Textual Analysis

In high school, my English class placed a heavy emphasis on literary analysis. Having read works by Camus, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Keats in that class, I have had to analyze prose, plays and poetry. To me, analysis is looking for hidden motivations and symbols in texts and drawing conclusions about their possible meanings with supporting evidence, and then relating what I find back to the overall mood and tone of the text. For prose writing, I had always been more inclined to search for symbolism related to life and death in the context of the character and the story so that I could start with the smaller picture and see how it relates to the big picture overall. Anything that would advance the plot or alter the mood would be a starting point. For poetry, I would take a different approach by focusing on the rhyme schemes and the symbolism in the structure in relation to the content. But in both cases I would always be looking for a hidden meaning instilled into the work by the author.


Ben Killips' essay "Hopper's Nighthawks: Comfort in Despair" serves as an analysis of Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks but for the most part I felt that it fell short of its potential since much of it seemed like complete speculation to me. Since art is such a tricky subject to analyze and draw conclusions from, speculation is a key, so my disagreement with Killips may simply stem from the differences in our interpretation of the painting. While Killips sees this as a reflection of desperation and loneliness in the world and the emotional turmoil of the times, I see it as a rather hope inspiring painting. Since it is painted from the point of view of someone walking on the streets of a city, the night seems to be brisk and dark. However, then you notice the bright diner, which shows people sitting at a table in conversation enjoying their drinks with the light from the diner piercing the dark night outside and casting a warm inviting glow towards others. In my own interpretation, I don't see suffering on the expressions of the people in the diner but instead see a passive expression as they place their orders. To argue that Hopper's painting is a mere reflection of the times would be an insult because art is meant to transcend time and be accessible to all by empathetically appealing to the viewers emotions. For that reason, I cannot see the connection between Nighthawks and Pearl Harbor or the overall bleak undertones. Optimism seems to be the only thing expressed through the contrast of colors because of the appealing nature of the diner in comparison to the darkness of the night. To argue that there is an internal struggle within the people in the painting would be stretching the argument. Killips' analysis is a product of his own interpretation of the painting and is fairly well done since he focuses heavily on the contrast of colors, the artist's period and background while providing his own interpretation. While I agree with some of the points presented in Killips' paper, because of my own interpretation I couldn't agree with everything he wrote. In relation to Hacker's criteria, Killips' essay is very well done since it starts with a summary of the visual text and then analyzes the piece while backing up his arguments with the design elements he felt were key to the work. However, I felt that he present too much of his own ideas as fact rather than interpretation. Killips lacked confusion and was too sure of his argument for me to be completely convinced.