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Guidelines for Close Reading of Fiction
In addition to answering the question, “What does this work or passage mean,” a close reading,
or explication, answers the question, “How does work or passage mean?” How, that is, do the
language, imagery, structure, and themes contribute to the passage’s overall meanings and effects?
Close reading allows you to break down complex ideas, language, and structure to make meaning
clearer and to understand more precisely the relationship between the form of a work and its
content.
When doing a close reading, you will want to think about the following thematic, linguistic,
narrational and structural components of the work or passage. They may occur separately or
together; their relative importance will vary.
1) Imagery
What sorts of images, similes or metaphors, are used?
What is their effect?
Is there a pattern of imagery, with particular images repeated (leitmotifs) or associated
with discrete characters?
Do certain images mirror, recast or juxtapose others?
Do specific images function as symbols?
2) Language
Does the text repeat the same word or related terms, use formal or informal language,
conventional or unconventional syntax?
Does the text contain clusters of repeated sounds (alliteration, assonance, consonance)?
What words are especially significant, and what are their connotations?
What is the “rhythm” of the work: sharp, with simple, declarative sentences; a discursive
stream of consciousness, with sentences that associatively move from subject to subject;
etc.?
3) Allusion
Are there any references, explicit or indirect, to a well-known person, place, or event, or
to another literary work? If so, how does the allusion suggest themes, illustrate character
traits, or establish contexts against which the work's action unfolds?
Does the allusion provide implicit or explicit commentary on the world represented in the
work? Does it critique that world or its characters by juxtaposing them with historical
figures, events or characters in other literary works?
4) Characters:
Who are the characters, and what traits do they exhibit?
What emotions, memories and conflicts do characters experience?
What actions do characters take and what effects do those actions have? What does the
text suggest about why characters act as they do?
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Do certain characters parallel or contrast others?
How do characters communicate thoughts, emotions and reactions—via dialogue, action,
first-person or third-person description of internal processes, internal monologue?
How much do we know about a character and why?
Which characters are primary, which secondary, which tertiary or background?
Do particular characters function as symbols?
5) Narrator (s) and Narration
Who narrates the story—a character or characters within the work or a speaker outside
the story world?
Is the narration first-person, second-person, third-person or a mix like free indirect style,
which combines elements of first-person and third-person narration to merge internal
and external perspectives?
How expansive or restricted is the narrative range of knowledge—do we experience the
story world primarily via the focalized perspectives of a single character or multiple
characters or via a non-focalized omniscient perspective?
What is the narrator's perspective on the story world and its characters?
Is the narrator reliable or unreliable, with his/her telling of the story serving particular
ends or revealing a lack of perspective?
6) Setting (s)
Where does the story take place?
When does the story action occur; does the story unfold over a single timeline or alternate
between times?
What cultural significance does the setting have within the world of the novel? Within the
audience's world?
How do settings parallel or contrast one another?
Do settings function as symbols?
7) Narrative Structure
What happens and how are events or thoughts sequenced?
How are parts of the work related to one another—how do they work together to create
an overall effect?
How does each part connect to or differ from the preceding and following parts?
How does the narrative progress (for example, order, disorder, reorder; exposition,
conflict, climax, resolution; parallel or contrasting events; connected/seemingly
disconnected episodes)?
8) Key Moment:
What key moments can you identify, either in a section or the work as a whole? Why are
these moments significant?
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9) Theme(s)
What themes does the work communicate via imagery, language, characters, narration,
setting, narrative structure and key moments?
10) Ideology
What assumptions do the characters and narrator(s) make about the nature of their world?
Which practices, roles, beliefs and values do they view as natural? Which are sources of
conflict? Which seem to be changing?
Which cultural values and institutions associated with those values does the work
address? Which does it ignore?
How are the world views expressed in the work similar to or distinct from the audience's?
How might the work comment on historical, social, economic or cultural aspects of the
time in which it was produced?
Guidelines for Close Reading of Poetry
Although most categories on the “Close Reading of Fiction” handout apply to the analysis of
poetry, the genre uses language, rhythm and form in ways our handout doesn’t fully explicate.
The following information thus expands upon and supplements the “Close Reading of Fiction”
handout.
As a genre, poetry makes extensive use of sound, rhythm and rhyme, much like music. In a
recent interview with NPR, poet Paul Muldoon, editor of a 2013 reissue of Eliot’s The Waste
Land, underlined the poet’s fascination with popular music: “He was always interested in
musical constructs. We remember that some of his very early poems were called 'preludes,' and
of course, we recall that his later poems were known as Four Quartets. So, musical structures
have always been very significant in his poetry.” The same can be said of Langston Hughes, who
merged the genres of poetry and music in the works we’ll read for class, “The Weary Blues” and
“Po’ Boy Blues.”
