Using Sources Tutorial:
Tutorial #25:
Writing About Literature:
Correct Verb Tense
When to Use Present Tense
When to Use Past Tense
When to Use Other Tenses
Writing Center
English 800 Center
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All notes and exercises should be done
on separate sheets of paper, which you
should bring to your conference with an
instructor in the center.
As you work through the tutorial, make sure to
see an instructional aide at the front desk in the
Writing Center or English 800 Center if you
have any questions or difficulties.
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Writing About Literature: Correct Verb Tense
Part One: Using Present Tense in Literature Essays
Whenever we read or discuss literary works—short stories, novels, poems and plays—they seem
vivid and alive. Thus, when discussing these works, we use present tense, no matter what tense
the authors, poets and playwrights used when they wrote the works—and even if the writers
themselves are no longer alive. The present tense highlights the vividness with which events
reoccur whenever we think and write about them.
Since literary works are often written in the past tense, it is easy to shift verb tenses accidentally
when you are writing an essay, especially after quoting from a literary work written in past tense.
This tutorial will help you understand when to choose present, past, or present perfect verb tense.
Use the present tense to describe fictional events in the text:
• In Flynn’s Gone Girl, the character Amy Dunne attempts to fake her own death.
• Voltaire's Candide encounters numerous misfortunes throughout his travels.
Also, use the present tense to describe literary elements like characters, setting or theme:
• In Toni Morrison’s Sula, Plum is a World War I veteran who is a defeated, depressed
heroin addict.
• The setting of Sula is a poor African American community that exists on the top of a
barren hill in Ohio.
When writing about literature, also use the present tense to report your own interpretations and
the interpretations of other sources:
• Odysseus represents the archetypal epic hero.
• In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford’s three
husbands signify distinct phases of her life.
• Marxist critics of The Great Gatsby contend that Tom and Daisy represent the power and
arrogance of the wealthy while George and Myrtle suggest the powerlessness and
vulnerability of the working class.
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Principle I. Use present tense when you are writing about fictional events; describing and
analyzing literary elements such as character, setting or theme; or reporting
your interpretations or the interpretations of other sources.
Exercise 1
Instructions: Using Principle I, write one sentence that describes something that happens in a
literary work you have recently read. Then, write another sentence that says what you think the
theme of that work is. Make sure you use the correct verb tense in each sentence.
Part Two: Using Past Tense in Literature Essays
You should use the past tense when you are writing about the author’s life or the historical time
period when the literary work takes place, because historical events and elements of the author’s
background occurred in the past:
• The Harlem Renaissance, the period when Langston Hughes wrote much of his best
poetry, was a flowering of African American music, art, and literature during the 1920s.
• World War I was the setting and subject of the vivid poetry of Wilfred Owen and Isaac!
Rosenberg; this war involved terrible waste of human life, and both poets died during
combat.
Also use the past tense when you are referring to an event that happened before the literary work
began:
▪ In the opening scenes of Hamlet, the men are visited by the ghost of Hamlet’s father,
whom Claudius murdered.
▪ In beginning chapters of The Great Gatsby, everyone wonders how Gatsby made his
money.
In the previous examples, Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father before the beginning of the play,
and Gatsby is already rich when the novel begins.
Principle II. Use past tense when writing about historical events, the author’s life, and
events that occurred before the beginning of the story, poem or play.
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Exercise 2
Instructions: Using Principle II, write one sentence that describes something that happened
before the beginning of a literary work that you have recently read. Then write a sentence about
the author’s life. Make sure you use the correct verb tense in each sentence.
Part Three: Using Present Perfect in a Literature Essay
Use the present perfect tense (have or has + the present participle) to describe an event that has
occurred in the text before the event you are currently describing:
▪ After her funeral, the townspeople discover that Miss Emily has slept with a corpse for
over thirty years.
▪ Convinced that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him, Othello strangles her.
In the first example, the townspeople discover something that has occurred earlier in the story:
that Miss Emily has slept with the corpse of Homer Barron. In the second example, the event that
is currently being described is Othello strangling Desdemonia; if Desdemonia had been
unfaithful, it would have happened earlier in the play.
