ASSIGNMENT 1: Close Reading

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1 Spring 2017 English 1B: U.S. Modernism & the Machine Age ASSIGNMENT 1: Close Reading 250+ words / Due January 25 / 3% of your final grade For this assignment, choose any of our course texts from the 1890s. Begin the assignment by quoting one excerpt from the text. The quoted text should be no longer than 125 words. This quotation does not count toward the paper s word count. If you choose to analyze Emily Dickinson s poems, you may select up to two poems and you can quote the entire poems. After you have quoted your selected excerpt, undertake a close reading of that excerpt. Close reading begins with three steps. The following is adapted from Harvard s Writing Center website, 1. Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text. "Annotating" means underlining or highlighting key words and phrases anything that strikes you as surprising or significant, or that raises questions as well as making notes in the margins. When we respond to a text in this way, we not only force ourselves to pay close attention, but we also begin to think with the author about specific decisions the writer has made. 2. Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about the text repetitions, contradictions, similarities. 3. Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed especially how and why. What is the relationship between the form of the text (how it s written) and its content (what is written)?

2 Spring 2017 English 1B: U.S. Modernism & the Machine Age What makes something literary? 1. The morning road air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet. 2. Janie felt really good when she left the house. She just felt like she needed to breathe and get away from her husband. It seemed to her that she had her whole life in front of her. Plus, she was in love with someone else. She walked outside to meet her soon-to-be husband, Joe Starks. Sample Close Readings Close reading 1 Toward the end of chapter four of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), the narrator compares Janie s newfound freedom to a new dress : The morning road air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet (31). Here, Hurston describes Janie s freedom from Killicks through a change in clothing. She swaps her apron for the new dress of the morning road air. This is a morning, or new beginning, that Janie experiences like an open road at the moment she sheds her apron, and with it, the confining domesticity of life as a housewife. Janie moves from the controlled and contained environment of the kitchen to the limitless arena of nature. By describing the morning road air as a new dress, Hurston suggests that Janie has become as unrestrained as the air itself. Furthermore, while Janie was controlled in the kitchen, here, in the open air, she asserts her control over nature by picking flowers and arranging them into a bouquet, a gesture that represents her new sense of agency. But, as we soon see, this new freedom is no more than a new dress that is, Janie has simply changed her clothing without transforming herself. Close reading 2 Toward the end of chapter four of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), the narrator compares Janie s newfound freedom to a new dress : The morning road air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet (31). The morning road air represents Janie s freedom. She is finally free from Killicks, so she can finally breathe. She unties her apron to show that she has become free. As she goes to meet Joe Starks, she picks flowers to show how happy she is. This symbolizes that Janie has a new life ahead of her. She will no longer have to deal with the burden of Killicks. She can finally find the love she has been after for so long. This moment represents Janie s first taste of freedom because she is finally on her own with no one else to control her.

3 Fiona Turner Stephen Pasqualina English 1B, MWF 8 am January 1, 2017 Close Reading #1 I dwell in Possibility (466) by Emily Dickinson I dwell in Possibility A fairer House than Prose More numerous of Windows Superior for Doors Of Chambers as the Cedars Impregnable of eye And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky Of Visitors the fairest For Occupation This The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise I dwell in Possibility begins with the lines I dwell in Possibility / A fairer House than Prose. The speaker is telling us that Possibility is a nicer place to live than Prose, which is not as open as Possibility. Furthermore, Possibility has many windows and doors, meaning there are many ways to enter and leave. The poem imagines Possibility as a house that people can enter and leave whenever they wish. The second stanza opens with the idea that the rooms in the house are made of cedar. The walls are solid because they are Impregnable of eye, meaning they prevent people from seeing inside. The house of possibility has an everlasting Roof, which suggests that it will never end. In fact, the roof is the Gambrels of the Sky. This suggests that the roof is the sky itself. It s as if this house doesn t have a roof at all.

4 Turner 2 The final stanza begins by explaining that the visitors to this house are the fairest, or the best, and that they have an Occupation or job that amounts to spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise. These lines suggest that the people that occupy this house open themselves up to the heavens. In the end, I think that this poem is about opening up to possibilities and living life to the fullest. (226 words) Works Cited Dickinson, Emily. I dwell in Possibility (466). Poetry Foundation,

5 Wilma Twain Stephen Pasqualina English 1B, MWF 8 am January 1, 2017 Close Reading #1 I dwell in Possibility (466) by Emily Dickinson I dwell in Possibility A fairer House than Prose More numerous of Windows Superior for Doors Of Chambers as the Cedars Impregnable of eye And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky Of Visitors the fairest For Occupation This The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise From early on, the speaker of Dickinson s I dwell in Possibility translates the abstract notion of possibility into a place to dwell in, a House that the speaker finds fairer... than Prose. This metaphor allows the speaker to occupy possibility as if it were a space, thus allowing the speaker to describe its parts in concrete terms. The second line compares this House to Prose, a comparison that associates possibility with prose s opposite: poetry. And so, in the first stanza, the speaker establishes an analogy: if poetry is a space of possibility, prose is a space of limitations and restrictions. The first stanza continues by describing the House of poetry and possibility as More numerous of Windows / Superior for Doors. In other words, this house has many possible openings. Because poetry is a space of possibility, there are many ways to enter into it. But these openings also provide ways of dividing the inside of the house from the outside. What s suggested in this image is that, while poetry has many ways in, it

6 Twain 2 may also be a space apart from the everyday world. In the house of possibility or poetry, the windows and doors shut most people out. In the second stanza, the speaker continues to establish that this house, composed of rooms made of cedar, is an impenetrable space Impregnable of eye, or unable to be seen into or entered easily. It seems as if Dickinson is suggesting here that getting inside her own poems will not be as simple as reading the words on the page once or even twice. To gain admission into this House of possibility, we are going to have to do more than merely glance our eyes over the page. Once inside, though, we gain access to a space as infinite as the heavens: And for an everlasting Roof / The Gambrels of the Sky. Here, the speaker establishes that this house is virtually limitless, as its roof is the sky itself, an expanse of space without end. While it may be difficult to enter the house of poetry or to develop a poetic sensibility, our minds are capable of expanding infinitely once we are there. If there were any doubt that the speaker is drawing attention to the poem itself, the third stanza establishes that the fairest or the ideal visitors of this house will find an Occupation in This a pronoun that points to the act of writing and reading the poem itself. The speaker closes by tying together claims from the first two stanzas, describing this intimate space of possibility as a place to gather Paradise, or to hold the heavens in the palms of our hands. Within the four walls of this House, and within the very tight space of this short poem, Dickinson shows us that, if we are willing to work for it, poetry offers us access to the infinite in the here and now. (494 words) Works Cited Dickinson, Emily. I dwell in Possibility (466). Poetry Foundation,