CLOSE READING
An introduction to reading for Eng. 132
Adapted from Jack Lynch – Rutgers University by Adam Hazlett - HFCC
Nothing will make an English
professor’s day like a student who
CLOSELY ENGAGES THE
LANGUAGE OF THE TEXT
That means reading every word: it's not enough to
have a vague sense of the plot. Maybe that
sounds obvious, but few people pay serious
attention to the words that make up every work of
literature. Remember, English papers aren't about
the real world; they're about representations of
the world in language. Words are all we have to
work with, and you have to pay attention to them.
Something more…
A text is never as simple as one
believes it to be. Often uninitiated
readers will assume a writer does
something in a story simply because
he or she wanted to.
Nothing is ever placed in a text by
accident. Even if it is, it has potential
to be something greater!!!
Misrepresentations
Often a student will see the moves
made in texts and ask, “If he/she
meant X in their story, why didn’t they
just come out and say it?”
The short answer to this is…because if
he/she did there would be no
pleasure in reading
THINK about it…
You don’t watch CSI because you
KNOW who the killer is and you don’t
spend hours playing video games
because you KNOW the end of the
story…the joy is in the discovery.
Usually the question, “Why did he/she
do that in the story?” is a good start.
This should not be the end
though…you should seek to answer
that question and in your answer you
will have found your thesis
For example…
If you analyze a story like “Cinderella”
you begin to see something deeper.
Why does Cinderella have to wait on
the Prince to be “saved”?
Couldn’t she just do it herself?
Isn’t the glass slipper something both
fragile and feminine?
Things to look at when analyzing
• Diction - Diction means word choice. In
English, we usually have a choice of
several ways of saying more or less the
same thing: see and observe and notice
and spot; overweight and portly and fat;
have intercourse with, make love to, and
fuck. Notice that they're never perfectly
interchangeable: some are formal, some
are euphemistic, some are clinical, some
are vulgar. Pay attention to similar words
authors might have used, and try to figure
out why they chose as they did.
• Word Order. Most declarative
sentences and clauses in Modern
English (since about 1500) follow the
word order subject — verb — object.
Adjectives tend to come before
nouns, adverbs usually come before
verbs or adjectives. You know all that.
If a poet departs from standard
English word order, consider whether
it's important. (It's not always, but
usually.)
• Verb Forms. Most narratives are told in the
past tense, active voice, and are usually in
either the first person ("I") or the third
("he," "she," "they"). But not always, and
not consistently. What might it mean if an
author relies on the passive voice? Why is
this narrative written in the present tense?
Teach yourself to look for these things.
(Pay particular attention when they
change. If a work suddenly switches from
the past tense to the present, or if a work
filled with the active voice begins to rely
on the passive, or a third-person narrative
changes to first, it's almost certainly
important.)
• Point of View. Narratives have to be told
from some point of view: the narrator
might be the central character in the work
(as in Rule of the Bone, narrated by Bone
himself); he or she might be a secondary
character in the work (as in Winesburg,
OH, narrated by George Willard); or the
narrator may be "omniscient" (as in Pride
and Prejudice, narrated by someone not in
the story and able to tell what happened to
all the characters). Some works mix things
up, telling different things from different
points of view (as in As I Lay Dying, where
different chapters are told from the point of
view of different characters.)
• Narrators might also be reliable — readers
are expected to take their word for
everything — or unreliable — readers have
reasons to doubt the narrator is telling the
story "straight." Try to stay conscious of
these things. Often there's nothing to say
about them, but sometimes they really pay
off. Look especially for changes in the
point of view: if a narrative has been
described from the point of view of one
character all along, and it suddenly shifts
to someone else, that's almost certainly
worth thinking about.
Things to think about beyond the
WORDS…
• Imagery: What sort of imagery is
invoked? How do the images relate to
those in the rest of the text? How do
the images work in the particular
passage and throughout the text?
What happens to the imagery over
the course of the passage? Does the
passage noticeably lack imagery? If
so, why?
• Metaphors. Metaphors — the likening of one thing to
another — are much more common than most casual
readers realize. Here's a passage from chapter 12 of The
Scarlet Letter: "It was an obscure night in early May. An
unwearied pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky
from zenith to horizon." The word pall here means
"covering" — he's just talking about cloud-cover. But a pall
is actually a piece of velvet used to cover a coffin: think
about the implications, then, of likening clouds to a shroud.
Metaphors are often lurking in the literal meanings or
etymological origins of common words that don't seem
metaphorical at all. Disaster, for instance, comes from the
words for "bad star," on the assumption that the heavens
influence things on earth: it's a metaphor from astronomy.
Ardent, meaning "passionate," comes from the Latin word
ardere, "to burn," and therefore originally meant something
like "burning with passion." Most people who use ardent
aren't thinking of fire, but some — including many good
poets — are. Pay attention to such things.
• Sound and Rhythm: Acquire a feel for the
sound, meter, and rhythm; note any aural
clues that may affect the meaning. Even
punctuation may be significant. Be alert to
devices such as alliteration, assonance,
rhyme, consonance, euphony, cacophony,
onomatopoeia. See a dictionary of poetics
or rhetoric for precise definitions of these
and other terms. Examine the meter of the
passage in the same way. Is it regular or
not? Determine whether the lines breaks
compliment or complicate the meanings of
the sentences.
• Themes: Relate all of these details to
possible themes that are both
explicitly and implicitly evoked by the
passage. Attempt to relate these
themes to others appearing outside
the immediate passage. These other
themes may be from the larger story
from which the passage is excerpted;
or from other tales; or from
knowledge about the narrator; or
from the work as a whole.
• Various theoretical questions –
gender, class, race, place, history and
cultural context might all play into
your close reading of the text. Think
about the culture in which the text
was written, the culture it is about,
and the culture it is for and you’ll
begin to formulate questions and
ideas about theoretical questions.
The most important thing
DO NOT TAKE ANY TEXT AT FACE
VALUE… There is always something
deeper or at least the potential of
depth.
Remember, a close reading is a deep
analysis of the WORDS within a story
and how those WORDS interact with
character, author, reader and world.