Lesson 1.6 · Unit 1 · Short Fiction I · LAN 7.A
The basics of literary argument: claim, evidence, commentary
Everything in this unit converges here. An analytic paragraph has three parts, and a reader can tell within two sentences whether you know which part you are in.
A claim is an interpretation someone could argue with. Evidence is the text's own words, kept short. Commentary explains how those words support the claim, and it is the part the rubric actually pays for.
- LAN-1.A. In literary analysis, writers read a text closely to identify details that, in combination, enable them to make and defend a claim about an aspect of the text.
- LAN-1.B. A claim is a statement that requires defense with evidence from the text.
- LAN-1.C. In literary analysis, the initial components of a paragraph are the claim and textual evidence that defends the claim.
- LAN-1.I. Evidence is effective when the writer of the essay uses commentary to explain a logical relationship between the evidence and the claim.
- Defensible claim (LAN 7.A): an interpretation a reasonable reader could dispute. A summary is not a claim, and neither is an observation.
- Evidence (LAN 7.A): the text's own words, quoted in fragments and fitted inside the grammar of your own sentence.
- Commentary (LAN 7.A): the sentence after the quotation, explaining how its wording supports the claim rather than restating it.
- Line of reasoning (LAN 7.A): the order of your claims, each one made possible by the one before it.
About the text: James Joyce, “Araby,” from Dubliners, first published 1914. The closing two paragraphs of the story.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
Joyce ends “Araby” by making humiliation a trick of lighting, not an event. Nothing is done to the boy: a voice calls from the far end of the gallery “that the light was out,” a routine announcement of closing time that he takes as a sentence on him. Then he is “gazing up into the darkness” when he sees himself: the verb that brought him to the bazaar turns around and takes him as its object. The cruelty in “derided” has no source but him. That is why the last clause can hold “anguish and anger” together: both are aimed the same way, inward.
The three parts: claim = sentence one; evidence = the quoted phrases; commentary = each sentence that follows a quotation and explains its wording. Exam tip: if half your sentences retell the passage, you have written summary with quotations in it.
Write one analytic paragraph on this closing: a defensible claim, two quotations of eight words or fewer, and a sentence of commentary after each. Then name in one line your claim sentence and your commentary sentences.
Show a model response
Joyce closes “Araby” by letting the boy do to himself what the bazaar never bothers to do. No one insults him; a voice simply calls “that the light was out,” an announcement about closing time that he takes as a judgment. Looking up into the dark, he finds in himself “a creature driven and derided by vanity,” language far harsher than the evening warrants, and the gap between the occasion and the verdict is the point. He has supplied the cruelty the world declined to, which is why the final clause aims anguish and anger at one target.
Rubric: sentence one is the claim (Row A); the two quotations with the sentences explaining them are evidence and commentary (Row B).