English 310: Writing about Literature
Dr. Wolfe
Close Reading Assignment
Goal
The goal of a close reading is to go into depth with something small. This is an essential skill of literary
analysis and for the first assignment I am going to limit you to analyzing a small section of a story that we
have read. The goal for this assignment is to find everything there is to say about this particular passage.
Requirements
Pick one of the three passages at the end of this handout and perform a close reading that makes
multiple surface/depth arguments based on this passage. Your final close reading should be
approximately 700 words (2 double-spaced pages) long. Focus on making debatable arguments about
the passage and defining why it is significant and then support these arguments with textual evidence.
Process
You may find this assignment frustrating, but it is meant to teach you a specific skill, a specific way of
reading deep, that will help you with later work in this class. Do NOT try to complete this assignment all in
one sitting. Instead, the first time you work on it, sit down and write as much as you can. Brainstorm and
try to get as much on paper as possible. Then put your essay aside for a few hours or a day and return to
it and see if you can discover anything else about the passage that you didn't see before. Be sure to
reread other passages of the story that might connect to this passage and see if you can draw out
similarities and contrasts.
Once you have had multiple brainstorming sessions, go back and do a reverse outline of what you've
written (see Chapter 10) and see if you can find ways to reorganize your thoughts into a coherent
analysis.
You may (and should) discuss about other sections of the story, but these other sections should always
be discussed in light of how they help us understand this particular passage.
Do NOT summarize the story: assume that your audience is a member of the class who has faithfully
done his or her homework and attended class discussion. In other words, assume your audience is
already familiar with the story and the surface interpretation.
You do not need to state when you are using a "surface/depth" strategy or when you are specifically
looking at "setting." Just do these things—you don't need to explain to your reader what you are doing.
This should be evident from the arguments you make.
Due Dates
This assignment is due on Friday, January 30. Bring three copies of your essay to class. Your essay
should be double-spaced and should have a title. Don't forget to include your name!
Questions?
Don't hesitate to email me at joanna.wolfe@louisville.edu if you have any questions. Be sure to put E310
in the subject heading of your email.
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Passages (Pick one of the three passages to write on):
1. Faulkner: "A Rose for Emily"
The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and
their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the
back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to
look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing
profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their
brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a
contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time
with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road, but,
instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow
bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.
2. Faulkner: "That Evening Sun Go Down"
"What, father?" Caddy said. "Why is Nancy scared of Jubah? What is Jubah going to do to her?"
"Jubah wasn't there," Jason said.
"No," father said. "He's not there. He's gone away."
"Who is it that's waiting in the ditch?" Caddy said. We looked at the ditch. We came to it, where the path
went down into the thick vines and went up again.
"Nobody," father said.
There was just enough moon to see by. The ditch was vague, thick, quiet. "If he's there, he can see us,
can't he?" Caddy said.
"You made me come," Jason said on father's back. "I didn't want to."
The ditch was quite still, quite empty, massed with honeysuckle. We couldn't see Jubah, any more than
we could see Nancy sitting there in her house, with the door open and the lamp burning, because she
didn't want it to happen in the dark. "I done got tired," Nancy said. "I just a nigger. It ain't no fault of mine."
But we could still hear her. She began as soon as we were out of the house, sitting there above the fire,
her long brown hands between her knees. We could still hear her when we had crossed the ditch, Jason
high and close and little about father's head.
Then we had crossed the ditch, walking out of Nancy's life. Then her life was sitting there with the door
open and the lamp lit, waiting, and the ditch between us and us going on, dividing the impinged lives of us
and Nancy.
"Who will do our washing now, father?" I said.
"I'm not a nigger," Jason said.
"You're worse," Caddy said, "you are a tattletale. If something was to jump out, you'd be scairder than a
nigger."
"I wouldn't," Jason said.
"You'd cry," Caddy said.
"Caddy!" father said.
"I wouldn't," Jason said.
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"Scairy cat," Caddy said.
"Candace!" father said.
3. Silko: "The Man to Send Rainclouds"
His fingers were stiff, and it took him a long time to twist the lid off the holy water. Drops of water fell on
the red blanket and soaked into dark icy spots. He sprinkled the grave and the water disappeared almost
before it touched the dim, cold sand; it reminded him of something—he tried to remember what it was,
because he thought if he could remember he might understand this. He sprinkled more water; he shook
the container until it was empty, and the water fell through the light from sundown like August rain that fell
while the sun was still shining, almost evaporating before it touched the wilted squash flowers.
The wind pulled at the priest’s brown Franciscan robe and swirled away the corn meal and pollen that had
been sprinkled on the blanket. They lowered the bundle into the ground, and they didn’t bother to untie
the stiff pieces of new rope that were tied around the ends of the blanket. The sun was gone, and over
on the highway the eastbound lane was full of headlights. The priest walked away slowly. Leon watched
him climb the hill, and when he had disappeared within the tall, thick walls, Leon turned to look up at the
high blue mountains in the deep snow that reflected a faint red light from the west. He felt good because
it was finished, and he was happy about the sprinkling of the holy water; now the old man could send
them big thunderclouds for sure.
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