Worksheet on Close Reading
A close reading, or explication, seeks to interrogate the particular words, images, and organization of a scene or passage. Close reading is a technique used to break up dense or complex ideas and language, or to draw attention to individual parts, in order to make meaning clearer. In addition to answering the question, "What does this passage mean," an explication seeks to answer the question, "How does this passage mean?" How, that is, does the passage unfold? What phrases, images, patterns, problems intrigue you? What drives the text? What makes it tick? How do the words, cadences, images, ideas, or silences contribute to the meaning and effect?
While you don't need to talk about every line in the passage — just choose those parts that seem important to you — you should address its main features and use quotations from the text to demonstrate and explore your interpretation. Use a brief introductory paragraph to present your argument about what the passage has to say (thesis), and explain what's at stake in the argument. Use your conclusion to develop your ideas about the relation of the passage to the rest of the work.
When writing an explication, you will want to think about the following thematic and structural components of the passage. Their relative importance will vary depending on the passage at hand, and not all of them necessarily warrant discussion in every essay:
- Context: how is the passage situated in the work? What comes before or after it?
- Chronology: what gets said first, second, etc.? Is the order of presentation important?
- Diction or word choice: do the characters or narrator use slang or highly formal language? Is the diction simple or difficult? How are significant words placed in the passage? How does the diction reflect or reinforce the sense of the passage?
- Figurative language and use of imagery: look at the use of metaphor, simile, analogy, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, personification, etc. What kind of imagery does the narrator employ? How does this use of figurative language affect the passage? Do certain images or ideas recur? Do they change? How might repetition of or changes in imagery or figures be significant?
- Repetition of words, images, sounds: how does repetition affect your reading of the passage? What patterns of repetition occur? How are these connected? Why and to what effect?
- Other types of language play: how do rhyme, rhythm, caesura, alliteration, assonance, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, etc., contribute to the sense of the passage?
- Ambiguity: what words are used ambiguously?
- Syntax: how does the placement of elements in a sentence or phrase, or word order in a line work in the passage? Are there changes in the expected word order that emphasize certain readings or suggest meanings? What voice is used (active or passive), and what point of view (first, second, or third person)? Consider also the use of poetic techniques such as enjambment or end-stopped lines in relation to the syntax of the passage.
- Style: does the narrator use short, choppy sentences or long complex ones? What about emotional tenor, tone, irony, or humor. How does the style affect our reading of the passage? What is the relation of irony -- the presence of doubled or multiple meanings -- to descriptive statements or arguments?
- The narrator: who is telling the story? Is the person using the first or third person? Is the narrator male or female? What role does gender play in helping us to situate the speaker? Is the person speaking to us, the readers, or to someone else? What is the narrator's stake in telling the story?
- Speaker(s): who is doing the talking and why?
Use the close reading to explore a particular problem, issue, or theme found in the larger narrative. Remember to be specific. Quote from the passage and use examples. An explication is simply a technique of analyzing a passage and discovering how the individual sentences comment upon, or look forward to, the work as a whole.