How to Make Assertions in Literature

Great stories often convey hidden truths more subtle than the original story.

Great literature not only tells a story, but often tells a story within the story. Literary assertions refer to the underlying meaning or the truths implied but not spoken in a literary work. Making assertions in literature means looking beyond the facts to the implications or deeper meaning of the events. For example, a literary assertion that slavery is an inhuman social system is easily grasped from tales such as Harriett Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Shirley Jackson's classic tale, "The Lottery," on the other hand, can be interpreted from a number of different angles that lead to different assertions.

Instructions

1. Read the story carefully. Notice not only what happens to the characters but why: the social fabric, the time period, the background factors that affect the story. Ask yourself the following questions devised by teachers who utilize visual thinking strategies to find deeper meaning in literature and art: "What's happening in this story? What do you see that makes you think that? What more can you find?" While many literature students can recite a story's plot, ferreting out the underlying meaning involves asking questions that go beyond the facts of the plot, Deborah Boughton of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute explains.

2. Answer the questions you posed as you read the story. Ruminate on why a character acted in an illogical manner, how he brought certain events on himself or what he could have done to change the story. Looking at how outside events in the character's immediate environment or world influenced the outcome of the story gives it a larger context. Stories set in the Civil War, for example, may have the horrors of slavery as an obvious assertion but also the less obvious assertion of the lasting bitterness that can color a person's life long after a cataclysmic event has passed.

3. Connect the morals and lessons of the story to possible truths or suppositions to arrive at an assertion. The story of a thief who gets away with a crime for many years but whose actions later catch up to him, such as in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," may make several literary assertions, including that crime will always be punished in some way or that people can redeem themselves, no matter the crime.

Tips & Warnings

• Your assertions may not agree with someone else's. That doesn't mean you are wrong; literary assertions can be colored by your own experiences and life context.

• The message you take from the story may not be the one the author intended; however, this also does not make your assertion incorrect.

References

• Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute: Seeing Between the Lines: Teaching Students to Interpret Visual and Verbal Text
• Minerva- An Internet Journal of Philosophy: Assertions in Literary Fiction