How to Write a Critical Analysis Essay: Examples & Guide

A critical analysis essay is an academic paper that requires a thorough examination of theoretical concepts and ideas. It includes a comparison of facts, differentiation between evidence and argument, and identification of biases.

Crafting a good paper can be a daunting experience, but it will be much easier if you have the right approach. In this guide by our custom writing team, you will find:

• Different types of critical analysis;
• Best ways to structure your essay;
• Two excellent critical analysis essay examples.

1. 📝 Critical Analysis Definition
2. ✍️ Writing Guide
3. ✅ Critical Analysis Types
4. 📑 Examples & Tips
5. ❓ FAQs

📝 What Is a Critical Analysis?

Criticism is the process of appraising things such as works of art and literature. It comes from the word meaning “able to make judgments”. A critical analysis essay is often referred to as a critical thinking essay, critical response paper, critical evaluation essay, and summary and response essay.

When we hear the word “criticism,” we often associate it with negative judgments. However, to criticize doesn’t necessarily mean to find faults. Even though criticism involves active disagreement, it strives to understand the meaning further and evaluate its efficiency. We call it constructive criticism.

In other words, critical analysis is an evaluation of a piece of work that promotes its better understanding . Have a look at this comparison and see what critical analysis is and what it isn’t:

• Evaluation of an argument
• Analysis of artworks, events, and issues
• Examination of different points of view

• A mere summary
• A deliberate process of finding flaws
• A personal reflection on facts and biases

Aside from art and literature, critical analysis is often used in theoretical research, nursing, and social work. In any of these areas, you have an opportunity to exercise your critical faculties.

Analysis in Writing: Definition & Examples

Analysis is a step you take before writing any paper. It’s aimed at evaluating and interpreting the sources. To do it, you break them down and study them in detail. You can learn more from this article on critical analysis by Southeastern Louisiana University.

In the following table, we’ve compiled several forms of analysis in writing and illustrated each type with a topic example:

• Instructions on how to achieve a result;
• Explanations of how something works or occurs.

What Is the Difference between Summary and Analysis?

Students often confuse analysis with summary and get a lower grade as a result. Here is how two notions differ. A summary is a brief restatement of the text’s main points that involves paraphrasing. An analysis is a detailed examination of the evidence that uncovers something new.

Check out this comparison to understand the difference better:

• Restates information
• Presents only the facts
• Doesn’t add anything new

• Interprets ideas
• Involves personal understanding
• Finds additional meanings

✍️ How to Write a Critical Analysis Essay

Now, we will show you the steps to writing a critical analysis with examples to guide you through this process. Keep in mind that the purpose of your critical analysis paper is to help readers understand a subject to a full extent.

Critical analysis consists of two stages: critical reading and critical writing. Read on to learn more about them.

Critical Reading Examples & Definition

Critical reading a technique that involves discovering and evaluating the text’s meaning and incorporating it into what you already know. It’s the first stage of critical analysis.

According to Cleveland State University, critical reading occurs after you’ve skimmed the research material and decided where to focus your efforts. While you are reading, use the following techniques to stay on track:

• Determine the central claim and identify how it is argued;
• Look for the large patterns that give purpose, order, and meaning to arguments;
• Contextualize the text within an original historical, political, or religious context;
• Distinguish the kinds of reasoning and methodology the text employs;
• Examine the evidence;
• Recognize manipulations.

When it comes to recognizing manipulations, authors use three persuasive appeals to convince their readers of something: ethos, pathos, and logos.

How to Start a Critical Analysis Essay

To create an outstanding opening paragraph, you may want to start it with a hook. It can be a quote from your source or a rhetorical question. Be sure to make it catchy so that it will grab your reader’s attention.

After you’re done with the hook, write the following:

• the work’s title and some background information,
• an outline of the main ideas from your sources,
• your thesis statement.

Here are two introduction examples for your inspiration:

What happens when there is a considerable wage gap between the upper and middle classes? The unsurprising reality forces poor people to use credit cards to pay off their debt. Credit card industries collect interest from those who can’t pay off their debt right away.

A romantic novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is about overcoming social stereotypes in the name of love. Its main character, Elizabeth Bennet, has to fight against her discrimination against wealthy men like Mr. Darcy to find love and be happy.

Critical Analysis Essay: Thesis

A thesis statement is what you are aiming to prove. Ideally, it should be the first thing you write because every other part of your critical analysis paper will be connected to it.

To create a strong thesis statement, you want to start with a broader idea of what you would like to critique. Then, you narrow it down. Choose a debatable thesis so you can back it up with evidence from your sources and anchor your entire paper around it.

