Writing literary analysis essays

In elementary school, students are tasked with merely writing book reports, reviews, summaries, and descriptive paragraphs comparing texts. In middle school, English teachers introduce their students to a deep analysis of texts. In sixth grade, students are permitted to use personal pronouns to express opinions and ideas. Furthermore, there are rigid rules imposed in a structured and coherent format to guide students in writing analytical papers. In seventh grade, personal pronouns, contractions, and any type of informal writing are no longer allowed in the countenance of students' essays. However, students are still encouraged to follow the same format and write a five-paragraph essay with three body paragraphs, an introduction paragraph, and a conclusion paragraph. In eighth grade, our English teacher clearly informed us that creativity is the most important quality in one's life. A creative viewpoint and vivid imagination are evidently required for weaving fictional stories, but it is also used in academic and research papers as well as nonfiction. Surprisingly, creativity is also needed in technical subjects like math and science. Therefore, she plainly elucidated that our creative writing assignment to write a fiction short story would indirectly improve our writing skills and aid in the process of our characterization literary analysis essays. I would much rather write a story or poem from my imagination than an academic essay, but I was able to understand the perspective of other students. If interested in writing fiction, poetry, or dramatic plays, one should choose a major in Creative Writing in college. If more inclined to read literature and analyze it critically,  one should study a major in English Literature. In eighth grade, we learned to trust our intuition and presentiments and write about the portions of a text that our heart feels obliged to discuss. We can use as many paragraphs in an essay as we need, but they all need to be strong and well-written paragraphs. I will be starting high school in September with English classes in the honors sequence and writing electives. I am sure we will hopefully have even more freedom to express our thoughts in the next four years of education in a college preparatory environment. In eighth grade, I wrote three literary analysis essays to analyze characterization, irony, and theme. 

Note: I had originally included samples in this blog post, but I removed them because they contain outdated content. I feel as though I have grown a lot during my time in secondary school. I wrote one to two research papers each year in high school and I am now working on my creative thesis project.