String Theory

For English classes, book clubs, and close readers

The Literary Analysis template

Take a novel apart on a corkboard: the characters and what they want, the symbols argued into themes, every passage cited, and a bibliography that writes itself.

A String Theory board for The Great Gatsby on the Jazz Age skin: photo cards for the characters pinned over a painting of a lawn party at dusk, grouped under masking-tape headings for New York City, the Valley of Ashes, West Egg, and East Egg, and connected by red, green, and dashed blue strings.
The Great Gatsby's character web, laid out as the novel's own map: four headings for four places, and the strings between them.

Story’s opposite number

The Story template is for people writing fiction. This one is for taking apart a work that already exists, which is a different job with a different vocabulary. Its cards read Character, Setting, Object / Symbol, Scene / Plot point, and Theme / Device, and the strings between them say symbolizes, foreshadows, foil of, develops, and alludes to. Nothing about the tool changes. The board is the same corkboard, with the questions an English class actually asks written on the cards.

Every claim says what it rests on

The template’s signature field is called Basis, and it appears on every card. Each claim is marked as Stated in the text, Implied, or My interpretation, and there is a Textual evidence box beside it for the passage or the page. “Nick is from Minnesota” is stated. “Nick is drawn to Gatsby despite disapproving of him” is implied. “Nick is in love with Gatsby” is an interpretation, a defensible one with a body of criticism behind it, and the field exists so a reader can make that claim honestly instead of smuggling it in as fact. A board where everything is marked as stated has not been read carefully. A board where everything is interpretation is not an analysis of this particular book.

Characters carry the classroom’s vocabulary

A character card asks for a Role (Protagonist, Antagonist, Foil, Narrator, Love interest, Mentor), a Characterization in Forster’s terms (round or flat, dynamic or static), what they want, how they change, and where they first appear. The strings speak the same language. When one character is a foil of another, the string asks what the contrast illuminates, and the answer goes on the string itself, where a grader or a book club can read it. Knows is almost always the wrong string. Admires, wants, betrays, and foil of each say something.

Symbols are argued into themes

Symbols and themes are both cards, and the rule that makes the board an analysis is that they have to be connected. A symbol strung to a theme with symbolizes, develops, or embodies carries a Significance note saying how, in one sentence. A symbol with no string is a list entry. Passages are cards too, quoted exactly and cited to the chapter, so the evidence sits on the board beside the reading it supports. The Gatsby demo keeps them on a second board of their own, with the themes and essential questions across the top and the cited passages beneath.

Two orders of telling

Every scene card records where in the text it appears and when it happened in the story’s world, and those are different questions. Switch to the Timeline and the board reorders itself by story date. Gatsby and Daisy’s courtship in Louisville, which the reader meets in Chapter 4 secondhand from Jordan, jumps to the front, five years before the novel opens. Fitzgerald could have told it in order and chose not to. A foreshadows string from an early scene to a late one makes the setup a physical thing on the wall, and cutting either end tells you what else just broke.

Sources, without the last-night scramble

Works, editions, and outside sources are cards with authors, dates, and identifiers. Every image carries a license, an attribution, and a link back to where it came from. The Sources view assembles all of it into a bibliography as you go, so there is nothing to build the night before it is due. One limit to know up front: it renders a readable one-line citation per source, not a formatted MLA or APA entry. If the department requires MLA 9, the list gets reformatted by hand.

For teachers: a ready-to-teach unit

The Great Gatsby character map is a five-period unit written in Understanding by Design, mapped to Common Core (with TEKS, Florida BEST, and Virginia SOL equivalents), with a rubric, formative checks, and the media, citation, and AI ground rules a school will ask about before the first image goes on a board. The demo board on this page is its worked exemplar. It is a model rather than an answer key, and its readings are meant to be argued with.

Your first board in 15 minutes

  1. Create a project and pick Literary Analysis.
  2. Add the protagonist, the antagonist, and the narrator. Give each a Role and fill in what they want.
  3. Set a Basis on each field you filled in, and be honest about which ones are your own reading.
  4. Add one symbol and one theme, then string them with symbolizes. In the Significance box, say how in one sentence, without using the word “represents.”
  5. Add three scenes with where in the text and when in the story’s world.
  6. Open the Timeline. If the story is told out of order, you can see it now.

What it isn’t

Nothing here reads the book for you. There is no summary, no generated analysis, and no field the tool fills in on its own; a Basis of My interpretation is a claim you have to defend. It is the companion to the Story template rather than a replacement for it, and a novel in progress belongs over there. The Sources view keeps your citations honest and readable, but it does not format them to a style guide.

From the Great Gatsby board

Click any screenshot to see it full size.

Four characters open side by side. Every card carries a Role, a Characterization, what they want, how they change, and a Basis that says whether the claim is stated, implied, or the reader's own.
Passages are cards, cited to the chapter. A string from one to a later scene reads foreshadows, and its tooltip carries the details.
The Timeline puts the story in the order it happened rather than the order it is told. Louisville in 1917 comes first, five years before the novel opens.
The Navigator on a period map of Manhattan, with the Plaza Hotel called out and the passages listed in the rail.
Every image carries its attribution, source, date, license, and a link back. This one is a Wikimedia Commons photograph in the public domain.
The second board: themes and essential questions across the top, the cited passages beneath, and green strings for the symbols that carry them.
The whole Themes and Evidence board: the work and its sources at the left, the plot as Freytag's arc along the bottom, and the themes above the passages that support them.
A sticky note beside the Green Light card makes the reading explicit: one green string, because Gatsby wants the light before we ever hear him speak.
Daisy's connections, listed in her file: who loves her and whether it is requited, who is family and how, who knows her and how well, and what each string means.
The fields a Character card asks for, each a checkbox in Project settings. Textual evidence and Basis are on by default; dates of birth and death are off until a project wants them.
The novel itself, as a Project Gutenberg PDF opened inside the media viewer, with its source and license on the document.
The media gallery grouped by the cards it belongs to: the author's photograph and a Wikipedia link under Author, and the character portraits beneath.
Four characters open side by side. Every card carries a Role, a Characterization, what they want, how they change, and a Basis that says whether the claim is stated, implied, or the reader's own.