The examples below will help you write your essay’s thesis:

People in positions of power are less likely to recognize the social injustice than marginalized groups of the civilian population.

In a 1989 American superhero film Batman, Tim Burton subverts the concept of heroism by refraining Batman from murder and making him morally ambiguous.

Critical Analysis Essays: Summary and Response

The body paragraphs of a critical essay consist of your source’s summary and a response with arguments.

A summary should present specific facts from your source to help your reader understand your arguments better. You can use these sentence starters to structure a summary:

• The book is about…
• The theme of the article is…
• The author argues that…
• The author concludes…
• The main character is…
• The main points are…

The main plot of Elizabeth Bennet’s plan to save her family from poverty intersects with stereotypes that romantic love and marriage don’t go together. She does not accept a marriage proposal from Mr. Darcy because she does not want to be walking proof that women marry for money. The rejected proposal leads Darcy to open up and change Elizabeth’s perception of him.

A response should present your main arguments that support your thesis statement. Each argument is a sub-thesis that connects to your central thesis. It’s crucial to discuss each point in detail and prove it with strong evidence.

Your arguments should be:

• clear, informative, and persuasive;
• well-researched and backed up with solid evidence;
• connected to your thesis.

At first, Elizabeth Bennet sees Mr. Darcy only as a powerful man with wealth and high social status. For her, he represents a marriage of convenience that she is so desperately trying to fight against. After Mr. Darcy attempts to separate Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth gets proof for her ideas about powerful men who do everything in their power to destroy a loving relationship for a better financial suit.

Critical Essay Outline: Conclusion

The final stage of essay writing is to ensure you have proven your arguments. The goal of your conclusion is to remind the reader of your thesis and the essay’s main points. You may also want to leave them with some final statements for consideration.

Keep in mind that the concluding paragraph is not a place to introduce new evidence. Instead, you can do the following:

• Restate your thesis;
• Summarize your main ideas;
• Talk about the work’s overall performance or outcome;
• Identify potential opportunities for further research or investigation.

Elizabeth Bennet struggles with the societal association of marriage with financial stability. Eventually, she marries a rich man, Mr. Darcy, but she marries him for love rather than his money and social status. Her pride and prejudice towards him were destroyed by his acts of kindness and true love. Their relationship had a rough start, but both of them could get their happy ending by breaking out of old beliefs and habits.

✅ Types of Critical Analysis

Choosing the correct type of analysis will help you stay on track with your research objectives. It will give you the anchor to develop your essay around in a systematic manner.

Critical analysis can be categorized into 4 main types:

• Literary analysis gives a critical evaluation of a literary text.
• Article analysis reflects upon arguments presented in an article.
• Media analysis essay interprets messages conveyed through visual media, music, or radio.
• Cultural analysis interprets cultural phenomena and practices.

Literary Analysis: Definition & Characteristics

Literary analysis is an argument that expresses one’s critical evaluation of a poem, novel, short story, or play. A critique of literature has the same characteristics as other types of critical essays. The difference is the kind of information you can include in this type of essay.

Here’s how to analyze literature:

• Identify the title, author, and genre of writing.
• State the topic of your essay.

• Consider the work’s strengths or weaknesses.
• Focus on characters, tone, use of symbols, themes, etc.

• Tell about the main points of the work.
• Assess the author’s use of language, characters, and themes.
• Add any background information that will help the reader understand what you are analyzing.
• Use quotes to support your thesis.

• Summarize the main point of your argument.
• Restate your thesis.
• Write a broader statement to provoke further thought.

You will find more interesting info in our article on literary analysis essays.

How to Write an Analysis of an Article

Critical analysis of an article aims to analyze the writing strategies and techniques an author uses to develop their argument. The process is a little different than persuading the reader to accept a particular point of view. Here is a sample outline:

• Introduce the author and the work under analysis.
• Summarize the main points of the article’s content.

• Offer your opinion on the article.
• Allude to elements being analyzed.
• Outline your discussion.

• Analyze only the most notable features of the article.
• State what you think of the author’s thesis.
• Examine the writer’s tone and attitude.
• Analyze the original audience.

• Share what you thought of the article and why.
• State whether you liked it or not.

Critical Film Analysis: Types & How to Write

Film analysis goes beyond the plot structure and includes composition elements such as camera work, lighting, costume choices, etc. After watching the film at least twice, you can select what type of film analysis you will be performing. Check out the types and see what they’re about:

• Semiotic analysis involves interpretation of signs and symbols within a film.
• Narrative analysis examines the story the film seeks to tell.
• Historical analysis is an examination of a film’s relationship to a cultural or historical context.
• Mise-en-scène analysis is an analysis of compositional elements used in a scene or a single shot.

