Close Reading

According to Patricia Kain close reading involves observing facts and details about a text. You basically walk yourself through a piece of writing interpreting every sentence with your own ideas. The first step to close reading is "annotating" the text. When you do this you can come back to certain things you read that you questioned or thought were interesting or surprising. The second step to close reading is noticing any repetition in the text or any similarities. Noticing similarities helps you link together things the author is saying which aids in understanding the full message of the text. Step three is asking questions about those similarities. Here is when you make the information that you found in the text useful. By asking questions about the patterns in the text you will come up with answers that make the text's message more clear. For example in the reading when the close reader notices the author's use of the word universe. Talking about how the spider has it's own universe, and that his senses don't go past that universe. She links this with the author trying to say that, like the spider, our universe is also finite and that there could be more that we are just not aware of.

Another reading I found about Close Reading (https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html) agree's with the previous reading. He add's in Characterization as a step however. How does what the author is saying make you feel about the character in this reading? How is it supposed to make you feel? By understanding this step you are understanding what the author is trying to say or how the author is trying to make you feel with this piece of writing. By understanding, also the characters within a text you can make even more connections to the rest of the reading.

No matter what you read about close reading, there is one basic concept. Close reading involves thinking and being creative. It almost ties back to our first Emerson reading. To read well you must be an inventor. That is the concept close reading deals with. Thinking about connections, language and people in a reading, asking questions and drawing conclusions which lead to fully comprehending what the author is trying to say.

Gillian Lynne

Hearing the story of how Gillian Lynne was "diagnosed" as a dancer really makes me wonder what talented people our culture has never seen due to medications that maybe halted their creativity. I can't really say that I'm on one side of the "ADD-ADHD debate," but I have been around this debate for quite some time. In my experience it seems like taking medication for these "disabilities" can be good and bad. I think if someone wants to be able to focus and learn just like everyone else medication isn't the worst thing for them, but it is their choice. If not being able to focus really bothers someone they should be able to get something to fix it. However, that person should know that focusing and doing well in things that other kids to well in is not what is most important. It is all about what makes that child happy, and what is best for that unique child. If everyone was good at one specific thing, or had one specific way of learning the world would never progress. Again, I am still not sure of my opinion on this matter. But these are just some of my thoughts.

21st Century American Scholar

I think a 21st century version of "The American Scholar" would reflect the nineteenth century version of the speech. The message Emerson was speaking of still holds true today. The balance between creative thinking and hard work is a lesson that still needs to be learned, and carried out. I think Emerson would probably put an emphasis on the hard work that makes our thoughts and ideas flourish into big things. He would encourage us not to get lost in the many distractions of the 21st century. He would urge us to remember that all ideas come from creative thinking. He would want us to shy away from the technology that we all cling to and let our minds be independent and free to think. Just as books are useful, computers are too, but none as useful or important as the independent mind, because the only way to move forward is through the mind and work of man and nothing else. Humans can have aids that support and influence our thoughts but when those aids become our thoughts all will be lost.

In conclusion, Emerson would most likely have a similar opinion in 2011. He would be more forceful to be heard through all of the distractions that come with the 21st century, but all in all the main point remains that even with so many other elements that reoccur in life holding on to nature that influences the mind; independence that makes thoughts unlimited and hard work that turns those thoughts into something more than just thoughts are the most important of all.

The American Scholar

While reading the first half of the American Scholar, although I had trouble comprehending his way of speaking, more so I found that I was having trouble with the message Emerson was conveying. In his paragraphs mainly having to do with books and reading I wasn't sure why he was almost saying that what the reader thought about a piece of writing was more important than what the author was trying to say. I guess I always thought the opposite, that I needed to figure out the message that the author was trying to let out through his words. However, after going on my third time reading this essay, trying to figure out what else Emerson was trying to say, "Inventing," my own thoughts and ideas about this piece of writing didn't sound so bad. In the toss up between going over the writing a fourth time, picking apart every word trying to figure out exactly what Emerson's message was, versus thinking about his words and creating my own thoughts and ideas about the essay, I'm sure you could guess which decision won. My overall difficulty with this essay was made less difficult by listening to the one thing i did understand that Emerson was trying to say, which was to create your own thoughts and ideas about writing, and along with creative reading and creative writing which he refers to in the essay, creative thinking is always vital. "When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion."