How do I demonstrate the importance of something to a text?

Very often in an exam question you will be asked of discuss how important something is within a text, this could be a character or symbol, for example. (Sometimes characters can be symbols themselves). If assessing importance, you should comment on what this character/symbol does to progress the story, or what it means to other characters/themes – does it reinforce certain themes or ideas, does it facilitate certain events to happen? This allows you to show the function, and thus importance in the text. Always use quotations and references from the text to demonstrate your answer, and link this to the wider context of the text/ broader themes that you are aware of. Also, commenting on the context of the text, and the time that the author was writing in will help you to attain higher-band marks. As well as this, don’t allow the focus on importance to distract from specific literary analysis too – still ensure you discuss the language and techniques that the writer is using.

For example, if you were being asked “What do you think is the importance of the ‘beast’ in Lord of the Flies?” (AQA specimen paper, English Literature B702/2), you could answer as follows:

“The beast is symbolic of evil in the text, and is important in reflecting the loss of civilisation that takes place throughout the novel, due to a lack of social structure and moral boundaries present on the Island. It is through the character of the beast that the boys channel their descent into savagery and chaos. This is demonstrated by the increasing violence of the boys as the novel progresses, for example, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Do him in!” reflects the use of the beast as a means to allow the savage instincts of the characters to become dominant. Golding’s use of punctuation in the form of exclamation marks, and the short sentences, reflect a tone of violence as well as a lack of civilisation and order. In reality, the boys actually kill Simon, and the beast is never seen in the novel, reflecting that all along that the beast served as a projection of human evil and fear, which exist within the boys themselves. Similarly, the symbol of the Conch can be perceived as the opposite of the beast, in that its represents order; the fact that the conch fades throughout the book, and loses importance and relevance to the characters, reinforces the role of the beast in that it too demonstrates the rise of chaos and savagery. Golding, having experienced the horrors of the Second World War, is using the beast in order to critique human nature, and reflect that there is an innate human evilness, which flourishes in the conditions of lack of social structure on the island.Thus, the beast serves as a significant and fundamental trope for evilness within Lord of the Flies.”