Close Reading of Fiction

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Close Reading ofFiction

• Modified from The Ohio State University
• at Lima Writing Center

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Close Reading An Overview

• Literary Analysis requires that one read the text
  by looking closely at both WHAT the author is
  saying as well as HOW the author is saying it.

• When conducting a close reading, readers should
  look at the small details and understand how they
  work together in the piece to create meaning.

Read like a writer, with purpose and intent.
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Part 1

• How to Tackle the Ever-Daunting Task of Close
  Reading

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How to Read Closely First Impressions

• Determine WHAT the author is doing in the
  passage
• Establishing Setting
• Creating Characterization
• Developing a Conflict (relationships)
• Manipulating Time
• Establishing theme
• Purposeinform, describe, entertain, narrate,
  etc.
• What is the first thing you notice about the
  passage?
• What is the second thing?
• Do the two things you noticed complement each
  other? Or contradict each other?
• What mood does the passage create in you? Why?

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How to Read Closely Vocab. and Diction

• Dictionis the authors word choice
• Connotationthe emotions attached to a word
  (maybe positive, negative or neutral)
• Denotationthe dictionary definition

• Home
• Connotations
• Loving, warm, comforting, hostile, abusive,
  argumentative
• Denotation
• 1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is
  the usual residence of a person, family, or
  household.
• 2. the place in which one's domestic affections
  are centered.
• 3. an institution for the homeless, sick, etc. a
  nursing home.
• 4. the dwelling place or retreat of an animal.
• 5. the place or region where something is native
  or most common.

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(No Transcript)
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How to Read Closely Vocab. and Diction

• Think about words with varying degrees of
  intensity.
• Hate vs. Abhor vs. Dislike
• Why would the author choose abhor over hate?
• What does the diction suggest about character?

• Look up the meanings of words.
• A good resource for looking up words is the
  Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED provides
  definitions of words relevant to specific time
  periods.

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How to Read CloselyDiscerning Patterns

• Symbolism
• Repeated images, words or ideas
• Words or phrases that jump out as important
• Words or phrases that can be interpreted in more
  than one way
• Irony or ambiguity
• Passages you dont understand
• Figurative language
• Paradox contradictory statement that is
  seemingly true ex. (F451) alive yet dead

• When reading, look at passages that seem
  important in the text.
• Underline or highlight or take notes on passages
  that stand out.
• Things you might look for

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How to Read Closely Discerning Patterns

• Are there colors, sounds, physical description
  that
• appeals to the senses? Does this imagery form a
• pattern? Why might the author have chosen that
  color,
• sound or physical description?
• Consider how the writing is structured how
• does it progress, from beginning to end?
• Is any part of the passage isolated? If so, why?
• Punctuation?
• Repetition
• Does the mode of writing change? (example,
  narration, description, argument, etc.
• Re-read passages you did not understand the first
  time.
• Never ignore anything that you dont understand.
• Keep working at difficult passages until they
  make sense.

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How to Read Closely Point of View and
Characterization

• How does the passage make us react or think about
  any characters or events within the narrative?
• 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, and he knows things the
  characters couldn't possibly know? (For example,
  omniscient narrators might mention future
  historical events, events taking place "off
  stage," the thoughts and feelings of multiple
  characters, and so on).
• If there are characters involved, do they agree
  with each other? Does one of them seem more
  reliable as a commentator on the subject under
  discussion? Does the passage rely on direct
  discourse? on free indirect speech?
• If we are hearing from a narrator as well as
  characters, what kind of comment does the
  narrator seem to be making about the matters at
  hand? Is the narrator reliable? (That is, do
  you trust him or her, or do you have some reason
  to be skeptical about the narrators stance
  here?)  

