How to Start a Close Reading Essay

Introduction

A close reading essay is like going to a museum, and staring at a painting until y'all notice significant details you had not seen before. Writing an essay based on a airtight reading of the text means yous need to exist able to flex your observational and belittling muscles when it comes to textual interpretation. This is your time to prove your instructor that you are able to not merely notice the minutia of a literary passage, poem or brusk story, but that you take something insightful to say nigh that minutia. While this might sound tedious, it'southward really not. Recollect of it as a treasure chase of sorts. The details y'all find are the treasure and its up to you to decide what you lot do with them.

Most of all, you might find that yous actually enjoy the procedure of a shut read, as it gives you a risk to appreciate the details of the work. In looking meticulously at these details, y'all may discover deeper and more nuanced meanings to the text that enlighten your experience of it. And so before you're quick to dismiss the task of creating a shut reading essay as another do in drudgery, be open up to the idea that it might be more fun than you realize.

Definition

A close reading essay is an essay that has a focus on the tiny themes inherent in a literary passage, story or poem. Lots of essays out there are more than than happy to encompass the "bigger themes": these are themes that are concerned with things like justice, love, revenge, becoming an adult, loneliness. These "bigger themes" are referred to equally such because they are prevalent and obvious in the text. You don't have to look hard to find them. They are right there, similar big neon signs. Characters might fifty-fifty refer directly to them. Themes like these might even be repeated a few times. These are themes that instantly come to mind anytime ane references the work.

On the other paw, a close reading essay seeks to hash out what can exist uncovered when one looks by these more overt themes. It's the bookish equivalent of looking nether the rocks and examining what y'all discover there. A close reading essay asks you lot to scrutinize the smaller, more hidden themes and decide how they connect to the larger, more than overt themes. With an essay like this, you need to be able to hash out how the author uses language, too as what the author omits. Such an essay is similar a deep scuba dive downwardly to the lower depths of the text's "ocean" to encounter how the word option, tone, imagery and other literary elements all work together to create more than meaningful connections to the larger text.

While a close reading essay often seeks to wait past the larger motifs of the book, much of what it uncovers can unremarkably shed more low-cal onto these larger concepts. Much of what y'all discover about a shut reading essay helps you view the entire work with a greater sense of nuance and agreement. This applies to the big and pocket-sized themes and concepts of the piece.

A close reading essay also requires that you are able to excerpt as much information as possible from a small corporeality of text. This type of essay asks that you are able to interpret this text and utilise it to the significant of the greater themes or the greater story. A shut reading essay should too be provocative. What you write should inspire greater inquiry and a desire for the reader to learn more than nigh what you talk over. After reading this article, yous volition accept a much better handle on what is expected from you when crafting such an essay. You will feel exponentially more comfortable writing 1 and will be able to earn a passing course or higher.

How to Write a Shut Reading Essay

1. Read the selected or assigned text at least three boosted times. The first time, just read to familiarize yourself with the content. The second time read to explore details farther. The third time read every bit closely and as slowly equally possible.
2. Underline or highlight any portions of the text that yous observe odd or significant. These can repetitive words, provocative punctuation, interesting syntax or other details that you lot did not find earlier. Take your fourth dimension in this step and become slowly. The key to making good discoveries is not to rush past details.
3. Take stock of all the details that you accept underlined. Think about what unites them (or what unites some of them). What conclusions tin you draw about the characters, the theme, the larger piece, the author's intention?
4. State the conclusions yous've drawn on a slice of scrap newspaper. Circle the strongest one and arts and crafts that into your thesis.
5. Circle the strongest pieces of textual evidence that support your thesis from all the ones yous've underlined.
6. Develop a hook that connects to the greater thought of your thesis. For case, if your thesis is nigh beingness observed unaware as demonstrated in the brusque story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you might open with a quote or statistic nearly being watched unaware or by others.
7. Discuss this concept in three more sentences in your introduction. Country your thesis at the end of this introductory paragraph.
8. Apply your first trunk paragraph to describe your first piece of textual prove. This should be a very small, very specific detail about language, syntax, imagery, repetition or something else you noticed. Hash out why this item is significant and how it supports the thesis.
9. Echo this step with the next 2 body paragraphs.
10. Summarize the crux of your argument using new language. Without repeating yourself, remind the reader how these details enhance one'due south understanding of the text. Connect your thesis to a bigger film effect of the era or of humanity. For example, if you're writing nigh the theme of the uncanny in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," yous might desire to connect your thesis to the human desire to understand the afterlife.

Close Reading Essay Format

The format of a close reading essay is the same as most essays yous're experienced with: y'all first with an introduction that ends with a stated thesis. There are three body paragraphs that support the thesis using articulate textual details ofttimes displayed as quotes. The essay conclusion restates your thesis and refers dorsum to the details establish in the text, using more than general language. The only existent difference is that in the introduction yous might want to specify which section your essay will exist examining.

For example, if you lot're doing a close reading essay of a short story or verse form then you lot might not need to designate which section you're focusing on. Nevertheless, if it'due south a longer poem or longer piece of text, you tin employ your introduction to state which section you volition be focused on. For example, you tin write something to the result of "this paper will examine the use of  colour in chapter one of The Red Badge of Courage," or "this essay will wait at the repetition of the gerund in The Burial of the Dead in T.S. Eliot's famous poem 'The Waste Country.'"

