What Does the Process of Close Reading Help a Reader Do
Apply the guidelines beneath to learn virtually the practice of shut reading.
Overview
When your teachers or professors ask y'all to clarify a literary text, they often look 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 paper, though in a refined form.
Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject, form, and specific discussion choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to find in small parts of the text clues to aid us empathise the whole. For example, if an author writes a novel in the form of a personal journal about a character'due south daily life, only that periodical reads like a serial of lab reports, what do we learn about that graphic symbol? What is the effect of picking a word like "tome" instead of "volume"? In event, you are putting the writer's choices under a microscope.
The process of close reading should produce a lot of questions. It is when you begin to respond these questions that yous are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary assay paper that makes the well-nigh of your close reading work.
Close reading sometimes feels similar over-analyzing, but don't worry. Close reading is a process of finding as much information as you lot can in society to class equally many questions as y'all tin can. When information technology is fourth dimension to write your paper and formalize your close reading, y'all volition sort through your work to effigy out what is most convincing and helpful to the argument you hope to brand and, conversely, what seems like a stretch. This guide imagines y'all are sitting downwards to read a text for the get-go fourth dimension on your manner to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper. To requite one case of how to practise this, nosotros will read the verse form "Pattern" past famous American poet Robert Frost and nourish to four major components of literary texts: discipline, form, discussion choice (diction), and theme.
If you want fifty-fifty more than information about budgeted poems specifically, have a expect at our guide: How to Read a Verse form.
The Poem
Equally our guide to reading poesy suggests, have a pencil out when you read a text. Make notes in the margins, underline important words, place question marks where you are confused past something. Of form, if y'all are reading in a library book, yous should keep all your notes on a separate piece of newspaper. If you are non making marks directly on, in, and abreast the text, be certain to note line numbers or even quote portions of the text so you take plenty context to remember what yous found interesting.
Pattern
I found a dimpled spider, fatty and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin material—
Assorted characters of decease and blight
Mixed fix to brainstorm the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' goop—
A snow-drib spider, a flower like a froth,
And expressionless wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with existence white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
So steered the white moth thither in the dark?
What only blueprint of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
Subject
The discipline of a literary text is just what the text is about. What is its plot? What is its about important topic? What image does information technology describe? Information technology's easy to think of novels and stories as having plots, but sometimes it helps to think of verse as having a kind of plot likewise. When yous examine the subject of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you empathize 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 and so poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of blue and how the spider and moth establish this particular flower. How did this situation arise?
Questions
The speaker'south questions seem unproblematic, but they are really fairly nuanced. We tin can use them as a guide for our ain equally we become forrad with our close reading.
- Furthering the speaker'southward simple "how did this happen," nosotros might enquire, is the scene in this poem a manufactured situation?
- The white moth and white spider each use the atypical white flower every bit camouflage in search of sanctuary and supper respectively. Did these flora and fauna come up together for a purpose?
- Does the speaker take a stance nigh whether there is a purpose behind the scene? If so, what is it?
- How will other elements of the text relate to the unpleasantness and uncertainty in our first look at the poem's subject?
After thinking about local questions, nosotros have to zoom out. Ultimately, what is this text nigh?
Form
Grade is how a text is put together. When you lot expect at a text, observe how the author has arranged it. If it is a novel, is it written in the first person? How is the novel divided? If it is a short story, why did the author choose to write curt-form fiction instead of a novel or novella? Examining the form of a text can help you develop a starting fix of questions in your reading, which then may guide further questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the writer chooses. A little groundwork enquiry on form and what different forms can mean makes it easier to figure out why and how the author'southward choices are important.
Observations
Virtually poems follow rules or principles of grade; even costless verse poems are marked past the author's choices in line breaks, rhythm, and rhyme—even if none of these exists, which is a notable choice in itself. Hither'southward an example of thinking through these elements in "Design."
In "Design," Frost chooses an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet form: 14 lines in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave (a stanza of eight lines) and a sestet (a stanza of six 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'southward more variation in the sestet rhymes, merely one of the more common schemes is
c d east c d e
Conventionally, the octave introduces a problem or question which the sestet then resolves. The betoken at which the sonnet goes from the problem/question to the resolution is chosen the volta, or turn. (Annotation that nosotros are speaking only in generalities here; there is a dandy bargain of variation.)
Frost uses the usual octave scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" (a) and "oth" (b) sounds: "white," "moth," "cloth," "blight," "right," "goop," "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 we can outset:
- Why use an Italian sonnet?
