Close Reading of a Text Poetry Essay Example
Use the guidelines below to learn about the practice of close reading.
Overview
When your teachers or professors ask you to analyze a literary text, they frequently look for something often chosen shut 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, though in a refined form.
Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject, class, and specific give-and-take choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to detect in pocket-size parts of the text clues to assistance us understand the whole. For instance, if an author writes a novel in the form of a personal periodical most a character'due south daily life, just that journal reads like a serial of lab reports, what do we learn nearly that graphic symbol? What is the effect of picking a word like "tome" instead of "volume"? In effect, you are putting the author'south choices under a microscope.
The process of close reading should produce a lot of questions. It is when you begin to answer these questions that yous are ready to participate thoughtfully in form discussion or write a literary assay paper that makes the most of your close reading work.
Close reading sometimes feels similar over-analyzing, but don't worry. Close reading is a process of finding as much information every bit you can in order to grade equally many questions equally you can. When it is fourth dimension to write your paper and formalize your close reading, you will sort through your work to figure out what is well-nigh convincing and helpful to the statement you hope to make and, conversely, what seems like a stretch. This guide imagines you are sitting down to read a text for the first fourth dimension on your fashion to developing an argument virtually a text and writing a paper. To give one example of how to do this, nosotros will read the poem "Blueprint" by famous American poet Robert Frost and attend to four major components of literary texts: discipline, course, give-and-take pick (diction), and theme.
If you want even more information about approaching poems specifically, take a look at our guide: How to Read a Poem.
The Verse form
Every bit our guide to reading verse suggests, take 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 volume, you lot should continue all your notes on a separate slice of paper. If you are not making marks directly on, in, and beside the text, be sure to annotation line numbers or even quote portions of the text and so you have enough context to remember what yous institute interesting.
Pattern
I establish a dimpled spider, fatty and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of decease and bane
Mixed ready to brainstorm the morning time right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that bloom to do with beingness white,
The wayside bluish and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that pinnacle,
Then steered the white moth thither in the nighttime?
What only blueprint of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing and so pocket-size.
Subject
The subject of a literary text is simply what the text is about. What is its plot? What is its nigh important topic? What image does it describe? It's like shooting fish in a barrel to think of novels and stories as having plots, but sometimes it helps to think of poetry as having a kind of plot besides. When y'all examine the subject of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you lot empathize its major concerns before you dig deeper.
Observations
In "Design," the speaker describes a scene: a white spider property a moth on a white bloom. The bloom is a heal-all, the blooms of which are ordinarily violet-blue. This heal-all is unusual. The speaker then poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of blueish and how the spider and moth found this particular blossom. How did this situation ascend?
Questions
The speaker's questions seem simple, but they are actually fairly nuanced. Nosotros tin can apply them as a guide for our own as we go forward with our close reading.
- Furthering the speaker'southward uncomplicated "how did this happen," we might ask, is the scene in this poem a manufactured situation?
- The white moth and white spider each employ the singular white flower as camouflage in search of sanctuary and supper respectively. Did these flora and beast come together for a purpose?
- Does the speaker have a opinion almost whether there is a purpose backside the scene? If and then, what is it?
- How volition other elements of the text relate to the unpleasantness and uncertainty in our first await at the poem's subject?
Subsequently thinking nigh local questions, we have to zoom out. Ultimately, what is this text about?
Course
Form is how a text is put together. When y'all look at a text, discover 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 writer 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 in your reading, which so may guide further questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the author chooses. A little background research on grade and what different forms can mean makes it easier to figure out why and how the author's choices are important.
Observations
Virtually poems follow rules or principles of class; even free verse poems are marked by the author's choices in line breaks, rhythm, and rhyme—fifty-fifty if none of these exists, which is a notable selection in itself. Hither's an example of thinking through these elements in "Blueprint."
In "Design," Frost chooses an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet form: fourteen lines in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave (a stanza of eight lines) and a sestet (a stanza of half dozen lines). We will focus on 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:
a b b a a b b a
There's more variation in the sestet rhymes, but one of the more mutual schemes is
c d eastward c d eastward
Conventionally, the octave introduces a problem or question which the sestet and then resolves. The point at which the sonnet goes from the problem/question to the resolution is called the volta, or plough. (Note that nosotros are speaking but in generalities here; at that place is a bang-up deal of variation.)
Frost uses the usual octave scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" (a) and "oth" (b) sounds: "white," "moth," "cloth," "blight," "correct," "goop," "froth," "kite." However, his sestet follows an unusual scheme with "-ite"/"-ight" and "all" sounds:
a c a a c c
Questions
Now, we take a few questions with which nosotros tin can first:
- Why utilise an Italian sonnet?
