Close reading

Sonnet 18 By

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,     So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Created for Lit2Go on the web at etc.usf.edu

Close Reading

Literature and Culture_50BZ_SP26_ON ZB

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Close Reading of a Literary Passage

To do a close reading, you choose a specific passage and analyze it in fine detail, as if with a magnifying glass. You then comment on points of style and on your reactions as a reader. Close reading is important because it is the building block for larger analysis. Your thoughts evolve not from someone else's truth about the reading, but from your own observations. The more closely you can observe, the more original and exact your ideas will be.

To begin your close reading, ask yourself several specific questions about the passage. The following questions are not a formula, but a starting point for your own thoughts. When you arrive at some answers, you are ready to organize and write. You should organize your close reading like any other kind of essay, paragraph by paragraph, but you can arrange it any way you like.

I. First Impressions

What is the first thing you notice about the passage? What is the second thing?

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Do the two things you noticed complement each other, or contradict each other? What mood does the passage create in you? Why?

II. Vocabulary and Diction

Which words do you notice first? Why? What is noteworthy about this diction? How do the important words relate to one another? Do any words seem oddly used to you? Why? Do any words have double meanings? Do they have extra connotations? Look up any unfamiliar words. For a pre-20th century text, look in the Oxford English Dictionary for possible outdated meanings. (The OED can only be accessed by students with a subscription or from a library computer that has a subscription. Otherwise, you should find a copy in the local library.)

III. Discerning Patterns

Does an image here remind you of an image elsewhere in the book? Where? What's the connection? How might this image fit into the pattern of the book as a whole? Could this passage symbolize the entire work? Could this passage serve as a microcosm—a little picture—of what's taking place in the whole work? What is the sentence rhythm like? Short and choppy? Long and flowing? Does it build on itself or stay at an even pace? What is the style like? Look at the punctuation. Is there anything unusual about it? Is there any repetition within the passage? What is the effect of that repetition?

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How many types of writing are in the passage? (For example, narration, description, argument, dialogue, rhymed or alliterative poetry, etc.) Can you identify paradoxes in the author's thought or subject? What is left out or kept silent? What would you expect the author to talk about that the author avoided?

IV. Point of View and Characterization

How does the passage make us react or think about any characters or events within the narrative? Are there colors, sounds, or physical descriptions that appeal to the senses? Does this imagery form a pattern? Why might the author have chosen that color, sound, or physical description? 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.)

V. Symbolism

Are there metaphors? What kinds? Is there one controlling metaphor? If not, how many different metaphors are there, and in what order do they occur? How might that be significant? How might objects represent something else? Do any of the objects, colors, animals, or plants appearing in the passage have traditional connotations or meaning? What about religious or biblical significance?

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If there are multiple symbols in the work, could we read the entire passage as having allegorical meaning beyond the literal level?

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Some Thoughts About Tragedy (Both Literary and Mundane): "We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look."

--Aldous Huxley

"I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them."

--Juliette Binoche

"I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment." --Marcel Marceau

Many people do not see the point to tragedy. Much of American pop culture tends to embrace the comic vision of art, finding tragedy depressing or disturbing. However, in the 5th century B.C.E., the classical Greek writers thought that facing tragedy was a healthy and necessary antidote to human foolishness. It taught humans to know themselves in a way comedy could not. The Greek philosopher Plato, quoting Socrates, admonished his listeners, "Know thyself." Part of that is how we might react in a tragic situation similar to what the protagonist faces.

"Tragedy is more important than love. Out of all human events, it is tragedy alone that brings people out of their own petty desires and into awareness of other humans' suffering. Tragedy occurs in human lives so that we will learn to reach out and comfort others"

--C. S. Lewis

Likewise, the Romantic poets and later Victorian viewers valued tragedy as an emotional exercise helping viewers learn compassion. Watching people suffer on stage could help the audience sympathize with another's pain. The rise of the sentimental novel in the late 1700s and early 1800s reveals a cultural interest in this process, and Romantic poets like Shelley, Byron, and Keats went into ecstasies over Shakespeare. Their poetic works are perhaps a distant cousin to the great tragic dramas of earlier years.

"If a single person dies in front of you, it is a tragedy. If a million people die on the other side of the earth, it is a statistic."

--Josef Stalin

So what exactly counts as a literary tragedy? What does not? Comedians jokingly refer to tragedy as "the plays in which everybody dies." But the genre is more complex than that. Many plays, movies, and stories contain death, violence, and unhappy endings. Though depressing, these traits do not make a tragedy per se.

The classical definition comes from Aristotle:

"Tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play . . . through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."

--Aristotle, The Poetics.

The word catharsis (translated above as "purgation") implies that tragedy purges, removes, or unclogs negative emotions such as pity and fear that build up within the human spirit. Thus, watching a tragedy might be a sort of psychological Draino. However, the word catharsis can also be translated as "purification," implying that somehow tragedy purifies pity and fear, turns them into something healthy or good. Catharsis can also mean "distillation," the sense that purifying something involves concentrating it into a more potent form. Somehow tragedy takes all these negative emotions people feel and intensifies them. Depending upon how you translate that single word, the purpose and definition of tragedy varies greatly.

"Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy." --Jacques Barzun.

"Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them." --Henri Frederic Amiel.

