There are many ways to approach a passage that you would like to explore further (“close read”). Often times, we will use one (or more) of these approaches to look at a single piece of work (a paragraph, 5-10 lines of a poem, a single speech that a character makes). In examining this passage, we will then build an argument from it. 

• Perspective: 
  • Why does it matter? Narrative bias? Unreliable narrator? Sincere narrator? 

• 1^st Person (“I”)
  • 2^nd Person (“You”)
    • E.g. “You’re in a car with a beautiful boy and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for” – excerpt from “Your Name is Jeff” by Richard Siken from Crush.
    • Please note that Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” is not second person but rather Oliver’s speaker directly addresses (or breaks the fourth wall by speaking to) the reader by saying “you.”

• 3^rd Person (Limited or Omniscient)

• Tone: 
  • Sincere? Sarcastic? Sad? Happy? Devastated? & how can you tell? Why does it matter?

• Audience: 
  • Who is this for? 
  • In Toni Morrison’s interview with Charlie Rose, she discusses how Morrison felt  that previous Black American authors were addressing a white audience because they were saying things that Morrison, as a Black woman, did not need explained to her about Black American culture. She said it was as if these writers were “talking over [Morrison’s] shoulder.” 
    • Now, why would that matter for a narrative? For the ability for someone to connect with a piece of literature?

• Punctuation:
  • Get nerdy about commas (A pause, a breath, a build, a tumbling of emotions?), em dashes (“–”), periods (full. stops.), excessive question marks (what? me? never?), exclamation points (Whoa! Exciting! Maybe angry! Or happy!).

• Diction:
  • Or, of all of the words in the world, why did the author choose this one? 

• Is there any kind of word that seems out of place? 
  • E.g. “I, being born a woman and distressed / By all the needs and notions of my kind, / Am urged by your propinquity to find” (Millay, lines 1-3) <– propinquity stands out to me because it is the longest and least “every day” word in these lines. From here, I would investigate further why it captured my attention. Sometimes this “opens up” a whole piece and sometimes it does not (depends on the word).

• Is poetic language being used? If so, why? 
  • Imagery / metaphor: are we breaking down a concept to make it more understandable? What does it do for the reader (beyond “paint a picture” or “better reading comprehension”)? Does it move you? If so, what does that tell us about what the author wants us to think about the human condition?

• Allusions: 
  • If an author is adding obvious allusions, then they want us to think about this work in relation to other things like myths, folklore, Biblical narratives. So, why would they (as a writer) want to be seen in the same context? 
    • For example, by referencing Paradise Lost, in Frankenstein does Mary Shelley want to put herself in context with John Milton to show that she is “just as good” a writer as he is?

• And/or how are those allusions working for the reader? In referencing something else, does it help you to better understand the narrative you are reading? 

• Finding Patterns or finding when patterns break: 

• Thematic:
  • If the theme of art is throughout a novel (Never Let Me Go) where the central question might be about the question of whether people who have been cloned have souls, then what is the function of art? Why does the theme of “art” pop up so much? 

• Symbolism:
  • This will depend on the narrative but look for the “small” things that are repeated time and again as it will – sure enough –­­ tell you about something larger. 

• Color (like purple, a color that was only for Kings before the 20^th century) is repeated often enough, what does it tell us about the wealth or class status of the character? Or if green is used in any narrative before 20^th century, was most likely created using arsenic – so what does that tell us about the main character who is slowly going insane (pure example). 

• Better example: How the pear tree is operating, for Janie, as a symbol or a metaphor for her sexuality in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

• Word repetition: 
  • Or, if writer repeats a phrase three times and, on the third time, the phrase changes slightly, what does the writer want us to think about this little rhetorical move? Is it an emphasis of a point? Is it a breaking of that point? 
  • E.g. Gloria Anzaldúa: “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I amfree to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate” (Anzaldúa 39). 

• Rhetorical flow / Sudden idea switch up, Anzaldúa, same passage:
  • “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome a tradition of silence” (Anzaldúa 40).
  • Language –> serpent’s tongue –> voice. What does this tell us about how she thinks about the way her language moves? About her identity? Why a snake? Why an instance on a multiplicity of voices?

• Sound: Consonance/Assonance, Alliteration, Enjambment (not technically a sound), etc…
  • How are the sounds of similar words striking your internal ears? It may take reading a sentence or passage out loud to really “hear” what is happening. Or, if you are taking on poetry, I always recommend doing a YouTube search where a trained actor reads a poem out. It’s not always a fool-proof model (some actors surprisingly don’t know what to do with poetry) but this can also be an excellent way to find patterns or to “hear” where patterns break. 

• Absences
  • Now, this can be a tricky one to prove, so choose your topic wisely.

• Example: Consider the absence of women in the center Frankenstein. Why would Mary Shelley, as the female author of that book, insist that her female characters not be part of the action? What is she saying by their absence? What could it tell us about the historical context, role of women during the time, or (most interesting of these questions) about creation when neither God nor women are involved? 

• The Big Ideas; or, what can this passage tell me about…
  • Philosophy
  • Historical context
  • Gender / sexuality
  • Race
  • Or class
  • And why does it matter? 

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