Where to Begin and Strategies

Where to Begin

An interesting and successful close reading starts with the right passage(s). Some promising places to look are:

  • Passages which are puzzling in some way
  • Passages which contradict the reader’s expectations
  • Passages which seem at first to be irrelevant digressions from the main narrative
  • Passages rich in concrete details and imagery

Strategies

Once you’ve found an interesting passage, read and reread it. As you do, you can try some of the following approaches to understand the passage more deeply.

  1. Reading for the literal meaning
  2. Rewrite the passage by paraphrasing or summarizing it
  3. Ask yourself: What does the passage say if you treat it as a complete text in its own right? How does the meaning contribute to the work as a whole (or not)?

Reading for Formal Elements

Identify some of the formal mechanisms of the writing, such as:

Narrative: How would you describe the narrative voice in your passage? Is the narrator first or third person, male or female, omniscient or restricted in knowledge? What are the limitations of the narrator, and how are these reflected in the text?

Structure: How is the passage structured? Does it move from point A to B? Does it move from point A to B and then back to A again (ring composition)? Does it linger on a single detail?  

Patterns: Are there images, keywords, or other devices that reappear in the passage? Are these elements used the same way? Finding a pattern can help establish general characteristics of the text.

Reading for the Implications of the Passage

The next step in close reading is to start examining the implications of a passage. One way to delve into the implications of a passage is to connect its formal elements to your literal reading. Do these formal mechanisms underscore or undermine what the passage says on a literal level?

Reading for the Context of the Passage

Does this passage share imagery with another passage in the work? Does it contradict it? Does the passage engage with larger themes (e.g., vision and voyeurism, popular politics, the nature of desire)? Are there important similarities and differences between this passage and others like it throughout the work?

 

Using a commentary can help you during a close reading. Make sure you check out our commentaries page!