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Point of View 1st Person

• First Person (narrator a participant I)
• 1. Major Character
• 2. Minor character
• Second Person (yourare)
• Third Person (narrator a nonparticipant observer
• he, she, they, etc.)
• 1. Omniscient (all-knowing)
• 2. Limited or Selective Omniscient
• a. Seeing into mind of 1 major character
• b. Seeing into mind of 1 minor character
• 3. Objective (fly on the wallnot seeing into
• minds of any characters)

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How to Read CloselyNow what?

• After reading and making note of important
  passages, try to find a unifying idea.
• First, ask what the elements seem to be saying.
• Any idea supported by the text is valid. There
  are no crazy or stupid ideas, unless there is
  no evidence from the text to support the claim.
• Dont try to relate everything you find in the
  story. Use the parts that create one unifying
  idea.
• However, dont ignore anything that contradicts
  this unifying idea. Remember to present and
  discuss any contradicting evidence you find.

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How to Read CloselyUnifying Idea

• If you have trouble
• finding a unifying
• idea
• Try writing about ideas in the work that interest
  you.
• By writing your ideas down you may begin to see
  connections you did not see before.

• The thesis/claim (unifying idea) should point to
  something about the text that people might not
  otherwise have realized.
• If no one would argue your point, ask So what?
• Sometimes the answer to this question is the
  thesis.

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How to Read CloselyUtilizing Quotes

• Use everything from the text that works for your
  idea.
• Also, quote from the text.
• Show what details you found, and tell why they
  are important.

• Quotes support your argument, and you need to
  support every idea with evidence from the text.
• If there is no evidence, there is no argument.

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Part 2

• Close Reading Fiction
• Excerpt from Herman Melvilles Benito Cereno

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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

• The morning was one peculiar to that coast.
  Everything was mute and calm everything gray.
  The sea, though undulated into long roods of
  swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the
  surface like waved lead that has cooled and set
  in the smelters mould. The sky seemed a gray
  surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and
  kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among
  which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully
  over the waters, as swallows over meadows before
  storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper
  shadows to come.

Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. Nation of
Letter A Concise Anthology of American
Literature. Ed. Stephen Cushman and
Paul Newlin. Vol. 1. St. James Brandywine P,
1998. 278-315.
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Sentence 1

• The morning was one peculiar to that coast.

• Morning - ideas of a new day or beginning, light,
  sunrise
• Peculiar - means distinct, characterizes a person
  place or thing, also the idea of different
• Coast - near the sea, establishes setting

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Sentence 2

• Everything was mute and calm everything gray.

• Mute - silent
• Calm - tranquil, peaceful, quiet, everything is
  quiet and gray
• Gray - color between black and white, dull, the
  cold of light at twilight, not bright or hopeful,
  dismal, gloomy, sad, depressing, cold and sunless

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Sentence 3

• The sea, though undulated into long roods of
  swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the
  surface like waved lead that has cooled and set
  in the smelters mould.

• Undulated - wavy markings, forming a waved
  surface
• Roods - one meaning is a cross or a
  representation of a cross, another is a unit of
  linear measurement,
• Swells - rising or heaving of the sea/water in
  succession of long rolling waves, as after a wind
  causing it has dropped, or due to a distant
  disturbance
• Fixed - fastened securely, firmly resolved,
  stationary
• Lead - gray, heavy metal
• Smelter - one who fuses metal
• Here there is a Paradox - the sea is moving, has
  swells and undulated waves, yet it seems fixed,
  sleeked at the surface, and like lead
• There is also a simile - the water is like lead

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Sentence 4

• The sky seemed a gray surtout.

• The color GRAY has become a dominant theme by
  this point.
• May be important in the worktake note of the
  color, perhaps
• Surtout - a mans great-coat or overcoat a hood
  worn by women outer covering
• (We know from the OED that the word is obsolete
  now.)

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Sentence 5 (Part 1)

• Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with
  flights of troubled gray vapors among which they
  were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the
  waters, as swallows over meadows before storms.

