The Writing Place

Now in some cases, your professor, TA, adviser, or whomever may assign you a passage and ask you to close read that particular passage and locate it within the greater framework of a text. At other times, though, you’ll have to choose your own passage, and in these instances it’s important to know what to consider when making that selection. a. Does it puzzle you? A good passage for a close reading is one that you did not, cannot, read and understand fully at a first glance. This passage might state a simple truth on the surface, but have deeper meaning waiting to be uncovered. It might be structurally confusing – perhaps the passive voice obscures agency to such an extent that it’s unclear as to what’s being done by whom. Maybe a narrator refers to a concept or an object that is not at once entirely clear. Perhaps a major theme is reiterated, but then dismissed too briefly for lucid understanding. If any or all of these things is true, then you’ve got yourself a good passage! b. Is it complex? Related to a), your passage must also be sufficiently complex. It should not only speak to various themes throughout the text and/or specific characters and their motivations, but it should also afford multiple interpretations of these things. If you’re reading a passage that affords only one obvious interpretation – say, gender subversion in Pride and Prejudice – you might want to pick something a little more challenging. Alternatively, you might choose two passages that seem simple, but analyze them in relation to one another in such a way as to complicate this original interpretation. The best passages are ones that, when read by multiple readers, evince over and over again myriad, even conflicting, analyses. Go for contentious, not simplistic. c. Is it long enough? Now this point is the most subjective of the three, but you may safely assume that an adequate passage for close reading is at least a paragraph or two long. While one can and does perform a close reading on individual sentences all of the time, it is difficult to form a compelling argument about a passage that relates to the text as a whole when there are only 15 or so words to choose from. A good rule of thumb is to stick between one and two full paragraphs, though if you find a particularly short paragraph exceptionally dense and meaningful, or if you find a series of paragraphs to relate so nicely to each other that to separate them would be to dissolve their potential, then you might be able to stray inside or outside of this rule.

Okay, so you’ve got your passage: now what? I still don’t know how to analyze this stuff!

Don’t worry – it’s not as bad as you think. Chances are, you’ve been doing this kind of thing subconsciously throughout the entirety of the text. Here are a few tools made explicit that you likely use without even knowing it.

a. Diction
We hear it all the time: “diction.” Just a fancy word for which words are used to convey a thought, and why those words as opposed to other potential ones. If the narrator is describing a character’s person and references a “beast-like glare,” then we know that the narrator views this person, at least somewhat, as a wild animal, a beast. The narrator could have said instead a “mad glare” or a “wild glare,” but both of these latter word choices still convey a kind of humanity in the character. The narrator used the former to deprive him/her of such humanity, and it is safe to assume that each word an author uses is chosen for a particular purpose which is your job to find.

b. Imagery
What do things look like? How are they described? Are some parts of the passage elucidated further than others? In what ways are landscapes painted, portraits drawn? Why is one character linked to fire and another to ice and what does that mean? These questions and those like them are ones you should seek to tackle whenever you see images deployed to describe, define or portray a character, a scene or a place.

c. Syntax
How do the words link together at the level of the sentence? Does the passage read awkwardly? Do you stumble over long words followed by longer ones? Why might this be? Does the placement of one word often follow another word specifically? What kind of connection does that juxtaposition make between these two things?

d. Figures
Old and faithful, it’s always a good idea to look for figurative language in a close reading. Metaphors, similes, symbols, allusions, etc. all serve important roles in a text and are evoked (by good writers) at significant and purposeful moments. Does one metaphor keep popping up throughout a text, and you see it in this passage as well? Is one character consistently characterized using a specific symbol? Think about these questions and others when considering their purpose after first identifying these figures.

e. Tone
What is the feeling of this passage? Is the narrator angry? Ranting? Cold and calculated? Does the passage read like the rest of the text, or does it stand out in its expression some way? Is this narrator typically recognized by this tone, or has something changed? If it’s the same, what patterns can we draw between this tone and that of the larger text? If it’s different, what does the shift tell us about this passage or its speaker?

