Close Reading Assignment on Erdrichs Tracks

Due: Thursday, May 21 at end of class

Assignment Background
For this assignment, you will give a close reading of a passage from the novel
Tracks. A close reading looks closely at a short passage of text and attempts
to unfold or unpack its larger significance. In this short paper, you will focus
carefully upon the language of the text itself and show how the meanings
you get from the passage you have selected are developed around specific
terms, definitions, characters, rhetorical devices and/or images. The focus of
your response (the thesis, basically) will be based on your discovery as you
explicate the passage.
Instructions on Close Reading
Pick a short passage from the novel (around 75-200 words) that interests you
for the way it articulates, dramatizes, or implies something significant about
a topic weve discussed in class (i.e. assimilation, women, Christianity, etc.)
Quote the passage at the top of your paper.
Analyze the passage closely, paying attention to word choice (diction),
rhythm, repetition, sentence structure, images, tone, etc. For example, you
may want to explicate the significance of a particular setting or group of
settings (imagery); a particular scene or description; a structural feature,
such as the use of repetition, how the beginning or ending of an incident is
framed, the uses of titles or proper names; how a particular aspect of
character is represented through the use of concrete details of time, place
etc.; the relation of landscape or physical environment to character; etc.
Additionally, you may want to address and explain how an authors use of
language reveals an ideology. Pick the passage apart in an attempt to
understand how it works and provides new insight about the text as a whole.
Focus on the observations that provide you with the richest analysis of the
passage.
The following website is a good resource if you are unsure of how to go about
close reading a passage: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html and
http://www.reed.edu/writing/paper_help/passages.html
Structure

Approximately 350-500 words MAXIMUM, worth 100 points

Quote your chosen passage, single-spaced, at the top of the paper (the
quote is not included in the word count)

Include a brief introduction to put the passage in context. (What is

occurring in the scene and what led up to it? End with your thesis.)

The bulk of your paper will be the close reading of the chosen passage.
Remember to both observe elements such as diction, imagery,

sentence structure, etc., and analyze them, which means to make a

specific argument about them. For example, what conclusions can you
draw about the passage, a character, and idea/issue or the text as a
whole from the close reading of the particular element?

Close your paper by considering the passage as a whole as it relates to

the texts issues/theme/characters, etc. Overall, does it express a very
clear stance on a particular issue or character? Or is it unclear? Does
this stance fit in with the rest of the text?

An example of a well-written close reading essay can be found here:

http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enlt214/averette.html (385 words) and
http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enlt214/sheeran.html (256 words). You will see
how the essay has a purpose (an argument/thesis), but its specific to the
elements analyzed rather than the text as a whole, which is what you are
accustomed to writing.
An example of a close reading from a passage on The Great Gatsby follows
(279 words):
The Great Gatsby: Close Reading: Women in Society
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young
women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their
dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around
the house.
This description of Daisy and Jordan represents their standing as women in society.
The fact that the women are buoyed up to the couch, the only stable object, shows that Daisy is not
in the room because she feels she wants to be. Money and social standing anchor her they tie her to
the house and keep her from simply floating away from Tom and his obvious unfaithfulness. Many
women in the society were kept in their marriages not out of love but of a simple and reliable anchor:
their house, which represents their wealth and positions in society.
Both women are in white fluttering dresses; the color white itself gives the image of purity and
innocence. Daisy and Jordan are expected in society to put on, as they put on their white dresses, a
show that they are innocent, moral wives. We know that Daisy is unhappy with her life and with Tom,
she expresses that to Nick, but she puts on a facade of a perfect wife, which Fitzgerald shows through
the white dresses.
The women are also described as looking as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight
around the house. This represents two things. First, that women are dainty, fragile, and weak, and
are therefore pushed around by even a gentle breeze. They are unsteady. Second, the flight gives
off an angelic feel. These women in white, who have just flown around the house, could be also
pictured as perfect angels, which shows us that women in society were expected to be moral and
perfect: to be angelic, or to at least put on the show of being that perfect.

The introduction is a little brief in this example since it is basically only the
thesis. Still, I thought it would be a good idea to show you an example from a
text you read for this class.