Formatting: Your assignment should include a Works-Cited page. Please see the “Formatting Guidelines for Written Work” section on the syllabus, on page 7.Instructions: Read closely a section (a passage of about a paragraph or two, or even a page) from one of the novels or one of the short stories you’ve read, and write a close reading essay of 2 to 3-pages. Your analysis essay needs to be at least 600 words* long (not more than 1000 words), include at least 2 quotes!!!, and should address the following components: Summary: (≈ 150 words, about 1 paragraph)Summarize the reading to show your understanding. What is it about? Who wrote it, and what are the credentials of the author? Where did it appear? When was it written? What are some of the points (themes) raised?** Analysis/Response: (≈ 350 words, about 2-3 paragraphs)Analyze the reading, its context, and the authorial choices that make it effective. Who is the intended audience of this text? What seems to be its purpose? Why did the author choose the examples, words, or expressions they did? The strongest response paragraph(s) will have a topic sentence that makes an argumentative claim (ex: “This passage seems to suggest that understand how social class impacts gender expectations”) and will go onto provide textual evidence supporting that claim.Application of the reading: Why is it relevant to us? What historical, social, political contexts does it relate to? What current topic or personal experience relates to this text?Conclusion: (≈ 100 words, 1 paragraph)Evaluation of the reading: Was the author successful at his/her purpose? Is the reading useful? Did you like it? Who might like it? To whom would you recommend it?Note: You must address the categories of summary, analysis, application, and evaluation in your short essay, but you do not need to answer directly every single question I’ve provided (the questions are for guidance). Do write your close-reading analysis in an essay format. * (Include your selected passage in your paper, but do not count it as part of the total length.)** For the analysis part:You may find the following examples of close-reading analyses from Mark Twain’s 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn helpful. (https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/07twain/closereadexs.html) From Mary Baroch’s close reading:”He chased me round and round the place, with a clasp-knife, calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me and I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who” (36).. . . Huck’s description of the passage of time in the chase relays a sense of urgency and danger. Descriptive phrases like “Once when I turned,” and “slid out of the jacket quick-as-lightning” change the novel’s pacing into an action-packed, suspense narrative. With Huck’s use of the phrase “Pretty soon,” after he narrowly escapes a knife in the back, the reader is led to wonder what happened in this gap of time. Pap’s desire to “Rest a minute” gives the reader a chance to “rest a minute” and recap the events that have just transpired, though the reader continues to dread Pap’s awakening to “see who was who.” But the reader is ever mindful of Huck’s distance from his experience by telling it in the past tense. This might also explain why he relates in a matter-of-fact way the story of his father trying to kill him. Though Huck is describing the chase in a rapid, vivid play-by-play, which the reader gets a sense of from the frequent temporal clues, his nonchalance adds a disturbing tone to the scene, as if Pap’s terrible abuse of him has always been commonplace. Pap hallucinates Huck as an “angel of death,” and in a sense his retrospective narrator self is a spiritual presence in the scene between his younger self and Pap. From Brittany Gurgle’s close reading:On a table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn’t real, because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was, underneath.This table had a cover made out of beautiful oil cloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures. One was “Pilgrim’s Progress,” about a man that left his family, it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it, now and then. The statements was interesting but tough. Another was “Friendship’s Offering,” full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn’t read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay’s Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn’s Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too? not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. (137). . . In basic terms, Huck describes a compilation of mundane household items — a table, a basket of fruit, books, a set of chairs. However, it is moments such as this one that contextualize Huck’s experience — explaining how Huck should be viewed in relation to society.In the first paragraph, Huck shows the reader how he was able to distinguish the fruit as artificial. It was clearly a curious and unusual sight for Huck to see fruit chipping away to expose white chalk; thus, his reaction was to analyze and observe the situation further. He came to the conclusion that “they warn’t real.” Twain craftily gives Huck greater narrative authority in the reader’s eye. The reader is shown Huck’s ability to rightfully distinguish between real and unreal, true and false when it comes to appearances. Though an adult might have deciphered the truth a little quicker through past experiences encountering artificial fruit; nonetheless, without observing such fruit before, Huck is able to distinguish.

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