- Why use an unusual scheme in the sestet?
- What problem/question and resolution (if whatsoever) does Frost offer?
- What is the volta in this verse form?
- In other words, what is the point?
Italian sonnets accept 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 adequately standard in the octave in presenting a state of affairs; nevertheless, the turn Frost makes is not to resolution, but to questions and dubiousness. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth.
- How did these elements come together?
- Was the moth'south death random or by blueprint?
- Is one worse than the other?
We can estimate right away that Frost's disruption of the usual purpose of the sestet has something to practise with his disruption of its rhyme scheme. Looking even more closely at the text volition assistance us refine our observations and guesses.
Give-and-take Pick, or Diction
Looking at the word choice of a text helps usa "dig in" ever more deeply. If y'all are reading something longer, are there certain words that come up up once more and again? Are in that location words that stand up out? While you are going through this process, it is best for you to assume that every discussion is important—once more, you can determine whether something is actually of import 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 yous have in the margins or on a split up slice of paper. If yous have ideas that may mayhap answer your questions, write those down, also.
Observations
Let's have a expect at the commencement line of "Design":
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
The verse form starts with something unpleasant: a spider. Then, as nosotros look more closely at the adjectives describing the spider, we may come across connotations of something that sounds unhealthy or unnatural. When we imagine spiders, we do not generally picture them dimpled and white; information technology is an uncommon and decidedly creepy paradigm. In that location is dissonance between the spider and its descriptors, i.e., what is wrong with this flick? Already we have a question: what is going on with this spider?
Nosotros should await for additional clues farther on in the text. The next ii lines develop the image of the unusual, unpleasant-sounding spider:
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Similar a white slice of rigid satin cloth—
Now we have a white flower (a heal-all, which commonly has a violet-blueish flower) and a white moth in addition to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, as their name suggests, but this i seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps like the spider? Does the mutation that changes the heal-all's color too change its beneficial properties—could it exist poisonous rather than curative? A white moth doesn't seem remarkable, just it is "Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth," or like manmade textile that is artificially "rigid" rather than smooth and flowing like we imagine satin to be. We might recollect for a moment of a shroud or the lining of a coffin, but even that is awry, for neither should be stiff with decease.
Questions
The first three lines of the verse form's octave innovate unpleasant natural images "of decease and blight" (as the speaker puts it in line iv). The flower and moth disrupt expectations: the heal-all is white instead of "blue and innocent," and the moth is reduced to "rigid satin cloth" or "dead wings carried like a paper kite." We might look a spider to exist unpleasant and deadly; the poem's spider as well has an unusual and unhealthy appearance.
- The focus on whiteness in these lines has more to do with death than purity—can nosotros understand that whiteness as being corpse-similar rather than virtuous?
Well before the volta, Frost makes a "turn" abroad from nature as a retreat and oasis; instead, he unearths its inherent dangers, making nature menacing. From three lines alone, we have a number of questions:
- Will whiteness play a role in the rest of the poem?
- How does "blueprint"—an arrangement of these circumstances—fit with a scene of death?
- What other juxtapositions might we encounter?
These disruptions and dissonances think Frost's alteration to the standard Italian sonnet form: finding the means and places in which form and word selection go together will help u.s.a. brainstorm to unravel some larger concepts the poem itself addresses.
Theme
Put only, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, specially longer forms like novels and plays, take multiple themes. That'south good news when you are close reading because it means there are many different means you can recollect through the questions you develop.
Observations
And so far in our reading of "Pattern," our questions revolve effectually disruption: disruption of form, disruption of expectations in the clarification of sure images. Discovering a concept or thought that links multiple questions or observations you lot have fabricated is the starting time of a discovery of theme.
Questions
What is happening with disruption in "Design"? What point is Frost making? Observations virtually other elements in the text help you address the thought of disruption in more depth. Here is where nosotros look back at the work nosotros 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 the text highlight, or redirect, certain ideas?
In this case, we are looking to determine what kind(s) of disruption the poem contains or describes. Rather than "disruption," we desire to see what kind of disruption, or whether indeed Frost uses disruptions in course and language to communicate something opposite: design.
Sample Analysis
Afterwards yous make notes, formulate questions, and prepare tentative hypotheses, you must analyze the bailiwick of your close reading. Literary analysis is another process of reading (and writing!) that allows you to make a claim about the text. It is likewise the betoken at which you plough a critical eye to your before questions and observations to detect the well-nigh compelling points, discarding the ones that are a "stretch." By "stretch," we mean that we must discard points that are fascinating but accept no clear connection to the text every bit a whole. (We recommend a separate certificate for recording the bright ideas that don't quite fit this time around.)
