How to Analyse a Quotation (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

What does zooming in mean in English?

Zooming in on a quotation means picking out one key word or short phrase from a quotation and analysing it closely. You move from the whole quotation, to a phrase, to a single word, and then back out to the writer’s bigger idea.

For example, in A Christmas Carol, Dickens describes Scrooge as “Hard and sharp as flint”. Zooming in means focusing on the single word “flint” and asking what it suggests about Scrooge.

Zooming in is one of the most useful skills in English Literature. It’s the kind of word-level analysis examiners reward, because it shows you understand how a writer’s choice of one word shapes the meaning of a whole text.

Why does word-level analysis matter in GCSE English Literature?

The AQA English Literature mark scheme rewards you for analysing the writer’s methods and their effects. Word-level analysis helps you do this well in three ways:

• It makes your analysis precise, because the examiner can see exactly which word you’re writing about and why it matters

• It gives you room for more than one interpretation, because a single word can often be read in different ways

• It links your ideas directly to the writer’s methods, because every word in a text is a choice the writer made

How to analyse a quote

Here is how to analyse a quotation in five steps:

• Choose the key word in the quotation: the word that carries the most meaning for the point you’re making

• Name its word class (such as noun, verb or adjective) or the technique it’s part of, if this helps your point

• Explore the connotations of the key word, which means the ideas and feelings it suggests

• Explain the effect of the word on the reader or audience

• Link the word back to the writer’s bigger idea about a character or theme, and to the question

A worked example: zooming in on “flint”

Here are the five steps applied to one quotation from Stave 1 of A Christmas Carol, where Dickens describes Scrooge as “Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire”.

This zoom turns one simile into a full argument about the novella. Dickens presents Scrooge as cold and cruel at the start, but the word “flint” prepares the reader for his change in Stave 5. This links to Dickens’ belief that even the meanest rich men could learn to help the poor.

How to choose which word to zoom in on

Not every word in a quotation is worth analysing. Look for a word that:

• Carries an image, such as a metaphor or simile

• Has more than one meaning, or meant something different when the text was written

• Sounds striking, or is repeated

• Links clearly to the question you’re answering

For a closed-book exam, learn short quotations that each contain one rich word like this.

What are connotations?

Connotations are the ideas, feelings and associations a word suggests, beyond its literal meaning. For example, at the end of An Inspector Calls, the Inspector warns that people will be “taught it in fire and blood and anguish” if they don’t learn to care for each other. The word “fire” literally means burning, but its connotations include:

• Destruction and danger

• War and bombing

• Hell and punishment

• Pain and suffering

How to turn connotations into an argument

Listing connotations is only the first step. A common mistake GCSE students make with connotations is to list several words, such as “destruction, war, hell”, and then move on without saying why they matter. A list doesn’t explain what the writer is doing with the word.

To turn a list into an argument, choose the one or two connotations that fit your point best, and then ask why the writer wants the audience to think of them. For example, you could write:

“The word ‘fire’ suggests war, which would remind Priestley’s first audiences of the two world wars that followed the play’s 1912 setting. ‘Fire’ also suggests hell, which presents the Inspector’s warning as a kind of judgement on the Birlings.”

How to explore more than one interpretation

Many words can be read in more than one way, and exploring two readings shows the examiner you are thinking about the text in detail. Use tentative phrasing, such as “could suggest”, “might also imply” or “perhaps”.

For example, in Act 5, Scene 1 of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth cries, “Out, damned spot”, as she tries to wash imagined blood from her hands. The word “damned” could simply be a curse, showing her frustration. However, it might also imply that Lady Macbeth knows she is damned (condemned to hell) for the murder of Duncan. A Jacobean audience, who mostly believed in heaven and hell, would probably have understood both meanings.

Zooming in on form and structure

You can zoom in on how a quotation is constructed, as well as on its vocabulary. Look at sentence types, repetition, line breaks and the way a character speaks.

In An Inspector Calls, the Inspector’s phrase “fire and blood and anguish” repeats the word “and”. This repetition piles up the suffering, so each new noun sounds worse than the last. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth speaks in prose in the sleepwalking scene, even though she speaks in verse earlier in the play. This change could suggest that her mind is breaking down.

How much should you write about one quote?

There is no set amount, but a good rule of thumb is two to four sentences of analysis for each short quotation. That’s usually enough to zoom in on a key word, explore its connotations and link it to the writer’s bigger idea.

One short quotation analysed in detail will usually earn more credit than several quotations that you only mention. To work each quotation smoothly into your own sentence, see our page on how to embed quotations.

What does a strong quotation analysis look like?

The table below shows the same point about Lady Macbeth written three ways, using her words from Act 1, Scene 5 of Macbeth: “Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here”. Each version zooms in more closely.

The weak version quotes a long line and names “strong language” without analysing any word. The better version zooms in on “unsex” but stops after one sentence. The strong version zooms in on part of the word, explains its effect and then links it back to Shakespeare’s bigger idea about gender.

What are the common mistakes?

• Analysing the whole quotation vaguely: writing that a whole line “shows Macbeth is guilty” misses the detail the examiner wants to see, so zoom in on one key word

• Naming techniques with no effect: spotting a simile or a verb earns little credit on its own, because the mark scheme rewards the effect of the technique

• Offering only one interpretation: a single reading can make your analysis sound limited, so add a second reading with “could also suggest”

• Listing connotations: a list of words such as “dark, gloomy, sad” doesn’t explain anything, and it takes up time you could spend on an argument

• Losing the link to the question: close analysis that never returns to the question can drift off the point, so finish your analysis by zooming out to the writer’s bigger idea

Analysing quotations in your AQA English Literature exam

AQA assesses your quotation analysis mainly through AO2, which asks you to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate”.

This table shows when you have the text in front of you, and how to zoom in for each part of your two exam papers: