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ENG 106 Spring 2023

Writing Project 1: Close Reading Essay

  • WP 1 first draft for peer review workshop due: Monday, Feb 13 by class
  • WP 1 due: Friday, Feb 17
  • ~1000 words (~4 pages double-spaced)
  • Cite direct quotations from the novel using parenthetical citation, e.g.: As Hurston writes, “example quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God” (34).
  • Turn in via Blackboard
    • If you participated in the peer review workshop, please also turn in the peer review worksheet your reader completed

Your first major writing project in this class is to write a close reading essay. A close reading essay means an essay in which you make a claim about a literary text based on close textual analysis. For this essay, you are required to write about Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

What is a Close Reading and How Do You Do It?

A close reading is an analysis of specific, detailed elements of the language, tone, and/or structure of a text.

You’ve already started your close reading essay by completing journal entry 2 and journal entry 3. In those journal entries, you made observations about the text that struck you as unexpected, interesting, or puzzling, and you then tried to identify patterns in those observations. Now you will put that all together into an essay in which you make a claim about Their Eyes Were Watching God for which at least one textual pattern you’ve identified serves as evidence.

You may use observations and/or patterns you identified in journal entries 2 or 3 in your close reading essay, but you are not required to.

Your goal in writing a close reading essay is to make a claim about the text that will help your reader to see this text differently. You are looking, in other words, to interpret this text in a potentially new way for your reader.

Your essay may say something like this (although not so explicitly): You, the reader, probably think this novel means X, but look again at these elements a, b, c, and d in the text—let me show you that in fact they don’t mean what you thought they meant the first time. You may even have ignored them the first time because you didn’t think they were important: let me show you why in fact they’re crucial to understanding the text. Now you can see that the text doesn’t mean X, but clearly means Y—and perhaps also Z.

If you put three or four of the best observations you made about the text together, do they begin to make such a claim?

Writing a successful close reading means: 1) Observing the text closely to find patterns; 2) Selecting one or two specific and particularly rich (to you) patterns to focus on; 3) Asking yourself what the significance of these patterns is within the text overall; and finally, 4) Answering the questions you posed yourself in the form of an analytical essay in which you make and defend a claim about the text that helps your reader to understand this text differently.

Writing Project 1 Requirements

In order to be considered “satisfactory”, your close reading essay must do the following:

  1. Attempt to include an original, central claim that you defend using at least 3 specific passages/direct quotations from Their Eyes Were Watching God. You should cite the page numbers on which each passage/direct quotation you cite occurs in the novel.
  2. Attempt to include analysis of these (at least) 3 specific passages/direct quotations from Their Eyes Were Watching God in which you explain to your reader how each passage/direct quotation contributes to/provides evidence of your central claim.
  3. Meet the minimum word requirement (around 1000 words) without significant filler.
  4. Attempt to communicate your ideas in a focused, clear, and well-organized way.
  5. Include citations of any outside sources (excluding Their Eyes Were Watching God). You are not required to do additional research for this essay; in fact, it’s probably better to focus only on the words of the literary text itself at this stage, since we haven’t yet discussed how to do or cite academic research in this class. But if you do any additional research, please make sure to cite your sources if you take ideas and, especially, direct quotations, from that research.
  6. Include, at the end of the essay, the following statement: “I upheld the Honor Code.” Including these words at the end of your essay functions as your digital signature of academic integrity.
  7. Include, at the end of the essay, a list of the assignments you have completed in this class, including all journal entries, writing projects, and peer review workshops to date.