Summaries and Analyses of Common Texts

Some websites provide summaries and analyses of novels and other books, often chapter by chapter. Students have sometimes been encouraged to use these by high school teachers when the reading is challenging. However, these websites should not be used without the express permission of the instructor assigning the text.

• Instructors want to ensure that you do your own reading and work on your comprehension skills without aids such as these.
• Instructors may ask you to write a summary of the text, and they will not want you to get help from a website.
• Instructors want you to build your own interpretation of the text based on reading, annotation, and journaling, not reading someone else’s analysis of the text.