My Close Reading Experience

       I believe that the close reading of this passage has definitely allowed me to grasp at some kind of "formula" for understanding literature, poems in particular, better in light of the AP test coming up. I think it helped me because it created this sort of road map for me to use while reading rather than reading through the whole poem and not being able to understand the poem by identifying literary devices. I found the paraphrasing to be quite difficult and maybe this is because of the syntax of the poem itself and the way poems generally say so much in so few words that often it will go over my head. I liked getting to answer one question after each line because it made me more aware of literary devices that could be analyzed further down the line if I were to have to quickly write an analysis essay about it. Although I enjoyed being able to have a process to work from when approaching poetry, I still find it quite challenging and will have to practice it to be able to understand each poem to the best of my abilities.

Analyzing Literature Reaction

       After learning about how to analyze literature, there are several notes I took that stood out to me. One important point that was emphasized was the fact there is a difference between the narrator and the author.  The narrator does not always reflect the view of the author. This is a hard concept for me to grasp and so now I will definitely try to keep this fact in mind while reading and analyzing the tone of a story. Something I actually didn't realize which I believe to be important is the fact that symbols do not "mean" things, rather they "suggest or remind or reflect". This reinforces the fact that there are many correct interpretations of a single symbol and they are there simply to emphasize the theme of the work. It's also essential to remember not to go way in over my head and not assume that everything has some symbolic implications. Lastly, it is important to remember the difference between mood and tone, which is something I am guilty of often forgetting. Mood is associated with the readers feelings while reading the text while tone is the author's attitude toward the text which are most commonly two different feelings.

       I still feel like I need to learn how to approach the text and know how to analyze it. Even while reading this packet and seeing an example, it is hard for me to picture myself reading this passage and quickly coming to the conclusions and interpretations of literary devices these examples explored. I realize that this is a difficult skill to acquire so maybe I just need more practice to get it. Also, I would like to expand my literary device knowledge, but at the same time I do not want to half learn a million new devices and not be able to use them properly on the test.

       One skill I feel I could teach others would probably be how to analyze characters and find "round", "flat", or characters that are foils to main characters. I feel this way only because I think analyzing character is a very logical process when you use the text as a guide.