The first component of tragedy is the tragic hero. In traditional Greek drama, the hero must be somebody of great social importance--a prince or ruler or hero far removed from the everyday Joe-on- the-street. The tragic hero had to be someone basically likeable; he had to have traits that the audience admired. Often, it is this same admirable trait that causes the hero's downfall. For example, we admire Macbeth initially for his ambitious, go-get-'em attitude. His up-and-at-'em philosophy takes Macbeth to glorious heights in the military. However, the same trait causes his ethical and political self-destruction when he plots to kill his liege lord. In the same way, we may admire the passion in Romeo and Juliet's young romance, but that same inability to live apart results in their messy double-suicide. We admire Brutus for his patriotic concern for Rome, but it is that same love of country that leads him into betraying his best friend. At some point, the hero falls from glory. His own hubris, his own desire to reach beyond what is possible, ensures such a fall.

"Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." --Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Tragedy also involves a weird mixture of personal choice and fate. To be a tragedy, the hero must have personal choice and agency. If a teenager is shot at random in a drive-by shooting, his death does not count as a literary tragedy because the victim did nothing to bring such misfortune upon himself. He had no choice in the matter. Such a death can only be fashioned into tragedy if the subject makes some kind of personal or moral decision. The decision (always made out of free will) then results in a chain of unstoppable and unforeseen negative events. That sudden shift from upward glory to tragic decline is called the peripetea. After the peripetea, the hero confronts social forces so huge and irresistible the tragedy seems like the hand of fate. Thus King Lear cries out, "As flies to wanton school-boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport." However, his suffering results as much from his faulty judgment as it does from some fixed destiny.

"There are no tragedies, just facts not recognized in time." --William D. Montapert.

Another important component of tragedy is anagnorisis. For the tragedy to meet the bill, the hero must realize his mistake and its horrible results. If a character never understands what occurred and why, the result may be brute suffering, but that does not constitute tragedy in the literary sense. Part of the pain a tragic hero must face is his own realization of personal culpability and error. However, that new insight always comes too late for him to change the coming disaster. By the time Macbeth realizes his approaching downfall, he has become a hollow shell of humanity, devoid of former ethics, and he cannot wash the blood from his hands. By the time Brutus realizes the ultimate results of Caesar's assassination, Julius' adopted heir has already claimed the imperial scepter and roused the mob against the assassins. Anagnorisis refers to the moment of tragic recognition, in which the truth, especially a universal or transcendent Truth-with-a-capital-T, reveals itself to the hero.

"What makes a tragedy so tragic is not that the noble individual falls into ruin, but that his fall causes so much suffering in others."

--Charmezel Dudt.

Finally, tragedy spirals out behind the hero himself. Not only does he suffer, his choice inflicts misery upon other innocent people, and he knows it. The error may be King Lear's, but Cordelia is the one hanged. Romeo and Juliet made the choice, but Tibalt and Mercutio also die. Tragedy is when a noble individual's poor choice destroys that admirable individual and also causes suffering, pain, and death to others he holds dear. The interest lies in how the hero reacts to this knowledge. How does he respond to the no-win situation resulting from his earlier choices? Macbeth responds with nearly psychotic fatalism. Othello with grieving tears. Hamlet with long overdue action. What can the reader or viewer learn from such varied responses?

From Plato’s Phaedrus

Plato, The Phaedrus (c. 370 BC)

Plato’s Phaedrus is a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, written down by Socrates’ student, Plato, in approximately 370 BC.

[Headnote: In reading this excerpt from The Phaedrus, crucial to your understanding of what bothers Socrates about writing is knowing a bit about his history and his own philosophical method. Socrates himself never wrote anything; all his ideas were written down by his student, Plato. Socrates had perfected a kind of oral technology of thought called the “Socratic dialogue.” Socrates worked — that is, he did his thinking work as a philosopher — by asking questions, interrogating the people who presented him with ideas to find out where those ideas broke down logically into contradictions. So when Socrates wants to be able to interrogate the author of a book, to ask him or her questions, he really wants the opportunity to do some good, hard thought-work with that author, overturning contradictory claims and getting at underlying assumptions through a process of question and answer, of dialogue.]

Socrates. Enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art of speaking.

Phaedrus. Certainly.

Socrates. But there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing.

Phaedrus. Yes.

Socrates. Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God?

Phaedrus. No, indeed. Do you?

Socrates. I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men?

Phaedrus. Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard.

Focus: Pay especially close attention to the highlighted passage below about Theuth and Thamus.

→ Socrates. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.

Socrates. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon.

Socrates. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them.

Socrates. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters,

Theuth. This will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.

Thamus. O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them.

Thamus. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not

use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.

Thamus. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Phaedrus. Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.

Socrates. There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from “oak or rock,” it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes.

Phaedrus. I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the Theban is right in his view about letters.

Socrates. He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?

Phaedrus. That is most true.

Socrates. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to

whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

Phaedrus. That again is most true.

Socrates. Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power—a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?

Phaedrus. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?

Socrates. I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.

Phaedrus. You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which written word is properly no more than an image?

Socrates. Yes, of course that is what I mean. And now may I be allowed to ask you a question: Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? At least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection?

Phaedrus. Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he will do the other, as you say, only in play.

Socrates. And can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and honourable has less understanding than the husbandman about his own seeds?

Phaedrus. Certainly not.

Socrates. Then he will not seriously incline to “write” his thoughts “in water” with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?

Phaedrus. No, that is not likely.

Socrates. No, that is not likely—in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent.

List of Topics and Sub-Modules for Week 1.1 Beta