In anticipation for your Unit 3 paper, please keep the following consideration in mind.
Your goal is to read the O'Conner texts, note important observations about each text, analyze the commonalities, and argue how/why those commonalities are important. The purpose is to show how THREE ASPECTS OF ONE STORY (themes, symbols, character traits, etc.) tie the story together.
You want to be able to show your readers how they should be interpreting the stories using one of those elements. You're going to want to justify where in the text(s) you draw your conclusions from, and why your interpretation is accurate.
Again, please refer to the sample student essay in the textbook as an example of how to appropriately conduct a literary analysis. Use this as a model to guide your thinking. Please let me know if you have any questions.