How to do a close reading

My definition of close reading according to Patricia Kain from Harvard University is just mainly to read carefully and to underline all of the words and phrases that sound very ambiguous, and different.  She also explains to us that we should try to look at it from the authors point of view to see what he is trying to convey to us.

Gillian Lynn 2011 age 8

-In the voice of the mother-

If Gillian Lynn was 8 years old in the year of 2011, there would have been a very different outcome to the situation that she was in if it was in the 1930’s.  Her point of view would be very different considering the external influences of the modern era.

                I am very worried about Gillian right now, she’s always so fidgety, and she just can’t stay still; her teachers have been calling me about her grades and her tardiness in homework.   I think I should bring her to a specialist to see what is going on, and to see if it’s possible to fix this situation.  On the car ride over she was always looking around, pointing at random objects, never sitting still and it honestly started to get on my nerves

                We brought her to a specialist that can help us diagnose what is wrong with her, in my mind I was hoping it was nothing serious, I hoped that it was something that she could just grow out of.  The specialist asked me many questions like her eating habits, study habits, and many other things that I honestly could not remember because they were so defined and specific.  That session was probably the longest hour of my life because during that time, I could only think about the “what ifs,” like I really hoped she didn’t have a learning disability or something along the lines of that.  The specialist then started to ask her questions like, how she was doing, how was school, pretty simple questions honestly.  What scared me the most was what came after, the psychiatrist told me that Gillian had ADHD, a hyperactive learning disorder that doesn’t allow the person to pay attention, and makes him/her very fidgety.  I was told that there wasn’t a cure to this disease but there are ways to suppress this sort of disorder; Ritalin was the answer.  He gave me some samples of Ritalin to see if anything worked to suppress Gillian’s symptoms, he told me to call back in a week to see the results. 

                A week has passed by, and I have seen no improvement in her condition, I called back to see if there was another route that we could take to help her.  He said that there was another way but, it would be very pricey; sending her to an institution for about a month.  I was shocked at what he told me but there was a special institution that helps to suppress the symptoms of ADHD. I had a lot of thinking to do so I went back home to see what the right approach we should take was; we decided to take the psychiatrist’s advice.  The week we decided to bring her there, we left her in that institution, when we parted, that was the most painful thing I had to experience.

What would a 21st century Emerson have to say about the same topic?

After reading the American scholar, i would think that the ways of thinking between the two time periods are actually quite similar.  I believe they are actually quite similar because, according to Emerson, "He who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom." Emerson basically states that what a person puts into their work will get an equal amount of knowledge or reward.  Emerson states in his speech that "In its grub state, it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub.  But suddenly, without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is an angel of wisdom."  This quote implies that basically a person needs time to gain the knowledge that they need to succeed.  Basically going with the principle of a child maturing into an adult.

Difficult Passage by Ralph Waldo Emerson "The American Scholar"

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.


I believe that this passage is quite difficult to understsand and interpret because in the first sentence Emerson states that the doctrine was "ever new and sublime."  From my previous studies I knew that the sublime was considered an unexpected beauty, or surprise of a good occasion.  However, i also knew that the sublime was also something to be feared and it could lead to disaster.  I find that this word alone leads the readers into a cliff hanger of this speech