Summary vs. Analysis

After watching the video on Summary vs. Analysis it became clear to me that they are two very different elements. They are like day and night. When wanting to give a simple briefing of a story one may choose to do so by summarizing it. A summary tells the reader the main point of text by telling what happened in a simple brief paragraph. This informs our reader as to what happened by talking about who, what, when, where, why, or how things happened in the text. Summaries unlike analysis, however, do not use critical evaluation.

An analysis creates an argument that breaks down the context of the reading and makes the reader further examine the elements of the text. By doing so one can come up with an arguable claim that will help further expand on what the main point or points of the story are. Analysis, unlike summary, goes deeper into the story and examines the elements that help us identify what the reading is really about.

Analyzing is thinking more deeply about what is being read. It could even be compared to doing detective work. One must look for the small details that put the story together. These details can be found by examining relationships, trends, patterns, roles of people, places, and objects, among many other things. Another way to creatively analyze a text is to look for a cognitive dissonance. This is looking for something within the text that doesn’t seem like belongs there, or it seems out of place. By expanding on this thought one can determine how it affects the story as a whole.

While a summary might be a good way to sum up all of the events in a story, it doesn’t tell the significance of the things that took place. When wanting to write a more informed or “sophisticated” paper it might be a better idea to choose the analysis method as this gives a better more complex briefing of the text.