How To Write An Interpretive Essay?

We all carry different perspectives about things, situations, or people in our lives. When you saw the word ‘Interpretive’, what comes into your mind? ‘Interpret what? A situation in which you were struggling last night? Or a friend whose action you were not able to judge. There are tons of things that you interpret in your everyday life. Interpret means conveying your thought or opinion about something and it needs not to be right or wrong. It is just your opinion and is away from being judged on correct parameters. This blog will help you to understand how to write an Interpretive Essay but before we begin let us first understand what you mean by Interpretive Essay

Meaning and Definition

Interpretive Essays are more like the literary analysis. You analyze and interpret the meaning of the literary work written by someone else. In simple words, you analyze the piece of literature (whether a poem, play, book, or essay) written by someone else. You need to analyze every element that is in the text or that you can see. Most of the literary works contain literary devices (like metaphor, simile) plot, setting, characters hence you must be well-read about all those things before interpreting a piece of literature. You just need to give an alternative meaning to each of the components used by the author.

How to begin

Identify Authors Method

When you are attempting to write an interpretive essay you need to get familiar with the author’s writing pattern. Some authors write on the autobiographical note while others observe the world around them. Hence you need to identify the plot of the story, the main characters, and the tone in which he/she is writing. You don’t need to summarize them but analyze them by making the connection between the story and the characters.

Identify the Ambiguity

Most literary works possess ambiguity as it gives immense pleasure to the author as well as the readers when the hidden meaning is interpreted. Sometimes there are multiple narratives hence you need to be careful while interpreting the text. Sometimes the person is good by heart but the situation makes him/her do a bad action. For example, there is a mother who is dedicated and hardworking but still, she is not able to get food for her five children. Hence she steals bread and milk from a shop. Since she has committed theft so is she a good person or bad. For a layman, she might be a bad person but when you are analyzing you know she steals only to feed her children. Literary works show the messy aspect of life which you need to identify and interpret.

Give possible answers

You need to focus on giving the possible answers in your interpretive essay as most of the time readers are interested in knowing multiple perspectives of a single situation. If there is a question in your mind, then it must also be in the mind of the reader. However to make your essay effective you can leave a question like “What do you think”? or “Does this happen in your life also”?. This will make the reader connect with your essay. Try to get detach from the work. As you have to interpret as a neutral reader and not as some attached author.

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Common Mistakes

Don’t Summarize

You need not summarize what is written by the author. You need to dig deeper and built a connection between why the author has introduced something in his literary piece of writing. Let’s take an example for this, consider the work of Harry Potter written by J.K. Rowling. Suppose we are talking about the character of Professor Trelawney. You are not supposed to describe her profession, personality, or vision. This is not an interpretation but just an explanation of what she is. Instead, you need to think about what she has done and what vision she has in her mind before doing any action.

Avoid Conjectures

You should avoid giving information about something which you are not sure about. Before interpretation, you must have complete information about the work, it’s setting, tone, and content. You have often seen people interpreting movie trailers on YouTube. They didn’t saw the movie as it is yet to be released. They provide all the interpretations based on the trailer which proved to be futile in the end Hence you should avoid giving false or incomplete information.

I hope this blog helps you in understanding how to write an interpretive essay. If still, you are not able to write an effective essay you can contact us. We at “Myessayassignment” help students to enhance their writing skills at a student-friendly price.