f. Narrator
Always, always think about who is doing the talking! Depending on the reliability of the narrator, we might be disposed to consider everything in a passage entirely in another light. Is the character a jokester? Is he serious? Have we seen him before and can we trust him? Was the character actually there to witness this scene, or is s/he merely speculating as to the events that transpired?

g. Structure
The macro-level question: what’s going on here with the passage’s structure? Is information conveyed through a series of negations? I.e. “the woman was neither tall nor short, neither slim nor plump,” or is it very explicitly conveyed? Does the passage look like other passages on other pages in the text, or does it stand out for its shorter or longer sentences, its abrupt pauses or lengthy asides? If the passage is seemingly incoherent and rambling, might that reflect the inner turmoil of the speaker? If the passage is cursorily clear – too clear – could we view this as a subtle indication that the speaker has something deeper going on in his mind that he’s not sharing with us? Feel free to think about sentence length, comma placement, overall cohesion, conformance to (or departure from) the text’s pre-established writing norms, and anything else that seems relevant to the actual construction of the passage.

h. Ambiguity/Ambivalence
Is something in the passage made deliberately unclear? Are there two equally compelling, yet at once conflicting ways to view a word, a phrase, a sentence? Literary ambiguity and ambivalence are powerful tools in writing because they condition the reader to either ask more questions or think hard about the correct meaning of a multi-faceted statement. Watch for each of these as they pop up very often and lead sometimes to interesting conclusions.

i. Polysemy
Another fancy word for the various meanings a word can have in a text. In Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven,” the speaker asks of a small child “What should it know of death?” Read hastily, one might overlook this rich question, but when doing a close reading it’s apparent that more than one “should” could be in play here. “Should” might read as a self-evident dismissal – “what should it know of death” could be a way to assert that the child, in fact, knows nothing whatsoever of death by the mere fact that she is a child. On the other hand, “should” might read as a kind of moral question. “What should it know of death” could be a positing of how much information is too much information for children on weighty topics like death. Each of these readings leads to interesting questions and sparks further thought, and there is no one reading that is clearly more valid than the other. Thus, it’s important to consider all of the ways in which a word, phrase or statement can be read, so that the various possibilities thereby created are each considered in turn.

Now that you’ve got your passage annotated and a whole paper filled with non-related analyses of various parts of the passage, it’s time to bring them together to construct your argument. While noting each observation is a pleasurable experience in itself, nothing can compare to the thrilling nature of seeing how each of these puzzle pieces fits. If you’ve got a list of ten points you drew from your passage, group them according to similarities and differences. Are several of your points about gender? Do you have one lingering point about class distinctions, but it seems to depart from the major theme of your observations? This is the moment where you take those similar analyses and think about what they mean. Don’t just tell me that the narrator avoids dialogue with the main character – tell me why this is so and what it says about the text as a whole. It’s the so what factor: so you’ve noticed that the Creature in Frankenstein never calls himself a “monster” until humans do so first – so what? Why should I care, and how does that observation mean anything more than a casual remark as to the weather forecast for the day?

But you must do more than make an isolated argument about your passage. The best arguments will tie observations made in the passages to the larger text as a whole. Are recurring themes touched on in this passage? Are they explored in a way consistent with the rest of the novel, or do they diverge from this? What does this redundancy or severance say about this passage and its relation to the larger text? How does the narrator’s cold, almost lifeless, narration illuminate his character elsewhere in the novel? Once you can draw connections between your analyses of the passage and overall trends in the larger text, you will have a compelling argument worthy of consideration and contention. Remember: a good argument notices things that other people don’t, but a better one explains why those things are worth noticing in the first place.

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And just like that, you’re done!

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3. There are, of course, many other tools to do a close reading, just like there are many other approaches to constructing an argument from your preliminary observations. You can close read using a psychoanalytic perspective, or you can approach a text with the mindset of a Marxist, and each of these choices will influence the way you analyze and argue about your passage. This is, on the whole, though, a very solid foundation, and once you have mastered these essentials you will find it both easy and intriguing to branch off into more obscure, less explored directions with your close reading.

