Introduction
Reading and Writing
• Read thoughtfully pg. 1-12 of 40 Model Essays A
Portable Anthology including the essay The Box Man.
• Consider the “Asking Questions” on pgs. 9-12
• Write down the general questions in each section and
• Take detailed notes on the book’s answers for each,
think about how these questions could apply to other
texts:
–
–
–
–
Meaning
Purpose and Audience
Method and Structure
Language
The Box Man
by Barbara Lazear Ascher
Present & Explain
• Create a presentation that thoroughly explains an area
of literary analysis in “The Box Man.”
– Use the passages from 40 Model Essays as a guide to your
explanation to the class.
– Create 6 questions, one from each of the Bloom’s levels.
– Use your analysis study guides to build your questions.
• Format:
–
–
–
–
Ppt
Skit
Posters
Interactive quiz/game show
Meaning
• What is the main idea of the essay—the chief
point the writer makes about the subject, to
which all other ideas and details relate? What
are the subordinate ideas that contribute to
the main idea?
1. This essay implies to the reader that loneliness isn’t always
a vile thing. The author compares somebody who has
absolutely nothing in life but enjoys the solitude, to people
who roam through life alone, seeking for company—but never
find it. The author compares the chosen lifestyle of the box
man, to the undesired for loneliness of the victims. The author
explains that although one may be poor and alone, it does not
mean that one is unhappy. For example, in paragraph 12 it is
explained that the mayor has offered him help, but the box
man pushes it away. In paragraph 18 it is described how the
box man enjoys his dark life. It is portrayed that life is a solo
journey and that one may be much more miserable by going
through life accompanied than by being a collector of boxes.
2. A subordinate idea that contributes to the main
idea is the way the author brought up memories
from her own past, The Boxcar Children. These
children were, like the Box Man, approaching their
loneliness in a positive manner, which is something
the author seemed to agree with. The other
character, which suffered from a different type of
loneliness, was a woman in a coffee shop, she
dwelled through her loneliness. She had no peers in
her life, and spent most of her time dragging on a
coffee at the coffee shop, just to be surrounded by
people.
Purpose and Audience
Why did the author write the essay? What did
the author hope readers would gain from it?
What did the author assume about the
knowledge and interests of readers, and how
are these assumptions reflected in the essay?
1. Barbara Lazear Ascher wrote this essay to help
audiences see the difference between chosen and
unchosen loneliness. With a numerous amount of
examples she shows the reader the difference between
someone who willingly chooses to live life alone, and
people who find themselves lonely and dwell about it.
2. The author hoped that readers would understand the
differences, and learn that life is not all about being
surrounded by peers. The author hoped that by reading
this essay, people realized that one enters life alone and
leaves life alone.(last paragraph)
Method and Structure
• What method or methods does the author
use to develop the main idea, and how do the
methods serve the author’s purpose? How
does the organization serve the author’s
purpose?
Language
• How are the author’s main idea and purpose
revealed at the level of sentences and words?
How does the author use language to convey
his or her attitudes toward the subject and to
make meaning clear and vivid?
Chapter 2
Close Reading: Analyzing Poetry and
Passages of Fiction
Assignment:
• Read thoughtfully pg. 19-24 of Lit. & Comp.
beginning with “What is Close Reading?”
• Consider the questions on pgs. 23-24 writing
complete sentence answers each:
– Diction
– Figurative Language
– Imagery
– Syntax
Suggestions:
• Go beyond just recognizing the elements of
style to analyze their effects…and write about
them.
• Understand the way language adds another
level of meaning to a work (identifying literary
elements is NOT enough).
Grow Your Cannon!
•
•
•
•
•
Read
Reread
Observe
Ask questions
Try to answer them
Connect Language to Meaning
• Look for:
–
–
–
–
–
Patterns
Motifs
Repetitions
References to other works
Connections to your own life and time
• A word of advice:
– The sample analyses are not the end-all-be-all. You are bound
to come up with your own different and interesting
interpretations, so don’t limit yourself by what the book (or
another source) may say. And don’t be discouraged if you seem
to be facing a blank wall; sometimes you just get stuck. In that
case, move on.
My Antonia
by Willa Cather
What part do the snakes play in this
passage about happiness?
• Snakes should set off alarm bells—they can’t
help but make us think of evil and the serpent
that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. The
narrator has set himself up in a place where
he is protected from snakes, or will at least be
alerted if one should come along. Cather may
be acknowledging the idea that life always has
snakes, but we can at least be aware of them
before they’re upon us.
What might it mean that the passage
is set in a garden?
• Taking off from the snakes in the first
sentence, we can’t help but think of the
Garden of Eden. The young narrator is
discovering an idyllic world; he is innocent,
protected, in touch with nature.
How big is that pumpkin? How big are
the grasshoppers, really?
