How Does Writing and Close Reads Connect?
Use the guidelines below to acquire near the practise of close reading.
Overview
When your teachers or professors enquire y'all to analyze a literary text, they ofttimes look for something ofttimes chosen close reading. Shut reading is deep analysis of how a literary text works; information technology is both a reading procedure and something you include in a literary assay newspaper, though in a refined form.
Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject, form, and specific give-and-take choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to find in small parts of the text clues to help united states understand the whole. For example, if an writer writes a novel in the class of a personal periodical near a character's daily life, but that journal reads like a serial of lab reports, what practice we learn about that character? What is the result of picking a word like "tome" instead of "book"? In effect, you lot are putting the writer'due south choices under a microscope.
The procedure of close reading should produce a lot of questions. Information technology is when y'all begin to reply these questions that you are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary assay newspaper that makes the most of your close reading work.
Close reading sometimes feels like over-analyzing, but don't worry. Shut reading is a process of finding as much data as you lot tin can in gild to grade as many questions as you lot can. When it is fourth dimension to write your paper and formalize your close reading, you will sort through your work to figure out what is most convincing and helpful to the statement you hope 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 style to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper. To give one case of how to do this, nosotros will read the poem "Design" past famous American poet Robert Frost and attend to four major components of literary texts: subject, course, give-and-take option (diction), and theme.
If you want fifty-fifty more information well-nigh approaching poems specifically, accept a expect at our guide: How to Read a Verse form.
The Poem
Every bit our guide to reading poetry suggests, accept a pencil out when you read a text. Brand notes in the margins, underline important words, place question marks where you are confused by something. Of form, if you are reading in a library volume, yous should proceed all your notes on a carve up piece of paper. If you are non making marks straight on, in, and abreast the text, be certain to note line numbers or even quote portions of the text so yous have plenty context to recollect what yous found interesting.
Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, property up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of decease and blight
Mixed set to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And expressionless wings carried similar a paper kite.
What had that flower to exercise with being white,
The wayside bluish and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but pattern of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing and so pocket-sized.
Bailiwick
The subject area of a literary text is simply what the text is almost. What is its plot? What is its most important topic? What image does it describe? It'due south easy to think of novels and stories as having plots, but sometimes it helps to call up of poetry equally having a kind of plot equally well. When you examine the subject of a text, yous want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you understand its major concerns before you dig deeper.
Observations
In "Design," the speaker describes a scene: a white spider belongings a moth on a white flower. The flower is a heal-all, the blooms of which are unremarkably violet-blueish. This heal-all is unusual. The speaker and then poses a series of questions, request why this heal-all is white instead of bluish and how the spider and moth found this item flower. How did this situation arise?
Questions
The speaker's questions seem simple, only they are really fairly nuanced. We tin can use them as a guide for our own as nosotros go forrad with our close reading.
- Furthering the speaker's simple "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 as camouflage in search of sanctuary and supper respectively. Did these flora and animate being come together for a purpose?
- Does the speaker have a stance nearly whether at that place is a purpose behind the scene? If and then, what is it?
- How will other elements of the text chronicle to the unpleasantness and doubtfulness in our get-go expect at the verse form'southward field of study?
After thinking nigh local questions, nosotros accept to zoom out. Ultimately, what is this text about?
Form
Grade is how a text is put together. When you look at a text, observe how the writer has arranged information technology. If information technology is a novel, is it written in the first person? How is the novel divided? If it is a brusk story, why did the writer choose to write short-form fiction instead of a novel or novella? Examining the grade of a text tin can help yous develop a starting set up of questions in your reading, which then may guide farther questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the author chooses. A little background research on form and what different forms can mean makes it easier to effigy out why and how the author'southward choices are important.
Observations
Most poems follow rules or principles of form; even complimentary verse poems are marked by the author's choices in line breaks, rhythm, and rhyme—even if none of these exists, which is a notable choice in itself. Hither's an case of thinking through these elements in "Design."
In "Design," Frost chooses an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet grade: fourteen lines in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave (a stanza of eight lines) and a sestet (a stanza of half-dozen lines). Nosotros will 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, just one of the more than common schemes is
c d e c d due east
Conventionally, the octave introduces a problem or question which the sestet then resolves. The point at which the sonnet goes from the trouble/question to the resolution is chosen the volta, or plough. (Note that we are speaking only in generalities hither; at that place is a bully deal of variation.)
Frost uses the usual octave scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" (a) and "oth" (b) sounds: "white," "moth," "textile," "bane," "correct," "goop," "froth," "kite." However, his sestet follows an unusual scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" and "all" sounds:
a c a a c c
Questions
Now, nosotros have a few questions with which we tin can first:
- Why use an Italian sonnet?
