Close Readings

This week we learned about close readings. I personally am not a huge close reader or reader of any kind. I do like to read certain books and stories by particular authors, but for the most part, I am not a huge reader. However, this weeks lesson taught me how to look closely at the text we are reading and try and analyze what is truly going on instead of just looking over the text briefly and hoping that I understood what it was saying.

            I think that it is important for us to learn the technique of close reading because it will help us understand and be able to analyze any texts that we read. By annotating texts it will help us be able to go back and learn/remember what we read about and help us in case we have to go back through the texts for answering questions.

            Normally when I read a text or a story, I just kind of go through the motions and read over what the words say but do not actually pay attention to any themes or messages the story is trying to portray. After our lesson about close reading and reading the story “Hills Like White Elephants” in class, I was able to realize that a short story like this for example has much more to talk about in the brief story then what meets the eye. Although it is a short story, when I first read it I just noticed that there was a guy and a girl talking and drinking. I really did not pay attention to the actual text or what was going on. But later we discussed in class what the real message was, abortion. I would have never guessed that from my initial reading of the text. After we did a close read of it, I was able to understand the true meaning of the story.

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