So good luck! Enjoy your text, make your argument, and always remember to read closely. And, if you still aren’t 100% sure how to implement these steps, check out the practice passages below.

From Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

1) What does the juxtaposition of “best” and “worst,” “wisdom” and “foolishness, “Light” and “Darkness” do for the opening of this novel? Does the paradox presented here suggest something that perhaps is not made explicit in the passage?

Sample answer:
The juxtaposition of “best” and “worst,” “wisdom” and “foolishness” etc. emphasizes two extremes from two starkly contrasting points of view. How can one think this is the “best” time and another think it the “worst” simultaneously? Perhaps it is because these two perspectives represent different positions in life; perhaps where one sees “Light,” the other can find “Darkness” if he looks hard enough.

2) Imagery: Think about “Light,” “Darkness,” “spring” and “winter.” What kinds of images does each of these terms produce in your mind? Why might Dickens be invoking these particular images as opposed to any others?

Sample answer:
Perhaps “Light” represents hope, while “Dark” the hopeless. “Spring” is a symbol for rebirth and life, while “winter” represents all that is dead and dying. Placing these images side by side each other is a powerful move because with it, the passage encompasses all that makes up life: the good, the bad, and the constant oscillation between these two.

3) Think about the form of this passage. What does the sentence length do formally to influence your understanding of the ideas? Do the frequent commas, the short statements linked seamlessly together, create a feeling of their own? In other words: is this just bad writing, or is the drawn-out prose actually accomplishing something?

Sample answer:
The lengthy prose style in this passage seems to connect formally what are very different ideas at the level of content. “Light” and “Darkness,” in conception, are as far from one another as any dichotomy you can draw, yet they’re all part of the same sentence – just like the other dichotomies presented in the passage. This forces the reader to consider these two things in tandem, rather than in isolation, which might be crucial to the ends of this passage.

From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:

[Gatsby] smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

 

1) What is the tone of this passage? How would you describe the narrator’s feelings toward Gatsby?

Sample answer:
It seems the tone of this passage is one of awe and admiration. The narrator feels like Gatsby understands him deeply (“as far as you wanted to be understood”), understands the “whole external world” in all its complexity – he thinks this all because of Gatsby’s smile. Smiles themselves have limited meaning in our lives; rather it is what we project onto a smile that endows it with meaning. In most cases, a smile represents happiness and laughter; in others it is indicative of scorn and malice. Here, the narrator is attributing anything and everything to Gatsby’s smile, which makes me feel like the former has lofty esteem for – even reverence of – the latter.

2) What is the effect of placing “or seemed to face” immediately after “It faced,” and in hyphenated form? Does this syntactical arrangement affirm, refute or complicate your understanding of the passage? Your trust for the narrator?

Sample answer:
The juxtaposition of “It faced” with “—or seemed to face—“ greatly problematizes my understanding of this passage for two reasons. First, the narrator seems to be second-guessing himself. He is unwilling to commit to an objective statement judging Gatsby’s smile. If he is unwilling or unable to say what the smile actually meant, how can we, as readers, trust his interpretations at all? Moreover, the formal structure also affirms this second-guessing, as the thought is broken up immediately with hyphens and an alternative. In the structure of the passage, then, the thought is not even given enough space to develop before it is derailed. This, too, makes it difficult for me to trust the narrator and what he has to say.

3) Why does the narrator utilize the second-person “you” here? What does he accomplish in so doing?

Sample answer:
Adopting the second-person “you” form here brings the reader into the narrator’s position; it also subjects the reader to Gatsby’s gaze. “You” implies an intimacy between the addresser and the addressee – it’s assumed informality parallels that which the narrator is projecting onto Gatsby’s smile. I think the narrator uses the “you” here, perhaps subconsciously, to rally the reader’s support for this Gatsby.