Getting Started on the Close Reading

1. Getting Started on the Close Reading

2. Surface Meaning / Deeper Meaning • To start, try to think how the text benefits from a re-reading. • On first reading the text might be . . . . But on a close reading something else. • Or you might be respond one way, but see that the text wants to also do something else. • This helps give a thesis. • Re-read as if with a “magnifying glass.”

3. Choose a Text • Sonny’s Blues • Love Medicine • The Open Boat • Others?

4. Choose a Text . . .

5. Theme • How to characterize it specifically (but not too much)? • Where is something said that is ambiguous, overwrought, that lends itself to scrutiny? • Write that theme, idea . . . (find evidence)

6. Part / Whole • How do the “parts” get us there . . ,.

7. Character / Conflict • Describe the main character. • How would you describe and/or categorize the other characters? How does the character interact with other characters. Is another character an alter ego or the “flip side” of a character’s personality? • Does the character grow or stay the same (“round” or “flat”)? • Describe the conflict or problems these characters face. What are the character’s motivations, inner conflicts, doubts? • What are the characters virtues or vices?

8. Plot Think of the story as a sequence of stages or steps. Mark where each new stage begins, and consider how the sequence could be understood Analyze aspects that might not appear to have anything to do with the plot (such as dreams), and look for ways to arrange these images.

9. Setting • What’s the setting of your story? Does it change, stay the same? • How does the setting signal what is happening? How does it change? • Look for cause-and-effect connections between descriptions of the setting and what the characters are feeling or thinking (objective correlative?) • Assume that the setting symbolized something outside of their control (nature), then consider what the setting tells you about the pressures and rules under which the characters function.

10. Point of View • Is the narrator a character in the story or all knowing? • What does the narrator distort. What does he/she not see that we do? • What tone or attitude does the author take at various points in the story? • What special agenda led the narrator to a particular way of describing characters or scenes?

11. Annotations • Explore your pre-critical response: what you have already written in your posts, in the margins of your books.

12. Drafting the Thesis Statement • Write down some ideas, and then try to come to a tentative thesis. Or try this • Although ________X (opposing view, first appearance), nevertheless ________Y (your own view, a more careful, reasoned view), because _________ Z (evidence).

13. Testing Your Choice • Writers: Take turns reading your tentative thesis statement out loud. Then take notes as your partner tells you what your thesis statement leads them to expect from your essay. • Listeners: As the writer speaks, note what you think are the key terms in the thesis statement. Tell what you expect. Also indicate if you think the writer will have difficulty supporting any of these ideas.

14. Goals for Drafting • Analysis: Where to do micro-analysis? Which parts to analyze? Beginnings and endings often give you the “whole.” • Organize: A Chronological approach: what happens as the story unfolds (reader in the act of reading). One more topical: these are the patterns. • Audience: they have read the book but not as insightfully as you have. Your purpose: to enhance their reading and understanding. • Argument: say something that someone else might not believe. • What to title?

15. Evidene, Evidence, Evidence • Support your points. • Break down and unpack words, meanings. OED • Denotation / Connotation