This Question Asks About Your Work in Your Reading Character Role
Use the guidelines beneath to learn about the practise of close reading.
Overview
When your teachers or professors ask y'all to analyze a literary text, they often expect for something frequently chosen close reading. Close reading is deep analysis of how a literary text works; it is both a reading process and something you include in a literary analysis newspaper, though in a refined form.
Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject area, grade, and specific word choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows u.s.a. to observe in pocket-size parts of the text clues to assist united states of america understand the whole. For example, if an author writes a novel in the class of a personal periodical about a character's daily life, but that journal reads like a series of lab reports, what exercise nosotros learn about that character? What is the upshot of picking a word like "tome" instead of "book"? In consequence, you are putting the author's choices under a microscope.
The procedure of shut reading should produce a lot of questions. Information technology is when you brainstorm to reply these questions that you lot are prepare to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary analysis paper that makes the about of your close reading piece of work.
Close reading sometimes feels like over-analyzing, but don't worry. Close reading is a process of finding as much information equally y'all tin in order to course as many questions as you tin. When it is fourth dimension to write your paper and formalize your shut reading, you will sort through your piece of work to effigy out what is virtually convincing and helpful to the argument you promise to make and, conversely, what seems like a stretch. This guide imagines you are sitting downward to read a text for the first time on your way to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper. To give i instance of how to do this, we volition read the verse form "Design" past famous American poet Robert Frost and attend to four major components of literary texts: subject, form, word pick (wording), and theme.
If you want even more data about approaching poems specifically, take a await at our guide: How to Read a Poem.
The Poem
As our guide to reading poetry suggests, accept a pencil out when y'all read a text. Brand notes in the margins, underline important words, place question marks where you are confused by something. Of grade, if you are reading in a library book, yous should keep all your notes on a separate piece of paper. If you are not making marks direct on, in, and abreast the text, exist sure to notation line numbers or even quote portions of the text and so you lot have enough context to remember what you lot institute interesting.
Blueprint
I found a dimpled spider, fatty and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning time right,
Similar the ingredients of a witches' goop—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that tiptop,
So steered the white moth thither in the nighttime?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If blueprint govern in a affair so small-scale.
Subject
The subject of a literary text is simply what the text is near. What is its plot? What is its most of import topic? What prototype does it depict? Information technology'southward piece of cake to think of novels and stories every bit having plots, simply sometimes it helps to remember of poetry equally having a kind of plot equally well. When you examine the subject field of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas almost the text and make sure you understand its major concerns earlier you dig deeper.
Observations
In "Design," the speaker describes a scene: a white spider holding a moth on a white flower. The flower is a heal-all, the blooms of which are usually violet-blue. This heal-all is unusual. The speaker then poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of bluish and how the spider and moth institute this detail flower. How did this situation ascend?
Questions
The speaker'south questions seem simple, merely they are really adequately nuanced. We can employ them every bit a guide for our own equally nosotros go forward with our close reading.
- Furthering the speaker'southward uncomplicated "how did this happen," we might ask, is the scene in this poem a manufactured situation?
- The white moth and white spider each use the atypical white flower equally cover-up in search of sanctuary and supper respectively. Did these flora and animate being come up together for a purpose?
- Does the speaker accept a stance nigh whether there is a purpose behind the scene? If so, what is it?
- How volition other elements of the text chronicle to the unpleasantness and uncertainty in our get-go look at the poem'south subject field?
Later on thinking about local questions, we have to zoom out. Ultimately, what is this text well-nigh?
Grade
Course is how a text is put together. When you look at a text, observe how the writer has bundled information technology. If it is a novel, is it written in the get-go person? How is the novel divided? If information technology is a short story, why did the author cull to write short-grade fiction instead of a novel or novella? Examining the form of a text can assistance you develop a starting fix of questions in your reading, which and then may guide further questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the writer chooses. A little background enquiry on class and what different forms can mean makes it easier to figure out why and how the author's choices are important.
Observations
Most poems follow rules or principles of course; fifty-fifty costless verse poems are marked by the author's choices in line breaks, rhythm, and rhyme—fifty-fifty if none of these exists, which is a notable option in itself. Here's an example of thinking through these elements in "Design."
In "Design," Frost chooses an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet form: fourteen lines in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave (a stanza of eight lines) and a sestet (a stanza of six lines). We volition focus on rhyme scheme and stanza structure rather than meter for the purposes of this guide. A typical Italian sonnet has a specific rhyme scheme for the octave:
a b b a a b b a
There's more variation in the sestet rhymes, simply one of the more common schemes is
c d eastward c d e
Conventionally, the octave introduces a trouble or question which the sestet then resolves. The point at which the sonnet goes from the problem/question to the resolution is called the volta, or turn. (Note that we are speaking but in generalities here; at that place is a great deal of variation.)