Once you’ve chosen a topic, use this outline to guide you through the writing process:

• Introduce the film’s title, the director’s name, and the release date.
• State the theme or the aspect you focus on.

• You can focus the thesis on the movie’s theme.
• Alternatively, you may analyze its compositional elements, lighting, sound design, costume choice, and editing.

• Give an overview of the film’s primary concepts.
• Note everything related to its style and structure.
• Discuss the director’s ability to achieve their goal.

• Summarize your findings.
• Restate your thesis.
• End with a call-to-action to urge your reader to watch the film after your reading your paper.

You can learn more from our article on film analysis.

How to Write a Cultural Analysis Essay

Critical analysis essay refers to your comment upon one specific cultural aspect that works or doesn’t work in a society. After you’ve chosen a topic for your cultural analysis paper, you can start drafting your outline. Here is how the structure of this kind of paper differs from others:

• Start with a hook.
• Write a brief overview of the cultural aspect you analyze.

• Focus it on the causes and effects of cultural phenomena.
• Alternatively, you can analyze its strengths or flows.

• Perform the analysis of the phenomenon.
• Include arguments advancing a unique concept.
• Add evidence, examples, statistics, and quotes.

• Summarize arguments to confirm that you’ve proven your thesis.
• Make predictions about the future of the cultural issue.

Critical Analysis Essay Topics

1. Critical analysis of qualitative research article.
2. Rhetorical analysis of articles on qualitative studies in healthcare.
3. American Exodus by James N. Gregory: Rhetorical Analysis.
4. Critical analysis of religion and faith.
5. Analyze the sonnet My Mistress’ Eyes by W. Shakespeare.
6. Critical essay on issues of cognitive neuroscience.
7. A Doll House as an example of feminist literature: rhetorical analysis.
8. Conduct a comparative critical analysis of Judaism and Christianity.
9. Rhetorical analysis of an Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.
10. Semantic meaning of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
11. Critical evaluation of Seligman articles.
12. Analyze psychological literature based on A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by E. Hemingway.
13. Rhetorical analysis of literary devices and expressive means in A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
14. Analyze the characteristic features of drama using the example of Death of a Salesman.
15. Critical analysis of the most popular business strategies.
16. Discuss the problem of childhood obesity in Active Living by Van Kann.
17. Analyze IT strategies and planning.
18. Critical analysis of a controversial art using the example of Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
19. Emotional impact of comedy films.
20. Rhetorical analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone as an example of Greek drama.
21. Influence of Socrate’s philosophy on the ancient Greek playwrights.
22. Critical analysis of Sophocles’ plays.
23. Different sets of values in Everyday Use by A. Walker.
24. Analysis of corporate crimes using the example of Lehman Brothers’ scandal.
25. Critical analysis of a scientific article based on Nursing Pain Management.
26. Different interpretations of A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor.
27. Critical analysis of Longinus’ idea of sublime.
28. The importance of a teacher’s role in Freedom Writers.
29. Critical analysis of the efficiency of CBT.
30. Rhetorical analysis of an article on a proactive care program.
31. The concept of emotional intelligence: critical analysis.
32. Evaluate implementation of Windsome’s risk management strategy to enhance the company’s response to stress.
33. The importance of symbolism in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
34. Critical analysis of Thomas Paine’s pamphlets.
35. Rhetorical techniques used in Hamlet by W. Shakespeare.
36. In-depth analysis of the modern world’s social issues in The Handmaid’s Tale.
37. Social messages in Robinson’s and Kincaid’s stories.
38. Analysis of rhetorical strategies used in Dwellings by Linda Hogan.
39. Critical analysis of issues elucidated in A Loss for Words by J. Thurman.
40. Discuss the problems of alienation and perception in The Things They Carried.

📑 Critical Analysis Essay Examples & Bonus Tips

The following writing tips will help you understand how to apply your critical thinking skills in practice and write an excellent critical essay on your own.

Critical Essay Format & Free Samples

Looking for some tips on how to format your paper? This section reflects the latest guidelines for citing your sources with the latest APA 7th and MLA 9th publication manuals.

• 11-point Calibri or Arial.
• 12-point Times New Roman.

• 12-point Times New Roman.

