A System for Close Readings Often it can be quite daunting to be faced with an unseen text and an accompanying question

that asks, Explain how the text represents a particular issue. You need to do a close reading of the piece before you can work out your thesis statement. We need to devise a system to follow for close readings: 1. Read through the introductory information that is usually provided at the top of the page (particularly on an exam paper) this will give you the purpose, context and audience. Write these down. 2. Read through the piece highlighting and making annotations in the margin. Do not overdo this but look for: Figurative language Examine the passage carefully for similes, images, metaphors, and symbols. Identify any and all. List implications and suggested meanings as well as denotations. What visual insights does each word give? Look for multiple meanings and overlapping of meaning. Look for repetitions, for oppositions. Consider how each word or group of words suggests a pattern and/or points to an abstraction (e.g., time, space, love, soul, death). Can you identify any archetypes (this may direct you to the themes, issues of the piece)? Diction This section is closely connected with the section above. Diction, with its emphasis on words, provides important information that leads you to understanding the texts meaning. Look up any words you do not understand. The dictionary will illuminate new connotations and new denotations of a word. Look at all the meanings of the key words. Develop and question the metaphoric sense of the words. Can you see what the metaphoric words are suggesting? Style Look for any significant aspects of styleparallel constructions, antithesis, etc. Look for patterns, polarities, and problems. Look for alliteration, internal rhymes and other such poetic devices which are often used in prose as well as in poetry. You need to look closely here for meanings that are connected to these rhyme schemes.

3. Write a summary of the literal content and structure of the piece- this will direct you towards the theme.

this should be done as succinctly as possible. Briefly describe the skeletal contents of the passage in one or two sentences. Answer the journalist's questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why?) in order to establish character/s, plot, and setting as it relates to this passage. What is the context for this passage?

4. Divide the passage into the more obvious sections (stages of argument, discussion, or action). What is the interrelation of these units? How do they develop? Again, what can you determine regarding a controlling design for the work at this point? If the work is a poem, identify the poetic structure and note the variations within that structure. In order to fully understand "Scorn Not the Sonnet," you must be knowledgeable about the sonnet as a form. What is free verse? Is this free verse or blank verse? What is the significance of such a form? Does the form contribute to the meaning? With prose it may be chronological ideas, development, flashback, dialogue, interior monologue. 5. Go back to the title: it may have a significance you missed earlier and most often contains a symbolic meaning regarding the theme of the piece. 6. Write a contextual paragraph looking at your response to the characters and issues and how the context of the piece (with its attitudes and values) has challenged or reinforced your own attitudes and values. 7. Pin point key aspects of narrative structure: particularly how the point of view positioned you and developed the characters and your understanding of them. The significance of the setting. The tone. Now devise a thesis statement. It must not be a statement of fact and it must be able to be argued. Using A Blow, A Kiss as the piece, a thesis statement on this topic might be: The issue of domestic violence and dysfunctional relationships is explored in A Blow, A Kiss. Your annotations and notes will form the structure of your essay as you use them to develop your argument for your thesis.