Sound
The “Close Reading of Fiction” handout asks you to focus on various aspects of language:
repetition, formal/informal diction, conventional/unconventional syntax and
denotation/connotation. When analyzing poetry, also pay attention to the sounds created by
words. Ask yourself, “Does the poem contain clusters of repeated sounds? What tone do the
sounds create?” Sound repetition can take the following forms (all definitions quoted from The
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms):
Alliteration: “The repetition of the same sounds—usually initial consonants of words or
of stressed syllables—in any sequence of neighbouring words.”
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Assonance: “The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables
(and sometimes in the following unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words.”
Consonance: “The repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring words
whose vowel sounds are different (e.g. coming home, hot foot).”
Rich consonance: “The repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring
words . . . [that] are identical except for the stressed vowel sound (group/grope,
middle/muddle, wonder/wander).”
Reading a poem aloud will help you hear its distinct sound patterns. Doing so will also call your
attention to the overall harmony of the words. Ask yourself:
Are the word sounds smooth and easy to say (euphony)?
Are the word sounds jarring, discordant, and difficult to say (cacophony)?
What are the effects of the harmonious or dissonant combination of sounds?
Meter
While the question about overall rhythm on our “Close Reading of Literature” handout applies to
poetry, the genre may also use a distinct meter, or a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables within a line. Each repetition of the pattern is called a “foot.” Patterns that tend to occur
in English poetry include the following (all definitions quoted from The Oxford Dictionary of
Literary Terms):
Iamb: “A metrical unit (foot) of verse, having one unstressed syllable followed by one
stressed syllable, as in the word ‘beyond.’” In high school, you may have discussed
Shakespeare’s use of “iambic pentameter,” lines containing five iambs, or, in other
words, ten stressed syllables.
Trochee: “A metrical unit (foot) of verse, having one stressed syllable followed by one
unstressed syllable, as in the word ‘tender.’”
Dactyl: “A metrical unit (foot) of verse, having one stressed syllable followed by two
unstressed syllables, as in the word carefully.”
Anapest: “A metrical foot made up of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed
syllable, as in the word ‘interrupt.’”
While I don’t expect you to identify metrical feet by name, I do expect you to read aloud and
listen for patterns of rhythm. Ask yourself the following questions:
Does the rhythm remain consistent, or does the poem shift rhythm?
What effects do fixed or varying rhythms create?
Rhyme
In addition to sound and rhythm, poetry may also make use of rhyme, or the repetition of syllable
sounds, typically at the ends of lines. Rhyme can be “perfect,” with sounds exactly matched, or
“slant,” with final consonants matched but not vowel sounds, as in the word pair move/pave.
Poems may also contain “eye rhyme,” where “the spellings of paired words appear to match but
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without true correspondence in pronunciation [as in the word pairs] dive/give [and] said/maid”
(The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms). Although rhymes typically occur at the end of lines,
they may also occur internally, or within the line.
When examining rhyme, you may find it helpful to mark rhyming words with the same letter of
the alphabet. For example, the opening lines of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” would be
marked as follows:
LET us go then, you and I, A
When the evening is spread out against the sky A
Like a patient etherized upon a table; B
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, C
The muttering retreats C
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels D
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: D
Streets that follow like a tedious argument E
Of insidious intent E
To lead you to an overwhelming question…. F
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” G
Let us go and make our visit. G
Once you identify the rhymes, consider the following questions:
What types of rhymes (perfect, slant, eye, internal) does the poem use?
Does the poem’s rhyme scheme follow a fixed pattern, as with the couplet pattern above,
or do rhymes occur more randomly?
What are the effects of the selection and arrangement of rhymes?
Form
The line is the basic unit of poetry. Lines may be grouped into stanzas of various lengths:
Couplet: Two lines.
Tercet: Three lines.
Quatrain: Four lines.
Sextain: Six lines.
Octave: Eight lines.
Poets may write in fixed poetic forms with proscribed patterns of meter and rhyme. You may be
familiar with the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet, a fixed form that features fourteen lines
composed in iambic pentameter and arranged into three quatrains with the rhyme scheme
“abab/cdcd/efef” and a final couplet (“gg”).
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Alternatives to fixed forms are open forms such as blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter,
and free verse, which employs flexible meter, rhyme and line length. Use of free verse
constituted one type of modernist formal experimentation.
When analyzing poetic form, consider the following questions:
Does the poem have a fixed or open form? Does it combine fixed forms or fixed and
open forms?
How is the poem’s form related to its content?
Additional Resources
The Academy of American Poets’ “How to Read a Poem” page details one approach to close
reading and offers two sample close readings; https://poets.org/text/how-read-poem-0
University of Toronto Libraries’ “Representative Poetry Online” features an exhaustive list
of terms specific to studying poetry; https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/glossary