- Why use an unusual scheme in the sestet?
- What problem/question and resolution (if any) does Frost offer?
- What is the volta in this verse form?
- In other words, what is the point?
Italian sonnets have a long tradition; many careful readers recognize the grade and know what to expect from his octave, volta, and sestet. Frost seems to do something fairly standard in the octave in presenting a situation; however, the turn Frost makes is not to resolution, but to questions and doubtfulness. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth.
- How did these elements come up together?
- Was the moth'due south death random or by design?
- Is 1 worse than the other?
Nosotros can guess right away that Frost's disruption of the usual purpose of the sestet has something to practise with his disruption of its rhyme scheme. Looking even more than closely at the text will help the states refine our observations and guesses.
Word Choice, or Diction
Looking at the give-and-take choice of a text helps us "dig in" e'er more deeply. If you are reading something longer, are there sure words that come up again and again? Are there words that stand out? While you lot are going through this process, it is best for you to presume that every word is of import—again, you tin can decide whether something is really of import subsequently.
Even when you read prose, our guide for reading poetry offers adept advice: read with a pencil and make notes. Mark the words that stand out, and perhaps write the questions you have in the margins or on a separate piece of paper. If you accept ideas that may possibly answer your questions, write those down, besides.
Observations
Let's take a look at the first line of "Blueprint":
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
The poem starts with something unpleasant: a spider. And then, as we look more closely at the adjectives describing the spider, we may run across connotations of something that sounds unhealthy or unnatural. When we imagine spiders, we do not by and large picture show them dimpled and white; it is an uncommon and decidedly creepy image. There is dissonance betwixt the spider and its descriptors, i.e., what is wrong with this picture? Already nosotros have a question: what is going on with this spider?
We should expect 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 upwards a moth
Similar a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Now we accept a white flower (a heal-all, which usually has a violet-blueish flower) and a white moth in addition to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, equally their proper noun suggests, only this one seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps like the spider? Does the mutation that changes the heal-all's color also alter its beneficial backdrop—could it be poisonous rather than curative? A white moth doesn't seem remarkable, but it is "Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth," or like manmade fabric that is artificially "rigid" rather than polish and flowing like we imagine satin to be. Nosotros might call back for a moment of a shroud or the lining of a coffin, but fifty-fifty that is awry, for neither should be stiff with decease.
Questions
The first iii lines of the poem'south octave introduce unpleasant natural images "of death and blight" (as the speaker puts it in line four). The flower and moth disrupt expectations: the heal-all is white instead of "blue and innocent," and the moth is reduced to "rigid satin fabric" or "dead wings carried similar a paper kite." Nosotros might expect a spider to be unpleasant and deadly; the poem's spider besides has an unusual and unhealthy appearance.
- The focus on whiteness in these lines has more than to do with death than purity—can nosotros empathise that whiteness as being corpse-like rather than virtuous?
Well before the volta, Frost makes a "turn" away from nature as a retreat and haven; instead, he unearths its inherent dangers, making nature menacing. From three lines lonely, we have a number of questions:
- Volition whiteness play a role in the residue of the poem?
- How does "pattern"—an arrangement of these circumstances—fit with a scene of death?
- What other juxtapositions might we see?
These disruptions and dissonances recollect Frost'southward amending to the standard Italian sonnet form: finding the means and places in which form and word selection get together will help us brainstorm to unravel some larger concepts the poem itself addresses.
Theme
Put simply, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, especially longer forms like novels and plays, have multiple themes. That's good news when you are shut reading considering information technology means there are many different ways you lot tin can think through the questions you develop.
Observations
So far in our reading of "Design," our questions revolve effectually disruption: disruption of grade, disruption of expectations in the description of certain images. Discovering a concept or thought that links multiple questions or observations y'all have made is the get-go of a discovery of theme.
Questions
What is happening with disruption in "Design"? What signal is Frost making? Observations about other elements in the text help y'all address the thought of disruption in more depth. Here is where nosotros look back at the work nosotros have already done: What is the text about? What is notable nearly the form, and how does it support or undermine what the words say? Does the specific language of the text highlight, or redirect, sure ideas?
In this example, we are looking to decide what kind(s) 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 form and language to communicate something opposite: design.