- Why use an unusual scheme in the sestet?
- What problem/question and resolution (if whatsoever) does Frost offer?
- What is the volta in this poem?
- In other words, what is the point?
Italian sonnets have a long tradition; many conscientious readers recognize the form and know what to await from his octave, volta, and sestet. Frost seems to practise something fairly standard in the octave in presenting a situation; however, the turn Frost makes is not to resolution, but to questions and dubiety. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth.
- How did these elements come up together?
- Was the moth's decease random or past pattern?
- Is one worse than the other?
Nosotros can guess correct away that Frost's disruption of the usual purpose of the sestet has something to practice with his disruption of its rhyme scheme. Looking even more closely at the text will assistance us refine our observations and guesses.
Word Option, or Diction
Looking at the word option of a text helps united states of america "dig in" ever more deeply. If yous are reading something longer, are in that location certain words that come up over again and once more? Are there words that stand up out? While you are going through this procedure, it is best for you to assume that every discussion is important—over again, you can decide whether something is really important afterwards.
Even when yous read prose, our guide for reading poetry offers good advice: read with a pencil and make notes. Marker the words that stand out, and perchance write the questions yous have in the margins or on a separate slice of paper. If you have ideas that may maybe reply your questions, write those down, too.
Observations
Let's take a expect at the commencement line of "Design":
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
The poem starts with something unpleasant: a spider. Then, as we look more closely at the adjectives describing the spider, we may see connotations of something that sounds unhealthy or unnatural. When we imagine spiders, nosotros do non by and large motion-picture show them dimpled and white; it is an uncommon and decidedly creepy paradigm. There is racket between the spider and its descriptors, i.eastward., what is incorrect with this pic? Already we take a question: what is going on with this spider?
We should look for additional clues farther on in the text. The side by side two lines develop the epitome of the unusual, unpleasant-sounding spider:
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Now nosotros accept a white flower (a heal-all, which usually has a violet-blueish flower) and a white moth in improver to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, as their name suggests, just this ane seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps similar the spider? Does the mutation that changes the heal-all'southward color too alter its beneficial properties—could it be poisonous rather than curative? A white moth doesn't seem remarkable, only it is "Similar a white piece of rigid satin cloth," or similar manmade fabric that is artificially "rigid" rather than smooth and flowing like we 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 potent with death.
Questions
The first three lines of the poem's octave innovate unpleasant natural images "of death and blight" (as the speaker puts it in line iv). The bloom and moth disrupt expectations: the heal-all is white instead of "bluish and innocent," and the moth is reduced to "rigid satin cloth" or "dead wings carried like a paper kite." We might expect a spider to be unpleasant and deadly; the poem'due south spider besides has an unusual and unhealthy appearance.
- The focus on whiteness in these lines has more to do with expiry than purity—tin we empathize that whiteness every bit being corpse-like rather than virtuous?
Well earlier the volta, Frost makes a "plow" abroad from nature every bit a retreat and haven; instead, he unearths its inherent dangers, making nature menacing. From three lines lone, we have a number of questions:
- Will whiteness play a role in the remainder of the verse form?
- How does "blueprint"—an arrangement of these circumstances—fit with a scene of death?
- What other juxtapositions might we encounter?
These disruptions and dissonances think Frost's alteration to the standard Italian sonnet class: finding the means and places in which form and discussion choice go together will aid us brainstorm to unravel some larger concepts the verse form itself addresses.
Theme
Put but, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, especially longer forms like novels and plays, accept multiple themes. That'south adept news when yous are close reading because it means at that place are many different ways you tin call up through the questions you develop.
Observations
And then far in our reading of "Blueprint," our questions revolve 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 yous take fabricated is the beginning of a discovery of theme.
Questions
What is happening with disruption in "Blueprint"? What betoken is Frost making? Observations about other elements in the text help you address the idea of disruption in more depth. Here is where we await back at the piece of work we take already done: What is the text about? What is notable about 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, nosotros are looking to determine what kind(south) of disruption the verse form contains or describes. Rather than "disruption," we want to meet what kind of disruption, or whether indeed Frost uses disruptions in form and language to communicate something reverse: pattern.
Sample Analysis
After you make notes, formulate questions, and set tentative hypotheses, yous must analyze the subject of your close reading. Literary analysis is another process of reading (and writing!) that allows you to make a merits about the text. It is also the indicate at which you plow a disquisitional eye to your earlier questions and observations to find the most compelling points, discarding the ones that are a "stretch." By "stretch," nosotros mean that we must discard points that are fascinating but have no clear connection to the text every bit a whole. (Nosotros recommend a split certificate for recording the vivid ideas that don't quite fit this time around.)
