Close Reading Post:
In this post, you should practice close reading using one or both of the close reading methods I presented in class [Follow the Trail or Archaeological Dig].
The most important part of this blog is that you NARROW YOUR SCOPE. You should pick either the tiniest thing to focus on. Perhaps you focus on just 2 sentences in A Lesson Before Dying. Or perhaps you focus on the detail of blonde hair in Frankenstein.
It’s hard to know what constitutes a minor and/or focused moment. 2 sentences in a poem would be a lot. And perhaps 4 short sentences in Frankenstein might be shorter than one long sentence in The Bluest Eye. Or perhaps even though there are only a few blonde hair women in Frankenstein, there is so much attention and meaning imparted to those moments, it is too much to do in one post, and you need to focus on just the use of yellow and white and light colors in the description of the village home in which we first meet Elizabeth.
You are not writing a paper in this blog, though you may use what you write in the post to help you write your close reading paper. The point of this blog is for you to practice engaging at a very close level how the language of the text works.
After you have identified your small portion, you should posit some idea about what that small moment is doing in the scene (if not the whole novel). You should illustrate this claim by explaining how you are seeing the details of the text work in such a way as to get this idea.
Remember that the post is really practice for the paper. You may do the post on any text you wish. Remember to narrow your scope.
Below are the white board notes, from yesterday’s class (also available on the chalk board notes part of this site).