• Kith and Kin - country and kinsfolk, relatives,
  family
• Vapors - matter in the form of a steamy or
  imperceptible exhalation, exhalation of nature of
  steam, usually due to the effect of heat on
  moisture used figuratively to mean something
  insubstantial or worthless, sometimes to mean a
  fantastic idea, foolish brag or boast
• Skim - to deal with, treat, or study very lightly
  without close attention, move over something with
  very slight contact, glance over without reading
  closely, pass over lightly without dwelling on or
  treating fully

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Sentence 5 (Part 2)

• Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with
  flights of troubled gray vapors among which they
  were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the
  waters, as swallows over meadows before storms.

• Storm - violent disturbance of affairs, whether
  civil, political, social, or domestic, commotion,
  sedition, tumult
• So the birdsFowlare relatives in some way to
  the vaporswhat does this mean? Why are they
  troubled? Note that there is more grayThese fowl
  are like swallows over meadows before
  stormsdoes this mean these fowl are
  foreshadowing a storm, as well (commonly believed
  that animals have some weather predicting
  capabilities)?
• Is this a literal storm, or also some sort of
  storm in the story itself?

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Sentence 6

• Denotation
• Shadow - comparative darkness, gloom,
  unhappiness, darkness of night or growing
  darkness after sunset image cast by a body
  intercepting light type of what is fleeting or
  ephemeral delusive semblance or image
  vain/unsubstantial object of pursuit obscure
  indication, symbol, foreshadowing imitation,
  copy slight or faint appearance, small portion,
  trace
• (Note how many meanings for one simple word that
  we all think we know)
• Deeper - extension downward profound, hard to
  get to the bottom of grave, heinous intense,
  profound, great in measure/degree intense
  (color) penetrating much immersed, involved,
  implicated, far advanced, far on

• Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to
  come.

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Sentence 6

• These shadows are also gray.
• Shadows foreshadowing deeper shadows might be all
  signs on the water of a coming stormthe waves,
  the quiet, the birds, the vaporshow does this
  relate to the story?
• Are their deeper shadows to come yet in the
  story itself?
• The story itself starts gray, in shadow-like
  environment on the seaalso the word
  foreshadowing is in the passage.

• Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to
  come.

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Putting it Together

• There is a lot of gray which signifies an in
  between state, not light or dark.
• Not black or white (an association we use to mean
  right/wrong or good/bad).
• Could these concepts be brought in simply by the
  color gray?
• Also there is a storm, an idea of shadow, ideas
  of illusion versus reality are present.
• The passage discusses ideas about things not
  being what they seem.
• To fully analyze the work, we would need the rest
  of the story, but this brief passage in the
  introduction already sets up quite a few ideas
  for what might be coming.

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Your Turn

• In Cold Blood is a non-fiction book first
  published in 1966, written by American
  author Truman Capote it details the 1959 murders
  of Herbert Clutter, a farmer from
  Holcomb, Kansas, his wife, and two of their four
  children.
• When Capote learned of the quadruple murder,
  before the killers were captured, he decided to
  travel to Kansas and write about the crime.
•  In Cold Blood is regarded by critics as a
  pioneering work of the true crime genre, though
  Capote was disappointed that the book failed to
  win the Pulitzer Prize.
• From http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood
  

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Close Reading Analysis Paragraph

• Write a paragraph in response to the following
  question
• How does the author use literary devices to
  introduce the village of Holcomb and the values
  of the people who live there?

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Part 3

• Close Reading Poetry

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Close Reading of Poetry Overview

• Some elements of poetry to consider when close
  reading
• The speaker is not always the same as the poet.
• Where is the poem taking place?
• What kinds of figurative language are present?
• Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Symbolism,
  Paradox, etc.
• What kinds of imagery are in the poem?
• What can be said about the sounds of words?
• Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance,
  Onomatopoeia, etc.
• What is the meter? (stressed, unstressed
  syllables)
• What is the rhyme scheme?
• What is the form of the poem?
• Sonnet (14 Lines), How many stanzas?, Are there
  any refrains?