Here follows an extract from a cursory analysis of "Design" based on the close reading higher up. This example focuses on some lines in smashing particular in order to unpack the significant and significance of the poem's language. Past commenting on the different elements of close reading nosotros have discussed, it takes the results of our shut reading to offer one item manner into the text. (In case you were thinking about using this sample as your ain, be warned: it has no thesis and it is hands discoverable on the spider web. Plus it doesn't have a title.)
Excerpt
Frost's speaker brews unlikely associations in the showtime stanza of the verse form. The "Contrasted characters of death and bane / Mixed fix to begin the morning right" make of the grotesque scene an equally grotesque mockery of a breakfast cereal (4–5). These lines are virtually singsong in meter and it is easy to imagine them prepare to a radio jingle. A pun on "right"/"rite" slides the "characters of decease and blight" into their expected concoction: a "witches' goop" (half dozen). These juxtapositions—a good for you breakfast that is also a potion for dark magic—are borne out when our "fatty and white" spider becomes "a snow-drop"—an early on spring flower associated with renewal—and the moth as "dead wings carried like a paper kite" (one, vii, 8). Similar the mutant heal-all that hosts the moth's decease, the spider becomes a deadly flower; the harmless moth becomes a kid's toy, but as "dead wings," more like a puppet 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" finish up white and bleached like a bone (x)? How did its "kindred spider" find the white flower, which was its perfect hiding place (11)? Was the moth, so, also searching for camouflage, only to meet its finish?
Using some other 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 "blueprint of darkness." Some force, the speaker suggests, assembled the white spider, blossom, and moth to snuff out the moth'southward life. Such a design appalls, or horrifies. Nosotros might also consider the speaker request what other force just nighttime design could use something as elementary every bit appalling in its other sense (making pale or white) to effect death.
All the same, the verse form does not close with a question, only with a argument. The speaker's "If pattern govern in a thing so small" establishes a condition for the octave's questions after the fact (14). There is no betoken in because the dark blueprint that brought together "assorted characters of expiry and blight" if such an event is also minor, as well physically pocket-size to exist the work of some force unknown. Catastrophe on an "if" clause has the outcome of rendering the verse form nonetheless more uncertain in its conclusions: not only are we faced with unanswered questions, we are now not even certain those questions are valid in the get-go place.
Backside the speaker and the agonizing scene, nosotros have Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet. Like whatever designer may take contradistinct the blossom and attracted the spider to impale the moth, the poet built his poem "wrong" with a purpose in mind. Pattern surely governs in a poem, however small; does Frost also take a dark design? Can we compare a scene in nature to a carefully synthetic sonnet?
A Note on Organization
Your goal in a newspaper nigh literature is to communicate your all-time and most 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. Information technology is best to enquire your instructor about the expectations for your paper.
Knowing how to organize these papers can be tricky, in function because at that place is no single right answer—only more and less effective answers. You may decide to organize your paper thematically, or by tackling each idea sequentially; you may choose to order your ideas past their importance to your argument or to the poem. If y'all are comparing and contrasting two texts, yous might piece of work thematically or past addressing first 1 text and so the other. 1 way to approach a text may exist to start with the beginning of the novel, story, play, or poem, and work your way toward its end. For example, here is the crude structure of the example to a higher place: The author of the sample decided to utilize the poem itself as an organizational guide, at least for this part of the analysis.
- A paragraph most the octave.
- A paragraph about the volta.
- A paragraph nearly the penultimate line (13).
- A paragraph most the final line (14).
- A paragraph addressing form that suggests a transition to the adjacent department of the paper.
You will have to determine for yourself the all-time way to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is information technology easier to follow your points when you lot write most each function of the text in detail before moving on? Or is your work clearer when you lot piece of work through each large idea—the significance of whiteness, the outcome of an altered sonnet form, and so on—sequentially?
We suggest you lot write your paper however is easiest for you then motion things effectually during revision if y'all need to.
Further Reading
If you really desire to master the practice of reading and writing about literature, nosotros recommend Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain's wonderful book, A Short Guide to Writing well-nigh Literature. Barnet and Cain offer not merely definitions and descriptions of processes, simply examples of explications and analyses, as well as checklists for you, the author of the paper. The Short Guide is certainly not the only available reference for writing about literature, but information technology is an excellent guide and reminder for new writers and veterans alike.
Source: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/closereading/
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