Critical Analysis

Your first paragraph should very briefly contextualize the passage, and the rest of your essay should explore how literary features such as language, structure and imagery generate effect and significance.
Passage One: Katherine Mansfield, Prelude
As they stood on the steps, the high grassy bank on which the aloe rested rose up like a wave, and the aloe seemed to ride upon it like a ship with the oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon the lifted oars like water, and on the green wave glittered the dew.
“Do you feel it, too”, said Linda, and she spoke to her mother with the special voice that women use at night to each other as though they spoke in their sleep or from some hollow cave – “Don’t you feel that it is coming towards us?”
She dreamed that she was caught up out of the cold water into the ship with the lifted oars and the budding mast. Now the oars fell striking quickly, quickly. They rowed far away over the top of the garden trees, the paddocks and the dark bush beyond. Ah, she heard herself cry: “Faster! Faster!” to those who were rowing.
How much more real this dream was than that they should go back to the house where the sleeping children lay and where Stanley and Beryl played cribbage.
“I believe those are buds,” she said. “Let us go down into the garden, mother. I like that aloe. I like it more than anything here. And I am sure I shall remember it long after I’ve forgotten all the other things.”
She put her hand on her mother’s arm and they walked down the steps, round the island and on to the main drive that led to the front gates.
Looking at it from below she could see the long sharp thorns that edged the aloe leaves, and at the sight of them her heart grew hard….She particularly liked the long sharp thorns….Nobody would dare to come near the ship or to follow after.
“Not even my Newfoundland dog,” thought she, “that I’m so fond of in the daytime.”
For she really was fond of him; she loved and admired and respected him tremendously. Oh, better than anyone else in the world. She knew him through and through. He was the soul of truth and decency, and for all his practical experience he was awfully simple, easily pleased and easily hurt….
If only he wouldn’t jump at her so, and bark so loudly, and watch her with such eager, loving eyes. He was too strong for her; she had always hated things that rush at her, from a child. There were times when he was frightening – really frightening. When she just had not screamed at the top of her voice: “You are killing me.” And at that those times she had longed to say the most coarse, hateful things….
“You know I’m very delicate. You know as well as I do that my heart is affected, and the doctor has told you I may die any moment. I have had three great lumps of children already….”
Yes, yes, it was true. Linda snatched her hand from mother’s arm. For all her love and respect and admiration she hated him. And how tender he always was after times like those, how submissive, how thoughtful. He would do anything for her; he longed to serve her….Linda heard herself saying in a weak voice:
“Stanley, would you light a candle?”
And she heard his joyful answer: “Of course I will, my darling,” and he leapt out of bed as though he were going to leap at the moon for her.