Close Reading Essay Topics

• Daisy'south vocalization and discussion pick in The Groovy Gatsby: what they indicate virtually her graphic symbol.
• Beverages consumed in The Great Gatsby: how they reflect the events both actual and emotional.
• Usage of the phrase "quondam sport": what the timing indicates in the novel The Neat Gatsby.
• Cigarettes and smoking in The Catcher in the Rye: what the author suggests.
• Pick ane slang word that Holden repeats in The Catcher in the Rye and make an argument nigh information technology.
• Hash out the structure, syntax and discussion pick and visual presentation in William Carlos Williams' This is Just to Say.
• Inscrutability in Eliot'south The Waste Land: discuss the details that make it more mysterious.
• Hash out religious or biblical symbols in The Blood-red Badge of Courage as a ways of driving the narrative.
• Discuss language and syntax in any brusque story of Hemingway as a means of restrained only brilliant story telling.
• Discuss food and/or drink described in a piece of work of Hemingway as a means of revealing the inner life of the characters.
• Pick iii details in To Kill A Mockingbird that subtly advise the importance of tolerance or justice.
• Discuss one of the supporting characters in To Kill A Mockingbird and discuss how ane affair they say is a indictment or violation of the theme of justice.
• Discuss Pearl'southward connection to nature and all that is wild in The Scarlet Letter.
• Hash out the significance and precision of all the names given to characters in The Crimson Letter.
• Hash out Arthur Dimmesdale's get-go lines and what the precision of his words suggest in The Scarlet Letter.

Stuck Writing Your Shut Reading Essay?

Close Reading Essay Example

The greatest punishment of solitary confinement is that the isolation is torture in and of itself: the lack of stimulus, of man company, of contact with or sight of the outside world. This premise is what shapes Charlotte Perkins Gilman'south famed short story "The Yellowish Wallpaper." Almost scholars interpret the short story as the tale of a woman gone mad as a consequence of the forced isolation, lack of mental/intellectual stimulus and the overbearing influence of the men in her life. While these interpretations are valid and legitimate factors for the heroine, Gilman places very deliberate hints inside the text that suggest this short story is a ghost story and that there is something uncanny at piece of work, influencing the main grapheme.

Gilman takes great pains in her description of this thou empty house that the couple has rented for the summer, a house that appears to have a night, suggestive history. The reader knows that the house is isolated: it's 3 miles from the boondocks. "Information technology

makes me remember of English language places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of dissever trivial houses for the gardeners and people" (Gilman, 648). While this detail might not audio terribly dark, it is designed to irritate the reader's subconscious. When coming across the word "English places" ane tin can't aid simply think of nighttime, gloomy, expansive English manors. The reference to "hedges, walls, gates that lock"  increment the sense that this is place that tin can go along one convict, hidden and enclosed. The reference to "lots of split up little houses" give the reader the sense that the business firm and land surrounding information technology is massive, and that there are lots of places for someone or something bad to hide.

The darker history of the business firm is hinted at in subsequent details. "There were greenhouses, besides, but they are all broken now" (648). This is a provocative description as the author didn't write "empty" or "rusted" or "in need of renovation." The principal fashion to break a greenhouse is to pause the glass it consists of. This suggests some act of violence, a riot or something provocative and twisted, or some ugly altercation. An additional detail continues to put the reader sick at ease, "In that location was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years" (648). This is highly suggestive equally one wonders what sort of legal boxing would continue it empty? If anything, heirs would exist vying to alive there, if it is as grand as described. This detail suggests possibly ugly drama betwixt family members, skirmishes or perhaps fifty-fifty crimes of passion. When combined with the broken greenhouses described earlier, one wonders if there is something securely sordid in the history of the business firm. Or maybe the heirs of the firm didn't desire it and that'southward why it had been empty for years. It is here where the heroine claims "here is something foreign most the business firm – I can experience it" (648).  Perhaps what her intuition picks up on is exactly what the heirs of this house were seeking to avoid, and why information technology stayed empty for so long.

The heroine goes to great pains to draw the yellow wallpaper, and how it looks like a pair of optics observing her. This is a significant attribute of the description and definitely leads to the descent into madness, notwithstanding there is ane detail that oft gets overlooked nearly the nursery where the main character spends nearly all of her fourth dimension: "And so the flooring is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug

out here and there, and this neat heavy bed which is all we institute in the room,

looks as if it had been through the wars" (650). This creates the suggestion that there had been someone held in that room confronting their will at an earlier appointment. We have already been told several times that there are bars on the windows and "rings and things" in the walls. The fact that we are now told there are scratches and gouges on the floors and that the plaster has been dug upward, creates an image of someone trying to claw their way out of there. This creates a securely unsettling proffer that perhaps someone was held in captivity in that room, died there and that perchance this ghost is observing the heroine from the other side.

In summary, Gilman'southward "The Yellow Wallpaper" relies on a host of details to create the setting and set-up for a traditional ghost story. In this story, the supernatural is what drives the heroine insane, in conjunction with the involuntary seclusion. The details near the supernatural and the uncanny are prevalent. Information technology is quite possible that the firm was the site of some atrocious murder. The house may be total of dark spirits and malevolent energy, and just be waiting to prey on someone every bit vulnerable equally the primary character. While this character does become mad, it would be very heavy-handed to blame everything on her quarantined state: the author deliberately suggests that there is something off with that house and that room, and that its history might exist a sordid ane.

Conclusion

A shut reading essay allows you to put on your detective's hat and get out your magnifying drinking glass and really examine a work closely. The goal with this assignment is to truly notice details you had previously disregarded and to let those details influence your interpretation of the work. Concentrate on tiny aspects of the text that nigh scholars don't tend to notice or dwell on and let these details guide your analysis. This should be fun because information technology lets you view a beloved piece of literary work from a new perspective.

As always, if y'all're having whatsoever difficulties, don't hesitate to reach out to our writers. Our writers have years of experience crafting and fine-tuning these types of essays. They can hands make a few suggestions to go y'all on track, or help you refocus your management if you're going in circles.

Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper."National Library of Medicine, www.nlm.nih.gov/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018.

roundscoon1999.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essay-writing/close-reading-essay/

Share this post