WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
THE AIM:
The aim is to analyze an excerpt from one of the short stories in the course and to develop a close analysis of the passage. Your close reading of the excerpt should be grounded in the interpretation of the story as a whole (thus, the whole story provides you with the context for your analysis). An interpretation presupposes developing an idea of your own that connects the work’s artistic features to its meaning. Therefore, avoid evaluating the story by just saying “I liked it” or “it didn’t do much for me.” Your analysis should demonstrate to the reader how your interpretation of the individual elements of the excerpt adds up to an interpretation of the whole story in a specific way.
THE TASK:
- Select one of the excerpts below.
- Write an essay of 300–500 words that develops a close reading of the excerpt.
- The close reading is always an attempt to draw out as much as you can from a literary text, but it should not be just a list of separate items. Instead, start by making a list of your observations, and then pick the ones that seem interesting, and in particular, pick the ones that seem to add to our understanding of the story as a whole. Only then should you start writing the close reading piece itself.
- Ideally, whether you choose to focus on setting, or narrative technique, or character, or focalization, or language, tone and word choice, or imagery (to suggest a few examples), make sure that your analysis is connected to an interpretation of the whole story.
- Focus on a few significant details rather than trying to cover every conceivable aspect. Remember, this is a very short piece of writing, so less will be more.
Submit your assignment on Athena in Examination/Written Assignment, YOUR GROUP folder.
Write YOUR FULL NAME in the header of your essay.
Name the file in the following manner: Group_Number_YourLastName
(e. g.: Group_1_).
EXCERPTS:
- “Araby”
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said she would love to go.
“And why can’t you?” I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
“It’s well for you,” she said.
“If I go,” I said, “I will bring you something.”
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.
- “Everything That Rises Must Converge”
He retired again into the high-ceilinged room sparsely settled with large pieces of antique furniture. His soul expanded momentarily but then he became aware of his mother across from him and the vision shriveled. He studied her coldly. Her feet in little pumps dangled like a child’s and did not quite reach the floor. She was training on him an exaggerated look of reproach. He felt completely detached from her. At that moment he could with pleasure have slapped her as he would have slapped a particularly obnoxious child in his charge.
He began to imagine various unlikely ways by which he could teach her a lesson. He might make friends with some distinguished Negro professor or lawyer and bring him home to spend the evening. He would be entirely justified but her blood pressure would rise to 300. He could not push her to the extent of making her have a stroke, and moreover, he had never been successful at making any Negro friends. He had tried to strike up an acquaintance on the bus with some of the better types, with ones that looked like professors or ministers or lawyers. One morning he had sat down next to a distinguished-looking dark brown man who had answered his questions with a sonorous solemnity but who had turned out to be an undertaker. Another day he had sat down beside a cigar-smoking Negro with a diamond ring on his finger, but after a few stilted pleasantries, the Negro had rung the buzzer and risen, slipping two lottery tickets into Julian’s hand as he climbed over him to leave.
He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathizer in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible but he did not linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman I’ve chosen. She’s intelligent, dignified, even good, and she’s suffered and she hasn’t thought it fun. Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us. Drive her out of here, but remember, you’re driving me too. His eyes were narrowed and through the indignation he had generated, he saw his mother across the aisle, purple-faced, shrunken to the dwarf-like proportions of her moral nature, sitting like a mummy beneath the ridiculous banner of her hat.
