Compose a 500-750 word close reading of a short passage or a particular literary element from one of the assigned short stories.
Do not focus on plot as a literary element in the text. Though plot is an element of fiction, it is not an effective or appropriate choice for this assignment. Obviously you will need to address some of the incidents that occur as part of the plot in order to provide context for the discussion of your selected passage or element, but the focus of the essay should be on the ways in which the selected passage or selected element of the text contributes to the development of the story’s themes. It’s possible to provide context without providing a complete synopsis of everything that happens in the text.
If you choose to select a passage, identify any significant literary elements within the passage, and explore the ways in which those elements contribute to the development of meaning in the story. You may refer to other parts of the story, but all such references should be within the context of your discussion of the selected passage. Take, for example, the following tremendously rich passage from James Joyce’s short story “Araby:”
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. (Joyce 35-36)
The passage is a wealth of imagery (language which evokes the senses) and allusion (references to other stories or historical realities), and perfectly captures the tone of classic chivalric romances while setting up the ultimate irony of the story. To discuss that irony, it would be worthwhile to compare the flowery, romantic language of the passage above with the terseness of the story’s closing lines. To do that, I obviously need to talk about the story’s closing lines, but I don’t need to explain every plot point between my chosen passage and the end of the story.
If you choose to focus on a particular literary element you can focus on one instance of it or on the element itself as used throughout the text as a whole. This is maybe easiest to conceptualize in terms of symbolism. You could choose to focus on one symbol in a story, or more generally on the use of symbolism in the story. Focusing on symbolism more generally allows you to bring multiple symbols into the discussion, as long as you are able to connect them meaningfully.
The important thing to remember, whether you’re writing about symbolism, allusion, foreshadowing, or any other literary or rhetorical device, is that your paper should be more than a list of examples. This warning is particularly relevant when writing about something like foreshadowing or irony. You need to do more than just point out examples of foreshadowing (or whatever literary element you’re writing about) and explore how foreshadowing functions in the story to contribute to the meaning.
In the end, what you should produce is 500-750 (roughly two to three pages) words of carefully crafted academic prose, thesis driven and developed with specific references to the text. Your starting point should be an idea or an element that you started to develop in one of your earlier short responses, but one which has been refined and further developed
I attach the short stories pictures down below
