Close Reading

 What Is Close Reading?

Close reading, sometimes called explication of text, means developing an

understanding of a text that is based on its small details and the larger ideas those details evoke or suggest. Although you might worry that taking a work apart somehow lessens its power or the pleasure of reading it, the opposite is usually true. By looking at the various parts of a poem or passage of fiction, you come to appreciate the writer’s artistry and understand how a writer uses various techniques

to make a statement, suggest an emotion, or convey an idea. John Ciardi’s classic book on analyzing poetry is entitled How Does a Poem Mean? — and that’s the purpose of close reading: to analyze not just what a piece of literature means but how that meaning comes about. When you write a close analysis essay, you start with the larger ideas you’ve discovered and use the small details — the words themselves and how they’re arranged — to support your interpretation of the meaning of the piece.

 

The key to close reading is, of course, observation — taking note of what you read and what you think about it, and asking questions. The good news is that the texts you are asked to read closely are usually not that long, which means you can read them several times. Each time you read a text, you will notice more and more. Later in the chapter we’ll suggest specific strategies — such as annotating and using a graphic organizer — that will help you organize what you notice, pose questions about your observations, and even answer the questions you’ve posed. Let’s start with what you notice when you first read a poem or passage of fiction.

 

First-Impression Questions

Take a look at this excerpt from My Antonia by Willa Cather, a novel about early

settlers in the American West, narrated by a young boy who moves from Virginia to

Nebraska to be brought up by his grandparents. As you read, jot down some questions

that arise from your first impressions.

 

I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach

unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There were some

ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the

papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me

giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic

feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed

ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but

I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall

grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through

my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around

me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could.

Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that

lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything

more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a

part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

[1918]

 

After just one reading, you can probably get a sense of the tone of this passage

and the mood it creates; you might even be able to imagine a few things about its

narrator, its setting, and even its themes. You will surely have questions about how

and why Cather’s style is so distinct, and that is the first step in reading closely.

 

Here are some questions that a first reading may raise. Your questions may be

similar to the ones here, or you may have come up with completely different ones.

 

• What part do the snakes play in this passage about happiness?

• What might it mean that the passage is set in a garden?

• How big is that pumpkin? How big are the grasshoppers, really?

• What makes the objects in the passage so vivid?

• Why does the narrator connect happiness and death?

• How does the narrator fit — literally and figuratively — into the landscape?

• How does the passage change from beginning to end?

What’s important at this point is not necessarily answering the questions but simply

asking them. By posing questions, you’re engaging with the text — you’re reading

actively.

 

• ACTIVITY •

Read the following poem ‘To an Athlete Dying Young

‘ by A. E. Housman. Then create your own first impression

questions.

 

To an Athlete Dying Young

A. E. HOUSMAN

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, 5

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay 10

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man. 20

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head 25

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

[1896]