Frost uses the usual octave scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" (a) and "oth" (b) sounds: "white," "moth," "cloth," "blight," "right," "broth," "barm," "kite." However, his sestet follows an unusual scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" and "all" sounds:
a c a a c c
Questions
Now, we have a few questions with which nosotros can start:
- Why apply an Italian sonnet?
- Why use an unusual scheme in the sestet?
- What problem/question and resolution (if any) does Frost offering?
- What is the volta in this verse form?
- In other words, what is the betoken?
Italian sonnets accept a long tradition; many careful readers recognize the form and know what to expect from his octave, volta, and sestet. Frost seems to practice something fairly standard in the octave in presenting a situation; nonetheless, the plow Frost makes is not to resolution, merely to questions and doubt. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth.
- How did these elements come together?
- Was the moth's death random or by design?
- Is one worse than the other?
We tin guess right abroad that Frost's disruption of the usual purpose of the sestet has something to do with his disruption of its rhyme scheme. Looking even more closely at the text volition assistance us refine our observations and guesses.
Word Choice, or Diction
Looking at the word choice of a text helps us "dig in" ever more deeply. If you are reading something longer, are in that location certain words that come up again and again? Are at that place words that stand out? While yous are going through this process, it is best for you to assume that every word is important—again, you can decide whether something is really important later.
Fifty-fifty when you read prose, our guide for reading poetry offers proficient advice: read with a pencil and make notes. Mark the words that stand out, and perhaps write the questions you accept in the margins or on a separate slice of paper. If you have ideas that may possibly reply your questions, write those down, too.
Observations
Let's take a look at the start line of "Blueprint":
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
The poem starts with something unpleasant: a spider. Then, every bit we look more closely at the adjectives describing the spider, nosotros may see connotations of something that sounds unhealthy or unnatural. When we imagine spiders, nosotros practise non by and large picture them dimpled and white; it is an uncommon and decidedly creepy image. There is dissonance between the spider and its descriptors, i.e., what is wrong with this picture? Already we take a question: what is going on with this spider?
We should look for additional clues further on in the text. The next two lines develop the image of the unusual, unpleasant-sounding spider:
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Now we have a white bloom (a heal-all, which usually has a violet-blue bloom) and a white moth in improver to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, as their name suggests, but this one seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps similar the spider? Does the mutation that changes the heal-all's color also change its beneficial properties—could it be poisonous rather than curative? A white moth doesn't seem remarkable, only information technology is "Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth," or like manmade textile that is artificially "rigid" rather than smooth and flowing like nosotros imagine satin to be. We might think for a moment of a shroud or the lining of a coffin, but even that is awry, for neither should be stiff with decease.
Questions
The first three lines of the verse form's octave innovate unpleasant natural images "of expiry and blight" (equally the speaker puts it in line iv). The flower and moth disrupt expectations: the heal-all is white instead of "blue and innocent," and the moth is reduced to "rigid satin cloth" or "expressionless wings carried similar a paper kite." We might wait a spider to be unpleasant and deadly; the poem's spider also has an unusual and unhealthy advent.
- The focus on whiteness in these lines has more to practise with death than purity—can we understand that whiteness as beingness corpse-like rather than virtuous?
Well before the volta, Frost makes a "turn" abroad from nature as a retreat and haven; instead, he unearths its inherent dangers, making nature menacing. From three lines solitary, we have a number of questions:
- Will whiteness play a role in the residuum of the verse form?
- How does "design"—an organization of these circumstances—fit with a scene of death?
- What other juxtapositions might we encounter?
These disruptions and dissonances call up Frost's alteration to the standard Italian sonnet form: finding the ways and places in which form and discussion selection go together will help us brainstorm to unravel some larger concepts the poem itself addresses.
Theme
Put only, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, particularly longer forms similar novels and plays, have multiple themes. That's good news when yous are close reading because it means at that place are many different means you tin can recall through the questions you lot develop.
Observations
So far in our reading of "Design," our questions circumduct around disruption: disruption of form, disruption of expectations in the description of certain images. Discovering a concept or thought that links multiple questions or observations you have made is the beginning of a discovery of theme.
Questions
What is happening with disruption in "Design"? What point is Frost making? Observations nigh other elements in the text help you address the idea of disruption in more than depth. Here is where we expect dorsum at the piece of work we accept already done: What is the text well-nigh? What is notable nearly the course, and how does it support or undermine what the words say? Does the specific language of the text highlight, or redirect, certain ideas?
In this instance, we are looking to determine what kind(southward) of disruption the poem contains or describes. Rather than "disruption," we want to see what kind of disruption, or whether indeed Frost uses disruptions in course and linguistic communication to communicate something contrary: blueprint.
Sample Analysis
Subsequently you make notes, formulate questions, and fix tentative hypotheses, you must analyze the subject of your close reading. Literary assay is another process of reading (and writing!) that allows you to make a claim about the text. It is as well the point at which you turn a disquisitional eye to your earlier questions and observations to discover the virtually compelling points, discarding the ones that are a "stretch." By "stretch," we mean that nosotros must discard points that are fascinating but have no clear connection to the text as a whole. (We recommend a split up document for recording the brilliant ideas that don't quite fit this fourth dimension effectually.)