Principle III. Use present perfect when writing about an event that occurred or might have
occurred in the text before the event you are currently describing.
Exercise 3
Instructions: Using a literary work you have recently read, write a sentence that illustrates
Principle III: use present perfect when writing about an event that occurred or might have
occurred in the text before the event you are currently describing.
Part Four: Combining Tenses in the Same Sentence or Paragraph
Literature essays often require writers to describe both the events in the work and the historical
context or the author’s biography. Writers may also wish to refer to events that happened before
the work of literature began—or to events that happened earlier in the text than the event they are
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currently describing. Thus, in almost all literature essays, writers must use more than one verb
tense, often in the same paragraph or even in the same sentence. In fact, you can see more than
one tense in many of the previous examples in this tutorial. The following examples use both
present and past tense because the writer is interpreting literature (present tense) and including
factual information about the author’s life (past tense):
▪ In the novel The Portrait of an Artist of a Young Man by James Joyce, who grew up in
the Catholic faith, church doctrine illuminates the roots of Stephen Dedalus’ guilt.
▪ In Les Belles Images, Simone de Beauvoir accurately portrays the complexities of a
marriage even though she never married in her lifetime.
Exercise 4
Instructions: Using Principles I, II, and III, write the correct verb above the verb in the
parentheses. The first one is done for you.
1. Lighthead, Terrance Hayes’ fourth volume of poetry, (to win) the National Book Award. All
the poems in this volume (to shake) and (to jive) with a loose associative whimsy. But
Hayes was not simply jive-talking. The battle between darkness and light—and all their
metaphorical associations—(to give) the brisk, alliterative sounds a depth that makes readers
want to read them twice. “A Plate of Bones,” a poem about the complicated inheritance of a
relative’s racism, begins “My slick black muscular back- / talking uncle drawing me and a
school / of fish corpses to church.” As the poem (to continue), and the speaker’s uncle (to
rage) about his cousin’s date with a white man, readers come across the surprising line: “I let
him feed me / the anger I knew was a birthright, / a plate of bones thin enough to puncture / a
lung.”
2. Although Flannery O’Connor, who (to die) in 1964, (to be) not a member of the working
class, the majority of her characters (to be) rural, working-class people. In her novels and
short stories, working-class people (to be) happier in their station in life and also (to
won$
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experience) less loneliness than upper-class people.
3. In Sula, readers find out about several events that (to happen) even before the beginning of
the novel. For example, after her husband Boy Boy (to abandon) their family, Eva Peace (to
have) no money and no possibility of a job. She (to leave) her three small children with a
neighbor and (to insure) her leg for a large sum of money. She (to place) her leg on a
railroad track as a train (to approach), to make sure that she (to have) enough money for her
children to survive. During the novel, Eva (to do) not understand why her daughter Hannah
(to need) to be told that Eva (to love) her. To Eva, the sacrifice of her leg shows her love for
Hannah.
4. At the end of The Great Gatsby, Nick Caraway (to reflect) on the events that (to happen)
earlier in the novel. At this point, he (to realize) that Tom, Daisy and Jordan are careless
people.
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Exercise 5
Instructions:
1. Review an essay about literature where your teacher has graded and marked verb tense
errors. Compare your verb tenses to the principles in this tutorial. This will also help you
realize if you are using them correctly.
2. Look back at the principles and exercises in this tutorial and make notes on a separate
sheet of paper. You will bring these notes and the essay to your conference.
3. Make!an!appointment!for!a!conference!with!an!instructor!in!the!Writing!Center!(18-
104)!or!English!800!Center!(18-102).!!To!make!this!appointment,!stop!by!the!
Centers!or!call!(650)!574-6436. During!this!appointment,!the!professor!will!make!
sure!you!understand!the!concepts!covered!in!this!tutoria l ,!answer!any!questions!
that!you!might!have,!review!your!answers!to!these!exercises,!and!check!to!see!if!you!
can!incorporate!the!skill!into!your!writing.
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Reminder:$
For!this!appointment,!bring!
• any!notes!about!the!tutorial!that!you!have!taken!
• your!completed!tutorial!exercises!!
• and!the!essay!
