes Gatsby's yearning for Daisy and everything she represents: wealth, status, and his idealized past. The light's green color connects to money and desire, linking Gatsby's romantic longing with material ambition. The fact that Gatsby can see but never reach the light foreshadows his ultimate failure.

As the novel progresses, the green light's meaning expands beyond Gatsby's personal desires to represent the broader American Dream. Fitzgerald suggests that post-World War I America has corrupted its founding ideals, replacing genuine aspiration with materialism and moral emptiness. Gatsby's pursuit of wealth to win Daisy parallels America's pursuit of prosperity at the expense of values.

The novel's final passage reveals the symbol's fullest meaning. Nick reflects that Gatsby believed in the light, "the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us" (Fitzgerald 180). This meditation shows the green light symbolizes not just Gatsby's dream but humanity's eternal struggle against time. We all reach toward idealized futures while remaining trapped by our pasts.

CONCLUSION

The green light's power as a symbol lies in its layered meanings. On one level, it's simply a dock light marking Daisy's location. More deeply, it represents Gatsby's specific dream of reclaiming lost love and, most broadly, the American Dream's promise and failure. Fitzgerald's genius lies in creating a concrete, visible object that carries rich symbolic resonance. The light embodies the novel's central tragedy: the gap between dreams and reality. Gatsby's fate warns against conflating material success with genuine fulfillment, yet Nick's final reflection suggests that this reaching toward green lights defines our humanity. We cannot help but dream, even when dreams destroy us.

Rhetorical Analysis Example: 

Analyzing a Political Speech of Ethos and Pathos in King's "I Have a Dream" 

INTRODUCTION

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech delivered at the 1963 March on Washington demonstrates masterful use of rhetorical strategies to inspire action toward civil rights. Through strategic establishment of credibility (ethos), emotional appeals (pathos), and powerful metaphorical language, King transforms a political rally into a moral crusade. This analysis examines how King's rhetorical choices create a speech that remains persuasive decades later.

BODY

King establishes ethos by positioning himself within American tradition rather than against it. He opens by referencing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, delivered "five score years ago," deliberately echoing the Gettysburg Address. This connection suggests the civil rights movement continues Lincoln's unfinished work rather than opposing American values. King further builds credibility by quoting the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, arguing that America has given Black citizens a "bad check" on promises of equality. This framing makes segregation un-American rather than making civil rights demands seem radical.
King's use of pathos creates emotional identification across racial lines. The speech's most famous section employs anaphora (repetition) with "I have a dream" to build emotional momentum. King dreams of a future where "my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." This personal reference to his own children humanizes the abstract concept of equality, creating emotional connection with parents in the audience regardless of race. The repeated phrase "let freedom ring" similarly builds to an emotional crescendo, transforming policy demands into a shared vision of liberation.
King's metaphorical language makes abstract injustice concrete and vivid. He describes segregation as "the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination," linking contemporary racism to slavery's legacy. He speaks of cashing a check rather than demanding rights, using economic metaphor that resonates with American capitalism. These metaphors help audiences visualize and understand complex social issues through familiar concepts.

CONCLUSION

King's rhetorical genius lies in meeting his audience where they are while inspiring them toward radical change. He uses American founding documents to argue that segregation betrays American values, making civil rights patriotic rather than revolutionary. His emotional appeals create identification across differences, while his metaphors make injustice tangible. The speech demonstrates that effective rhetoric requires understanding your audience deeply enough to frame your message within their existing values and beliefs. By grounding radical demands in conservative appeals to American tradition, King creates persuasion that transcends his immediate audience and historical moment.

Comparative Analysis Example: 

INTRODUCTION

Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Fight Club" and David Fincher's 1999 film adaptation share the same plot and twist ending, yet create fundamentally different viewing experiences. The novel's unreliable first-person narration creates psychological intimacy and ambiguity, while the film's visual medium and stylistic choices transform internal psychological horror into external spectacle. By comparing how each medium handles the narrator's voice, the violence, and the reveal of Tyler's identity, this analysis demonstrates how medium shapes meaning even when content remains similar.

BODY

The novel's first-person narration creates immediate intimacy with the narrator's deteriorating mental state. Palahniuk's fragmented sentences and contradictory statements signal unreliability from the start: "I know this because Tyler knows this." The reader experiences confusion alongside the narrator, never quite certain what's real. The film attempts similar unreliability through Norton's voiceover and visual tricks (frames of Tyler spliced into early scenes), but visual media inherently creates more certainty. When we see Tyler and the narrator together, we believe they're separate people because film shows us "objective" reality.

Violence appears differently across media. Palahniuk describes fights in detached, almost clinical prose that emphasizes participants' numbness rather than physical excitement. The novel presents violence as symptom of spiritual emptiness. Fincher's film, however, makes fights visceral and somewhat thrilling through dynamic cinematography, sound design, and stylized visuals. Despite apparent critique of masculinity and violence, the film's aesthetic celebrates what it supposedly condemns. Audiences remember exciting fight choreography more than the critique embedded in dialogue.

The Tyler reveal carries different weight in each medium. Novel readers may reread with new understanding, catching clues they missed. The twist reframes the entire narrative as one man's dissociative fugue. The film's reveal, constrained by linear viewing, plays more like a surprise twist than a psychological study. Subsequent viewings reward attention to clues, but the initial experience emphasizes shock over psychological complexity.

CONCLUSION

The comparison reveals how medium affects meaning despite shared content. Novels excel at depicting internal experience and ambiguity through unreliable narration. Films, showing us "objective" visual reality, struggle with similar psychological complexity and risk glamorizing what they aim to critique. Neither version is superior, but each creates different interpretive possibilities through medium-specific strengths and limitations. Understanding these differences matters for anyone analyzing adaptations or considering how form shapes content.