Go Deep and Go Wide

For my class this morning, I was assigned to read a book and then write a three page paper on it, summarizing the book for one page and then delving into one argument and discussing it for two pages.

One of the challenges in graduate study, apart from the requisite expectation of lack of sleep, is to broadly define and then specifically argue a topic. This often feels like an impossible task. How can I go so broad as to summarize a topic and then go so deep as to analyze it meaningfully? When you add in the third parameter of keeping all this to three short pages, I feel pressed from all sides.

How can I go deep while simulatenously going wide? And on top of all that, keep it short and concise? I have no answers today; just this one question I'm flinging out into the cosmic void.

That is all.