Here follows an excerpt from a brief analysis of "Design" based on the close reading higher up. This instance focuses on some lines in cracking particular in order to unpack the meaning and significance of the poem'southward linguistic communication. By commenting on the unlike elements of shut reading we take discussed, it takes the results of our close reading to offer one particular way into the text. (In case you were thinking about using this sample equally your own, be warned: information technology has no thesis and information technology is easily discoverable on the web. Plus it doesn't take a championship.)
Excerpt
Frost'south speaker brews unlikely associations in the first stanza of the poem. The "Assorted characters of death and blight / Mixed ready to begin the forenoon right" make of the grotesque scene an equally grotesque mockery of a breakfast cereal (four–v). These lines are almost singsong in meter and it is easy to imagine them set to a radio jingle. A pun on "right"/"rite" slides the "characters of expiry and blight" into their expected concoction: a "witches' goop" (6). These juxtapositions—a healthy breakfast that is also a potion for dark magic—are borne out when our "fat and white" spider becomes "a snow-drop"—an early spring flower associated with renewal—and the moth as "dead wings carried like a paper kite" (1, 7, 8). Like the mutant heal-all that hosts the moth's death, the spider becomes a deadly bloom; the harmless moth becomes a kid'south toy, but equally "dead wings," more similar a boob made of a skull.
The volta offers no resolution for our unsettled expectations. Having observed the scene and detailed its elements in all their unpleasantness, the speaker turns to questions rather than answers. How did "The wayside blue and innocent heal-all" stop up white and bleached like a bone (10)? How did its "kindred spider" discover the white flower, which was its perfect hiding place (11)? Was the moth, then, also searching for camouflage, just to run across its end?
Using some other question as a disguise, the speaker offers a hypothesis: "What merely blueprint of darkness to appall?" (13). This question sounds rhetorical, every bit though the but reason for such an unlikely combination of flora and fauna is some "pattern of darkness." Some force, the speaker suggests, assembled the white spider, bloom, and moth to snuff out the moth'southward life. Such a design appalls, or horrifies. We might also consider the speaker asking what other strength but night design could utilize something as simple as appalling in its other sense (making pale or white) to effect death.
Yet, the poem does not close with a question, but with a statement. The speaker'south "If design govern in a affair so small-scale" establishes a condition for the octave's questions afterward the fact (14). There is no point in because the dark design that brought together "assorted characters of expiry and blight" if such an event is too minor, too physically small to exist the work of some force unknown. Ending on an "if" clause has the effect of rendering the verse form nonetheless more uncertain in its conclusions: non only are we faced with unanswered questions, we are now not even sure those questions are valid in the outset place.
Behind the speaker and the agonizing scene, we have Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet. Similar whatever designer may have altered the bloom and attracted the spider to kill the moth, the poet congenital his poem "incorrect" with a purpose in mind. Design surely governs in a verse form, all the same small; does Frost also have a dark pattern? Tin we compare a scene in nature to a carefully constructed sonnet?
A Annotation on Organization
Your goal in a paper about literature is to communicate your best and most interesting ideas to your reader. Depending on the type of paper yous have been assigned, your ideas may need to be organized in service of a thesis to which everything should link back. It is all-time to ask your instructor about the expectations for your paper.
Knowing how to organize these papers can be tricky, in role because there is no single right respond—but more than and less effective answers. You may make up one's mind to organize your paper thematically, or by tackling each idea sequentially; yous may choose to order your ideas by their importance to your argument or to the poem. If y'all are comparing and contrasting 2 texts, yous might work thematically or by addressing first ane text and so the other. One mode to approach a text may be to kickoff with the outset of the novel, story, play, or poem, and work your style toward its end. For example, here is the rough structure of the example higher up: The author of the sample decided to employ the verse form itself every bit an organizational guide, at least for this part of the analysis.
- A paragraph about the octave.
- A paragraph about the volta.
- A paragraph about the penultimate line (13).
- A paragraph most the terminal line (14).
- A paragraph addressing grade that suggests a transition to the next section of the newspaper.
Yous will have to decide for yourself the best fashion to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is information technology easier to follow your points when you lot write nigh each part of the text in detail earlier moving on? Or is your work clearer when y'all work through each big idea—the significance of whiteness, the event of an altered sonnet form, and and so on—sequentially?
We propose you lot write your paper however is easiest for you lot and then move things around during revision if you need to.
Further Reading
If you really want to main the exercise of reading and writing about literature, nosotros recommend Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain's wonderful book, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature. Barnet and Cain offer not simply definitions and descriptions of processes, only examples of explications and analyses, as well as checklists for you, the author of the newspaper. The Curt Guide is certainly not the only available reference for writing about literature, only it is an excellent guide and reminder for new writers and veterans akin.
Source: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/closereading/
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