• The pumpkin and the grasshoppers are, of
course, elements of setting, but they also help
characterize the young narrator, who has just
moved out west from Virginia. Things really are
more immense in his new home; the sense of
wide-open space pervades most of the novel, as
do the mythic proportions of the natural world.
On the other hand, the narrator is quite young;
thus, a pumpkin he can lean against would be big
but not huge. His sense of the grasshoppers as
twice as large as any he’s even seen is, in part,
the hyperbole of a young boy.
What makes the objects in the passage
so vivid?
• The images in this passage are quite concrete,
depending on verbs and nouns to appeal to
nearly every sense. We hear the wind; we feel
the warm earth; we see the acrobatic
grasshoppers and the scurrying gophers.
Why does the narrator connect
happiness and death?
• It seems unlikely that a young person would have
such profound thoughts on death. We should
probably consider this an intrusion of the
perspective of the adult narrator looking back on
his youth. It might even be an intrusion from the
author herself, as the last two sentences of this
passage are on Cather’s tombstone. On the other
hand, it does feel pretty organic. It may be the
closest Cather can come to describing the ecstasy
of happiness and her commitment in this novel to
the importance of a connection to the natural
world.
How does the narrator fit—literally
and figuratively—into the landscape?
• He is, as we mentioned, quite young (maybe 9
or 10). He’s been recently orphaned and has
been sent far from home. But there is no
sense of loss or grief in this passage. He is
literally and figuratively protected in this
garden. He’s sitting on the ground, connected
in both a concrete and an abstract way to the
earth, and every one of his senses is
stimulated by the plant and animal life around
him.
How does the passage change from
beginning to end?
• It becomes, of course, more abstract. The
vivid depiction of the natural world, in
language clear and concrete, leads to the
narrator’s meditation on happiness: “to be
dissolved into something complete and great.”
The joy of the physicality of the world he
describes is so palpable that even the
introduction of the ide of death does nothing
to tamp down that sense of ecstasy.
To an Athlete Dying Young
by A.E. Housman
Create your own first-impression
questions.
• Who is the speaker, and who is the speaker address?
Who is “you”?
• What does “chaired” mean? Is it like “cheered”?
• Why is the word order shifted (“home we brought
you”)?
• Why does a laurel wither quicker than a rose?
• Why does this poem rhyme?
• Why do all of the lines have almost the same number
of syllables?
• What does the speaker mean by “see the record cut”?
Analyze and Explain the Effect
• Here are some starting points…mine a
questions and develop a response.
Diction
Which of the important words (verbs, nouns,
adjectives, and adverbs) in the poem or passage are
general and abstract, and which are specific and
concrete?
• The words in the beginning of the poem are
more concrete than the ones toward the end.
The language is driven by verbs, as one might
expect in a poem about an athlete.
Are the important words formal,
informal, colloquial, or slang?
• The words in the poem are quite formal.
Are there words with strong
connotations, words we might refer to
as “loaded”?
• Housman makes quite a bit of the multiple
meaning of “laurel,” as well as variations of
“run.”
Figurative Language
Are some words not literal but figurative,
creating figures of speech such as metaphors,
similes, and personification?
• In line 13, “night” is both a metaphor for
death and personified—it can shut the eyes.
Earth, too, can stop the ears (l. 16).
Imagery
Are the images—the parts of the passage we
experience with our five senses—concrete, or do they
depend on figurative language to come alive?
• The images are both concrete—the athlete,
alive, young and victorious, riding through the
marketplace, held above the crowd in a
chair—and figurative—held shoulder-high, the
coffin understood rather than stated. The
“challenge cup” and “garland” are literal, but
they function in the poem symbolically,
representing the glories of the athlete’s youth
that he will never know have been bested by
generations to come.
Syntax
What is the order of the words in the
sentences? Are they in the usual subjectverb-object order, or are they inverted?
• Line 4 is notable for its inverted structure:
“And home we brought you shoulder-high.”
Which is more prevalent in the
passage, nouns or verbs?
• As we noted, the poem is driven by verbs.
What are the sentences like? Do their
meanings build periodically or
cumulatively?
• In this poem, each stanza is a sentence.
Particularly in the last few stanzas, the
sentences build toward strong statements at
the end.
How do sentences connect their
words, phrases and clauses?
• In “To an Athlete Dying Young,” the ideas are
connected with words that often show the
passage of time: “The time you won” (l. 1),
“To-day” (l. 5), “Now” (l. 17), “So set, before”
(l. 21). You’ll also notice that the connector
“and” is used in almost every stanza;
Housman connects the past, present, and
future with that word.
How is the poem or passage organized? Is it
chronological? Does it move from concrete to abstract
or vice versa? Or does it follow some other pattern?
• The pattern here is chronological; the poem
moves rom the past (the time the athlete
came home triumphant) to the present ( his
funeral) to the future (time will move on even
though the young athlete will never know
about it).