Explication

• The title of the story and the date of its original publication
• The author’s name and dates
• The name (if any) of the main character, together with a description of that character’s dominant traits or features
• Other characters, dealt with the same way
• A short description of the setting
• The narrator of the story (POV)
• A concise summary of the main events, given in chronological order
• A description of the general tone of the story (the author’s feelings toward the central character or main events)
• Some comments on the style in which the story is written (quotes are helpful)
• Genre conventions/inventions that we haven't seen before
• The work’s main theme in a sentence
• Leading symbols (if any), with an educated guess at what each symbol suggests
• Finally, an evaluation of the reading as a whole, concisely setting forth your opinion of it