Instruction
Close Reading: A close reading of a literary text helps to deepen a reader’s understanding of a novel. It involves analyzing how a selected passage relates to the narrative progression as a whole. A close reading does not summarize the all of the facts and details of a story, rather it focuses on articulating the significance of particular section(s) of the reading.
Directions: For this discussion board post, you will complete a close reading of one of the following passages. Please indicate which passage you will be analyzing (e.g. 1 or 2). After you’ve identified which passage you will be analyzing write a 1-2 paragraph response addressing the following prompt:
Analyze how the ideas presented in the selected passage develop over the course of the following pages (pages 117-186 *chapters 10-14*). Be sure to use specific examples from pages (117-186) to support your analysis; not doing so will negatively impact the grade for the assignment. The use of direct quotes strengthens one’s analysis. However, there is no minimum or maximum in terms of direct quotes that should be included.
Passage 1: This passage comes at the beginning of chapter 9, “How We Fed the Cats”
“Al and Horst were going off on business for the day. Al told Chick to feed the cats and Chick, as usual, bit his tongue, turned pale, and nodded without saying anything…After Al left, Chick slid up to me at the sink where I was doing the breakfast dishes. ‘Come with me, Oly, please?’…’Sure,’ I said, ‘but how come? You’ve fed them lots of times.’ His eyebrows went up in a peak of resignation. ‘I like the cats. It’s the meat. I don’t like moving it. Just come along, O.K.?’…When Chick fed the cats he dropped the meat through the ventilator slots in the roof. We stood outside the refrigerator truck and watched the big bolt lift and the door swing open. Chick reached over and took my hand. ‘Is this O.K.? I want to hold your hand while I’m moving the meat.’ He was looking pinched. ‘Sure,’ I said…Chick was squeezing my hand gently… ‘You could do it without the cleaver, Chick,” I said. ‘Yeah, but I’d feel the meat more. Can you feel it?’ He was taller than I was and he looked down at me with such a serious intensity that I felt a small quiver of fear. ‘Feel what?’[I questioned] He frowned. Words never came all that easily to him ‘Well, how…dead…the meat is” (Dunn 106-108).
Passage 2: This passage comes at the end of chapter 9, “How We Fed the Cats”
“Arty had the advance men make up special flyers to hit certain churches. ‘Refuge!’ they blared. ‘Arturo, the Aqua Boy!’ and then a list of our dates and sites. Though Arty never mentioned anything resembling a god or an outside will, or life after death, church groups started showing up. In the grim blasted regions where the soil had failed or the factories were shut down, whole congregations would drift through the gates ignoring the lights and sights of the midway, and find their way to Arty’s tent. They paid their price and sat numbly in clumps on the bleachers waiting as long as it took for his show to begin. When it was over, they would leave the grounds together, ignoring everything. ‘Too poor to play,’ Papa said. ‘The one buck they’ve got, I’ll get’ said Arty. But it wasn’t the money that excited him. It was that those who never would have come to the carnival came just for him. Mama was dreamily pleased. ‘Arty’s spreading his wings,” she said nodding to herself. But his wingspread took in more than the bleachers and his own tent. And all this time he was taking over more and more control of the carnival itself, and becoming more obvious in the orders he gave” (Dunn 116).