Reading Close

The goal of close reading is to engage in a detailed examination of a poem or a short passage from a prose work to find a focus, a design, or an idea that might help explain the whole work. The method is to pay close attention to all the patterns, correspondences and tensions in the diction, syntax, imagery, symbolism, tone, and literary devices the author has chosen to use. The premise is that the text will be more fully understood and appreciated to the extent that the interrelations of its crafted parts are perceived.

How to...

1. Read the text once to get an overall impression, keeping in mind any questions the reading activates in your mind. Try to formulate an initial literal sense of the situation, meaning, point, or function of the passage as a whole (if it’s a complete text) or within the larger whole (if it’s only one small part of a longer work). What’s the big idea? What’s the author mostly talking about? Could you express or paraphrase it in a sentence? Why do you think the author wrote this? Pay attention to key passages that might convey particularly important messages.

2. Read the text again, more carefully this time, and annotate the text. What grabs you? Provokes thought? Confuses? This is reading with your pen, and it will help your understanding and recall of the text.

3. Now examine the key passages, words, or phrases you have annotated. What do you notice? What patterns emerge? What ideas, words, or moves recur? Do you find significant connections, repetitions, contradictions, multiple meanings, designs, motifs, or consistent uses or rhythm of language?

4. Formulate a statement that attempts to answer a couple of your questions about what you’ve noticed. The statement should reflect your speculations about the meaning of the text.

5. Now you’re ready to write an essay with this statement as a focus. Remember to keep all your conclusions firmly grounded in the text of the work, supporting all assertions with evidence from the passage.

A close reading is usually the first step towards a larger analysis.

Note that a close reading is not an analysis or an essay. It is the first step in trying to understand a text.

Some typical questions

Initial Reception

What is the first thing you notice about the passage?

What is the second thing?

Do the two things you noticed complement or contradict each other?

What mood does the passage create in you? Why?

Vocabulary and Diction

Which words do you notice first? Why?

How do the important words relate to one another?

Do any words seem oddly used?

Do any words have double meanings? Do they have extra connotations?

(Look up any unfamiliar words).

Patterns

Does an image here remind you of an image elsewhere in the book? Where? What's the connection?

How might this image fit into the pattern of the book as a whole?

Could this passage symbolise the entire work? Could this passage serve as a microcosm--a little picture--of what's taking place in the whole work?

What is the sentence rhythm like? Short and choppy? Long and flowing? Does it build on itself or stay at an even pace? What is the style like?

Look at the punctuation. Is there anything unusual about it?

Is there any repetition within the passage? What is the effect of that repetition?

How many types of writing are in the passage? (For example, narration, description, argument, dialogue, rhymed or alliterative poetry, etc.)

Can you identify paradoxes in the author's thought or subject?

What is left out or kept silent? What would you expect the author to talk about that the author avoided?

Narratological aspects

How does the passage make us react or think about any characters or events within the narrative?

Are there colours, sounds, physical description that appeals to the senses?

Who speaks in the passage? To whom does he or she speak?

Does the narrator have a limited or partial point of view? Or does the narrator appear to be omniscient?

Other

Are there figures of speech? What kinds?

Is there one underlying metaphor? If not, are there different metaphors, and in what order do they occur?

Do any of the objects (colours, animals, plants, etc.) appearing in the passage have traditional connotations or meaning?

If there are multiple symbols in the work, could we read the entire passage as having allegorical meaning beyond the literal level?

Harvard College Writing Centre: How to Do a Close Reading