· But most essays, especially academic essays, begin with a close reading of some kind of text, a painting, a movie, an event, and usually with that of a written text. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a Estimated Reading Time: 7 mins The process of writing an essay usually begins with the close reading of a text. Of course, the writer's personal experience may occasionally come into the essay, and all essays depend on the writer's own observations and knowledge. But most essays, especially academic essays, begin with a close reading of some kind of text—a painting, a movie, an event—and usually with that of a written text Close Reading Essay Example This means that the weather is still rather cold and despite the freezing temperature, Irene still sits beside the window. Another reason why Irene would want to open the window is because she wants to smoke her cigar. She politely uses the warm temperature in the room as her excuse to open the blogger.comted Reading Time: 6 mins
Close Reading Essay and How to Write It Properly and Fast
When your teachers close reading essays professors ask you to analyze a literary text, they often look for something frequently called 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, close reading essays, though in a refined form. Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central close reading essays, including subject, form, and specific word choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to find in small parts of the text clues to help us understand the whole. The process of close reading should produce a lot of questions.
It is when you begin to answer these questions that you are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary analysis paper that makes the most of your close reading work. Close reading is a process of finding as much information as you can close reading essays order to form as many questions as you can.
When it is time to write your paper and formalize your close reading, you will sort through close reading essays work to figure out what is most convincing and helpful to the argument you hope to make and, conversely, what seems like a stretch. This guide close reading essays you are sitting down to read a text for the first time on your way to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper.
If you want even more information about approaching poems specifically, take a look at our guide: How to Read a Poem. As our guide to reading poetry 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 by something. Of course, if you are reading in a library book, you should keep all your notes on a separate piece of paper. If you are not making marks directly on, in, and beside the text, be sure to note line numbers or even quote portions of the text so you have enough context to remember what you found interesting.
What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? The subject of a literary text is simply what the text is about. What is its plot? What is its most important topic? What image does it describe? When you examine the subject of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you understand its major concerns before you dig deeper.
The flower is a heal-all, the blooms of which are usually violet-blue. This heal-all is unusual. The speaker then poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of blue and how the spider and moth found this particular flower.
How did this situation arise? We can use them as a guide for our own as we go forward with our close reading. Form is how a text is put together. When you look 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 short-form fiction instead of a novel or novella? Examining the form of a text can help you develop a starting set of questions close reading essays your reading, which then may guide further questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the author chooses. We will focus close reading essays 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:, close reading essays. Conventionally, the octave introduces a problem or question which the sestet then resolves. Note that we are speaking only in generalities here; there is a great deal of variation. Italian sonnets have a long tradition; many careful readers recognize the form and know what to expect from his octave, volta, and sestet.
Frost seems to do something fairly standard in the octave in presenting a situation; however, close reading essays, the turn Frost makes is not to resolution, but to questions and uncertainty. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth. Looking even more closely at the text will help us refine our observations and guesses.
If you are reading something longer, are there certain words that come up again and again? Are there words that stand out? While you are going through this process, it is best for you to assume that every word is important—again, you can decide whether something is really important later. Even when you read prose, our guide for reading poetry offers good advice: read with a pencil and make notes.
Mark the words that stand out, and perhaps write the questions you close reading essays in the margins or on a separate piece of paper. If you have ideas that may possibly answer your questions, write those down, too, close reading essays. The poem starts with something unpleasant: a spider.
Then, close reading essays, 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, we do not generally picture them dimpled and white; it is an uncommon and decidedly creepy image.
There is dissonance between the spider and its descriptors, i. Already we have a question: what is going on with this spider? We should look for additional clues further on in the text. The next two lines develop the image of the unusual, unpleasant-sounding spider:. On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—.
Now we have a white flower a heal-all, which usually has a violet-blue flower and a white moth in addition to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, as their name suggests, but this one seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps like the spider? We might think for a moment of a shroud or the lining of a coffin, but even that is awry, for neither should close reading essays stiff with death. From three lines alone, we have a number of questions:.
Put simply, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, especially longer forms like novels and plays, have multiple themes. Discovering a concept or idea that links multiple questions or observations you have made is the beginning of a discovery of theme. What point is Frost making? Observations about other elements in the text help you address the idea of disruption in more depth. Here is where we look back at the work we have 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 close reading essays text highlight, or redirect, certain ideas?
In this example, we are looking to determine what kind s of disruption the poem contains or describes. After you make notes, formulate close reading essays, and set tentative hypotheses, you must analyze the subject of your close reading. Literary analysis is another process of reading and writing!
that allows you to make a claim about the text. By commenting on the different elements of close reading we have discussed, it takes the results of our close reading to offer one particular way into the text. In case you were thinking about using this sample as your own, be warned: it has no thesis and it is easily discoverable on the web. These lines are almost singsong in meter and it is easy to imagine them set to a radio jingle. The volta offers no resolution for our unsettled expectations.
Having observed the scene and detailed its elements in all close reading essays unpleasantness, the speaker turns to questions rather than answers. Was the moth, then, also searching for camouflage, close reading essays, only to meet its end? Such a design appalls, or horrifies. We might also consider the speaker asking what other force but dark design could use something as simple as appalling in its other sense making pale or white to effect death.
However, the close reading essays does not close with a question, but with a statement, close reading essays. Behind the speaker and the disturbing scene, we have Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet, close reading essays. Design surely governs in a poem, however small; does Frost also have close reading essays dark design?
Can we compare a scene in nature to a carefully constructed sonnet? Your goal in a paper about literature is to communicate your best 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.
It is best to ask your instructor about the expectations for your paper. Knowing how to organize these papers can be tricky, in part because there is no single right answer—only more and less effective answers. You may decide to organize your paper thematically, or by tackling close reading essays idea sequentially; you may choose to order your ideas by their importance to your argument or to the poem.
If you are comparing and contrasting two texts, you might work thematically or by addressing first one text and then the other. One way to approach a text may be to start with the beginning of the novel, story, close reading essays, play, or poem, close reading essays, and work your way toward its end.
For example, here is the rough structure of the example above: The author of the sample decided to use the poem itself as an organizational guide, at least for this part of the analysis. You will have to decide for yourself the best way to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is it easier to follow your points when you write about each part of the text in detail before moving on?
Or is your work clearer when you work through each big idea—the significance of whiteness, the effect of an altered sonnet form, and so on—sequentially? We suggest you write your paper however is easiest for you then move things around during revision if you need to.
If you really want to master the practice of reading and writing about literature, we recommend Sylvan Barnet and William E. Barnet and Cain offer not only definitions and descriptions of processes, but 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 it is an excellent guide and reminder for new writers and veterans alike. This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels, close reading essays.
How To: Close Reading Essay
, time: 15:51A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis – The Writing Center – UW–Madison
As the name suggests, a close reading essay refers to an essay that is focused on the tiny themes within a literary story, passage, or poem. Most of the essays you might have come across or written were concerned on broader topics like justice, adulthood, loneliness, love, and jealousy · But most essays, especially academic essays, begin with a close reading of some kind of text, a painting, a movie, an event, and usually with that of a written text. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a Estimated Reading Time: 7 mins Organizing your close-reading essay In writing your close-reading essay, you may wish to start by introducing the book and describing your chosen passage’s importance within it. You could then offer relevant details to support your thesis. Questions you raise may appear as part of your conclusion, suggesting avenues for further thought and study
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