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Shakespeares Sonnet 3

• 1 Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou
  viewest
• 2 Now is the time that face should form
  another,
• 3 Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest
• 4 Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some
  mother.
• 5 For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
• 6 Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
• 7 Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
• 8 Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
• 9 Thou art thy mothers glass, and she in thee
• 10 Calls back the lovely April of her prime
• 11 So thou through windows of thine age shall
  see,
• 12 Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time
• 13 But if thou live, remembered not to be,
• 14 Die single, and thine image dies with
  thee.

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Rhyme Scheme

• This is a Shakespearean sonnet.
• The rhyme scheme is ABABCDCDDEDEDD
• This is a variant from the standard
  Shakespearean rhyme schemes of
• ABABCDCDEFEFGG
• ABBACDDCEFFEGG

• Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
• Now is the time that face should form another,
• Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest
• Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
• For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
• Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
• Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
• Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
• Thou art thy mothers glass, and she in thee
• Calls back the lovely April of her prime
• So thou through windows of thine age shall see,
• Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time
• But if thou live, remembered not to be,
• Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

• A
• B
• A
• B
• C
• D
• C
• D
• D
• E
• D
• E
• D
• D

• The rhyme scheme shows possible turning points
  in a sonnet.
• Areas that break the rhyme pattern or dont
  quite rhyme often draw attention to important
  words or ideas.

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Meter

• / U / U
  / U / U /
  U /
• 1 Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou
  viewest
• / U / U /
  U / U
  / U /
• 2 Now is the time that face should form
  another, U / U
  / U / U / U
  / U
• 3 Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest

• Meter is important because areas where the meter
  falters obviously could suggest important
  portions or words in the poem.
• Look for stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Count how many syllables are in the line.
• What might extra syllables
  suggest?

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Speaker

• Look at the speaker of the poemis it a man or
  woman? How can you tell?
• The speaker is not always the same as the poet.
• Though the poet is Shakespeare, he is not
  necessarily the speaker.

• To Whom is the poem addressed?
• Also, think about the theme of the poem
• Is this a love poem?
• Is it something else?

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Meanings of Words

• Look for words that you dont understand or that
  might be important
• Look words up in the Oxford English Dictionary
  (OED)
• In a poem, especially short poems, all words are
  important.

• Beguile
• 1. To entangle or over-reach with guile to
  delude, deceive, cheat.
• 2. To deprive of by fraud, to cheat out of.
• 3. To cheat (hopes, expectations, aims, or a
  person in them) to disappoint, to foil,
• 4. To win the attention or interest of (any one)
  by wiling means,
• 5. To divert attention in some pleasant way from
  (anything painful, or irksome)

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Figurative Language

• Look for figurative language and other poetic
  elements in the poem.
• simile, metaphor, symbolism, imagery etc.

• Metaphor Thou art thy mothers glass
• Symbolism Imagery glass, meaning mirror, is a
  symbol throughout the poem.
• Symbolism Imagery living, life, death, youth,
  children, mother

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Having Troubles?

• If you have troubles figuring out the language,
  try paraphrasing line by line, or sentence by
  sentence
• See the example below

Image from http//www.shakespeare-online.com/sonn
ets/3detail.html
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The Unifying Idea (Thesis)

• What does Shakespearean Sonnet 3 seem to be
  saying?
• What do all of these elements combined suggest?
• Generate a unifying principle to tie the
  information youve gathered together.

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Further Reference

• Visit the Writing Center to meet with a tutor to
  discuss your paper.
• Take advantage of this and other helpful online
  resources through the Writing Center website at
• http//www.lima.ohio-state.edu/academics/writing/

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Close Reading Presentation Credits

• The OSU-Lima Writing Center thanks Jered Slusher
  for creating this PowerPoint Presentation.
• Based on a workshop
• Created by Mary Hirt,
• Anne Maag, and
• Stephanie Verhoff
• Visit us online at
• http//www.lima.ohio-state.edu/
• academics/writing/