Sample Analysis
After you lot make notes, formulate questions, and set tentative hypotheses, yous must analyze the subject of your shut reading. Literary analysis is some other process of reading (and writing!) that allows you to brand a claim about the text. It is as well the point at which y'all turn a critical eye to your earlier questions and observations to find the most compelling points, discarding the ones that are a "stretch." By "stretch," we mean that we must discard points that are fascinating but have no clear connexion to the text as a whole. (We recommend a split document for recording the brilliant ideas that don't quite fit this fourth dimension around.)
Here follows an extract from a brief analysis of "Pattern" based on the close reading above. This example focuses on some lines in nifty detail in order to unpack the meaning and significance of the poem's linguistic communication. Past commenting on the different elements of shut reading nosotros have discussed, it takes the results of our close reading to offer one particular mode into the text. (In example you were thinking well-nigh using this sample as your own, exist warned: it has no thesis and it is hands discoverable on the web. Plus information technology doesn't have a championship.)
Excerpt
Frost's speaker brews unlikely associations in the first stanza of the poem. The "Assorted characters of death and blight / Mixed set up to brainstorm the morn right" make of the grotesque scene an equally grotesque mockery of a breakfast cereal (four–5). These lines are almost singsong in meter and it is like shooting fish in a barrel to imagine them set to a radio jingle. A pun on "right"/"rite" slides the "characters of death and blight" into their expected concoction: a "witches' broth" (6). These juxtapositions—a healthy breakfast that is likewise 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, eight). Like the mutant heal-all that hosts the moth'south death, the spider becomes a mortiferous flower; the harmless moth becomes a child's toy, but as "dead wings," more similar a puppet fabricated 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" find the white flower, which was its perfect hiding place (11)? Was the moth, and then, besides searching for cover-up, only to meet its cease?
Using another question as a disguise, the speaker offers a hypothesis: "What only design of darkness to appall?" (13). This question sounds rhetorical, as though the only reason for such an unlikely combination of flora and fauna is some "design of darkness." Some force, the speaker suggests, assembled the white spider, flower, and moth to snuff out the moth's life. Such a design appalls, or horrifies. Nosotros might also consider the speaker asking what other strength but nighttime pattern could use something as simple as appalling in its other sense (making pale or white) to effect death.
However, the poem does not close with a question, but with a statement. The speaker'due south "If design govern in a matter so modest" establishes a condition for the octave's questions after the fact (14). There is no point in considering the dark blueprint that brought together "assorted characters of death and blight" if such an event is likewise small, besides physically pocket-size to be the work of some forcefulness unknown. Ending on an "if" clause has the issue of rendering the poem still more uncertain in its conclusions: not just are we faced with unanswered questions, we are now not fifty-fifty certain those questions are valid in the first place.
Behind the speaker and the disturbing scene, nosotros have Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet. Like whatever designer may have altered the bloom and attracted the spider to kill the moth, the poet built his poem "wrong" with a purpose in mind. Design surely governs in a poem, yet small; does Frost also have a dark design? Can nosotros compare a scene in nature to a carefully constructed sonnet?
A Note on Arrangement
Your goal in a paper near literature is to communicate your all-time and nearly interesting ideas to your reader. Depending on the type of paper you have been assigned, your ideas may need to be organized in service of a thesis to which everything should link back. It is best to ask your instructor most the expectations for your paper.
Knowing how to organize these papers can be tricky, in office because there is no single right answer—just more and less effective answers. You may decide to organize your paper thematically, or past tackling each idea sequentially; yous may choose to lodge your ideas by their importance to your argument or to the poem. If you are comparing and contrasting two texts, you might work thematically or by addressing first one text and then the other. I manner to approach a text may exist to start with the kickoff of the novel, story, play, or poem, and work your manner toward its end. For instance, here is the rough structure of the example to a higher place: The author of the sample decided to use the poem itself as an organizational guide, at least for this part of the analysis.
- A paragraph about the octave.
- A paragraph about the volta.
- A paragraph nigh the penultimate line (13).
- A paragraph virtually the last line (14).
- A paragraph addressing form that suggests a transition to the next section of the paper.
You volition accept to make up one's mind for yourself the best way to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is information technology easier to follow your points when you write about each part of the text in particular before moving on? Or is your work clearer when you work through each big idea—the significance of whiteness, the effect of an altered sonnet form, and so on—sequentially?
We suggest you write your paper however is easiest for you then move things around during revision if you demand to.
Further Reading
If you really want to main the practice of reading and writing about literature, nosotros recommend Sylvan Barnet and William Eastward. Cain'due south wonderful book, A Short Guide to Writing nigh Literature. Barnet and Cain offer not only definitions and descriptions of processes, but examples of explications and analyses, likewise as checklists for you, the author of the paper. The Curt Guide is certainly not the only available reference for writing nigh 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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