Here follows an excerpt from a cursory analysis of "Pattern" based on the shut reading to a higher place. This example focuses on some lines in peachy detail in order to unpack the significant and significance of the poem's language. Past commenting on the unlike elements of close reading nosotros have discussed, it takes the results of our close reading to offer one item fashion 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 spider web. Plus it doesn't have a title.)
Extract
Frost's speaker brews unlikely associations in the first stanza of the poem. The "Contrasted characters of decease and bane / Mixed prepare to begin the morning right" make of the grotesque scene an equally grotesque mockery of a breakfast cereal (4–five). These lines are almost singsong in meter and information technology is easy to imagine them set to a radio jingle. A pun on "right"/"rite" slides the "characters of decease and blight" into their expected concoction: a "witches' broth" (half-dozen). These juxtapositions—a healthy breakfast that is as well a potion for dark magic—are borne out when our "fat and white" spider becomes "a snow-drop"—an early jump bloom associated with renewal—and the moth as "dead wings carried similar a newspaper kite" (1, 7, 8). Like the mutant heal-all that hosts the moth'due south expiry, the spider becomes a deadly flower; the harmless moth becomes a child'southward toy, but as "dead wings," more than like a puppet made of a skull.
The volta offers no resolution for our unsettled expectations. Having observed the scene and detailed its elements in all their unpleasantness, the speaker turns to questions rather than answers. How did "The wayside blue and innocent heal-all" end up white and bleached like a bone (10)? How did its "kindred spider" find the white flower, which was its perfect hiding place (xi)? Was the moth, so, too searching for camouflage, only to meet its stop?
Using some other question as a disguise, the speaker offers a hypothesis: "What but design of darkness to appall?" (13). This question sounds rhetorical, as though the only reason for such an unlikely combination of flora and fauna is some "design of darkness." Some strength, the speaker suggests, assembled the white spider, blossom, and moth to snuff out the moth'due south life. Such a design appalls, or horrifies. Nosotros might also consider the speaker request what other strength but dark design could apply something as simple every bit bloodcurdling in its other sense (making pale or white) to effect death.
However, the poem does not close with a question, only with a statement. The speaker'south "If design govern in a affair so pocket-sized" establishes a condition for the octave's questions after the fact (14). There is no point in because the dark design that brought together "contrasted characters of death and blight" if such an event is also minor, too physically modest to be the piece of work of some force unknown. Catastrophe on an "if" clause has the effect of rendering the poem still more uncertain in its conclusions: non only are we faced with unanswered questions, we are now non even sure those questions are valid in the start identify.
Behind the speaker and the disturbing scene, we take Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet. Like whatever designer may have altered the flower and attracted the spider to impale the moth, the poet congenital his poem "wrong" with a purpose in listen. Blueprint surely governs in a verse form, however small; does Frost too accept a dark design? Tin can we compare a scene in nature to a advisedly synthetic sonnet?
A Note on Organisation
Your goal in a paper about literature is to communicate your best and most interesting ideas to your reader. Depending on the blazon of paper y'all 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 teacher about the expectations for your paper.
Knowing how to organize these papers tin can be tricky, in function considering at that place is no single right reply—merely more and less effective answers. You may determine to organize your paper thematically, or by tackling each thought sequentially; you may choose to guild your ideas past their importance to your argument or to the poem. If yous are comparing and contrasting 2 texts, you might work thematically or by addressing offset ane text and and so the other. One mode to approach a text may be to start with the beginning of the novel, story, play, or poem, and piece of work your way toward its end. For example, hither is the rough construction of the example above: The author of the sample decided to use the verse form itself equally an organizational guide, at least for this part of the assay.
- A paragraph about the octave.
- A paragraph well-nigh the volta.
- A paragraph about the penultimate line (xiii).
- A paragraph almost the final line (14).
- A paragraph addressing form that suggests a transition to the next section of the paper.
Y'all will have to decide for yourself the best manner to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is information technology easier to follow your points when y'all write nigh each part of the text in detail before moving on? Or is your work clearer when yous work through each big thought—the significance of whiteness, the effect of an altered sonnet form, and and so on—sequentially?
We suggest you write your newspaper however is easiest for you then move things around during revision if you need to.
Further Reading
If you really desire to main the practice of reading and writing about literature, nosotros recommend Sylvan Barnet and William Due east. Cain's wonderful book, A Short Guide to Writing near Literature. Barnet and Cain offer not only definitions and descriptions of processes, but examples of explications and analyses, equally well as checklists for you, the author of the paper. The Short Guide is certainly not the only bachelor reference for writing nigh literature, but information technology is an excellent guide and reminder for new writers and veterans akin.
Source: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/closereading/
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