• Page-number aligned top right.
• Title of the paper in bold, centered, in top half of the page.
• Your name, university, course name and number, instructor’s name, and due date.
• 1-inch margins, double-spaced.

• Running head with your name and page numbers.
• 1-inch margins, double-spaced.
• Your name, instructor’s name, course and the date in the upper left-hand corner of the first page.
• Centered title in title case.

• Separate page.
• The word “Abstract”, centered and in bold.
• No more than 250 words.

Before you dive into writing your critical analysis paper, get inspired with some compelling essay examples. The first is a film analysis example. You can download the PDF file below:

The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock is a thriller that derives its suspense from the violence which stands on the borderline with divine retribution. The birds of the film are the symbol of the said violence and primary actors that contribute to the semiotic revelations of the film.

The following critical analysis essay is concerned with a literary work. You can download it below:

Feminism has been influential in various aspects of society for many decades. With the beginning of women’s emancipation, humanity has progressed not only in political and social life but also in science, culture, and literary studies. A feminist standpoint in literature research points to the limited portrayal of the characters in literary works, which showed the world mainly from a patriarchal perspective.

Here’s the list of critical analysis essay examples. You can check them out to get a better understanding of critical analysis and to gain some inspiration.

1. Managing Business Risks: A Critical Analysis
2. Nursing Skills for Palliative Care: A Critical Analysis
3. Critical Analysis of Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research
4. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper: Critical Analysis
5. Roosevelt and Obama: Critical Analysis of Two Speeches
6. “The Love of My Life” by T. C. Boyle Critical Analysis
7. Nursing Education-Practice Gap: Critical Analysis
8. Affordable Care Act: A Critical Analysis
9. Mother Tongue by Amy Tan: Critical Analysis

Bonus Tips: Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the process of conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information. It is about careful reasoning directed to a goal. The main components of this process include observing, wondering, imagining, experimenting, judging, and deciding.

This type of thinking is instrumental in conducting a critical analysis. To succeed at it, you need to be attentive, confident, and open-minded. Below are some questions that you can ask yourself while thinking critically:

• Why are you being told this?
• What are you not being told?
• Who is telling you this?
• How reliable is this information?
• Are there any manipulations involved?
• How else can you analyze the same material?

Critical thinking is a skill that develops with time and effort. However, you may encounter barriers that can prevent you from making accurate judgments. The following tips will help you overcome them:

• Step back from your personal feelings and biases
• Look for different ways to examine the data
• Check your sources for reliability
• Do your best to detect manipulations in arguments
• Always conceptualize what you are reading
• Challenge your worldview

Want to learn more? Feel free to check out our article on critical thinking essays.

Now you know everything necessary to write a perfect critical analysis essay. Feel free to share this article or leave a comment!

Further reading

• How to Write a Critique Paper: Tips + Critique Essay Examples
• How to Write an Art Critique: Examples & Strategies
• How to Write an Analysis Essay: Examples + Writing Guide
• How to Write a Book Review: Format, Outline, & Example
• How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Outline, Steps, & Examples

❓ Critical Analysis Essay FAQs

When analyzing any literary text, it is essential to evaluate the work and use the theme to support your opinion. The response’s goal is to show the reader what the selection of the source and the theme means to you personally.

The purpose of a response to a literature essay is to inform your reader about something interesting and insightful you found in a literary work. It may focus on the characters, plot, or theme of the story.

In a critical essay, choose the formal language and avoid using “I” statements. Focus on the piece you are analyzing, its strengths, and weaknesses. Using the first-person singular will take away the reader’s attention from your argument to you.

A critical source is a source that interprets, analyzes, critiques, and adds to the discussion of the primary source. It is then integrated into critical writing. The best critical sources can be found through library catalogs and scholarly databases.

🔍 References

1. Critical Analysis: University of Wollongong
2. Some Suggestions on Critically Evaluating Your Reading in History: Carleton College
3. Criticism and Critical Analysis: Kansas State University
4. Resources for Writers: Analytical Writing: Drew University
5. Critical Thinking and Writing: University of Kent
6. Writing Critical Essays about Literature: Gallaudet University
7. Film Analysis: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8. Cultural Critique: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
9. Writing a Critical or Rhetorical Analysis: Bellevue College
10. Writing Critical Analysis Papers: University of Washington
11. Critical Analysis Template: Thompson Rivers University
12. Writing Effective Summary and Response Essays: Colorado State University
13. Rhetorical/Critical Analysis: Houston Community College
14. Writing Critical Reviews: Queen’s University
15. General APA Guidelines: Purdue University
16. Using MLA Format: MLA.org

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