Firstly, context this is the class. https://class-descriiptions.northwestern.edu/4960/WCAS/ENGLISH/12717
This must be very good. This is my first assignment for this English class, at a very very prestigious university. The quality of analysis must be good. AND you MUST follow instructions below.
Close Reading Paper x 2 (500-750 words): You will choose one single passage from a literary text (not a film) and create an argument around it. In other words, you will choose a passage to interpret the text and offer your own understanding of the passage. This will have to differ significantly from a lay-reader’s understanding of the passage—you have to get into an in-depth analysis to unpack something that isn’t immediately evident or obvious to a peer. Your imagined audience for this paper is your class, so use that as a way to guide your interpretation. Think about whether your argument has a counter-argument—if it does, then you’re working with an interpretation. If it doesn’t, then you probably have an explanation on your hands that is closer to a summary.
First, select a passage from Jack London’s The Unparalleled Invasion.
Then, work through the passage by breaking it down to its constituent elements (offstage). What interesting words or phrases jump out at you?
Go to the OED and look up the meanings of any unusual words. The bar for unusual can be quite low–you’d be surprised how an ordinary word such as “revolution” or “planet” or “animal” can have multiple secondary and tertiary meanings that could impact the meaning of the sentence in unexpected ways.
Then, begin compiling all the relevant information, bringing it back together to bear on the passage. What you’re doing is figuring out what’s important to a “reading” of the passage. What elements of a passage can be most useful towards reinterpreting the passage towards a different “hidden meaning” or “what lies beneath the surface meaning” of the text?
Bring all the relevant elements back together again and tell your reader what new ways of interpreting the passage you’vr discovered by doing this exercise.
Note: Assume that your reader is a peer group member and is someone who has read the text. Therefore, you can dispense without having to recount the plot of the story or the novel. Your close reading must offer a sense of why a particular passage is important towards understanding a text from multiple angles and at multiple levels.
Word Count: 500-750 words
Deadline: Oct 13, 2024, Sunday, 11:59 pm
The text Jack London’s The Unparalleled Invasion is attached in the file below.