Lessons on close reading... from a spider

Today I read an excerpt from Patricia Kain's explanation on how to "close read". Patricia provided, in her writing, a story about an explorer's discovery of a spider. The explorer discovered the spider on its own web and tapped it with his pencil. The web began to react (acting as a puppet of the spider) and provided the explorer with an observation. Now, the reason that Patricia included this story is because she wanted to teach us how to use the steps of close reading, "annotating", "looking for patterns" and "asking questions", steps one, two, and three respectively, to dissect piece of writing in order to significantly improve our understanding. Her definition of close reading is defined in those three steps. Collectively, Kain defines close reading as the ability to dissect, analyze, and come to conclusions about the piece of written text in question. While stumbling around the vast universe that is google, I came about a slightly different interpretation of what close reading is. While reading through the passage on http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/a/sam50/closeread.htm, I received a slightly more forward opinion of what close reading is. "Dr. McClennen" (as quoted from the text) defines close reading as simply to interpret what you are reading. Patricia Kain, however, defines close reading as a collaboration of steps, not just one single solitary idea. It is interesting how different people have different ways of explaining this concept.

Waldo's Great Great Grandson

After finishing reading Emerson's "The American Scholar" I was filled with the opinions of a man who's eyes were so prevalent in the eighteen hundred's. When one (myself) is filled with so many thoughts of a completely different time period, those thoughts are automatically conflicted with the values I was brought up with in the twenty first century, two hundred years after Emerson's evaluation of the American scholar. So any one, in order to get the full effect of a reading like this, must ask themselves what such a great mind of the past would say in his time's distant future, or rather, our own present.

If presented with the society of 2011, Emerson would still hold core values he presented in his 19th century address. However, Emerson would most likely take into account the extreme advances in technology that are directly related to today's "American Scholar".

One resource that would please and displease Emerson is the ability to find almost any piece of wanted information on the world wide web. Emerson would preach about how valuable that ability would be for the student who knows how to use it properly. On the other hand, he would criticize how today's technology has hindered the American mind of those who use it improperly. For example, studies have shown that the ability to seek any information wanted in an instant has eliminated one's ability to use basic research skills needed when the Internet was not available. This is only a phenomenon that effects certain individuals; those who don't seek out to use other resources as well. This would trouble Emerson because of the fact that with this great tool comes a great responsibility, one who the average person fails to uphold.

Difficulties in decoding Emerson's message..

In the first half of "The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, there was a tremendous amount of sophistication and English codec that to many, including myself, are misunderstood. It seems a select secret mind, a rare one at that, can reveal the true meaning of Emerson's mind numbing text. A particular passage struck out to me as especially difficult.

The passage read:
"I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action"

Like myself, I'm sure all of you reading this are shaking your heads and massaging your temples. To me a few phrases stand out to be important to the understanding of this particular piece of written text. When looking at the phrase "there is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade" it seems to imply that multiple types of work are equally important to society. Further into that sentence when examining the phrase "for learned as well as unlearned hands." it seems to add the workers themselves to the important factors of this described society.

The most trying sentence of this passage is the final one. "only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgements and modes of action". In my opinion, this final part swings the entire mood of the passage. It seems to be seen that Emerson believes that finding multiple methods of work and workers to complete them is indeed important, but once a man begins his work, he should not be persuaded to go elsewhere by outside influences, at least, from what I understand, until the work is done.

So taking both major elements into mind, it seems that the overall message of this passage is this; One must seek out to do needed and productive tasks, but once a task is started, one must finish it no matter what forces may push back.

Emerson seems to have a multitude of coded messages in his historic pieces, no one can understand his writing, or any writing for that matter, to the fullest extent, unless they wrote it themselves. This is because writing isn't a science, writing is a point of view.