Not to brag, but if there is anything I have mastered so far in my high school career, it is the art of annotating poetry and prose for close text analysis. This guide will focus primarily on close-text analysis, but will also touch on a full annotation of a larger piece. Basically, I will be giving you a few different techniques given to me by my English teacher, as well as a few that I have learned on my own! Enjoy!
{ Some of the names are weird because my english teacher is a hilarious person! }
What: Basically coondog is all about “sniffing out” motifs and symbols. So for example, when reading a series of poems, if you realize there is a lot of references to the ocean, go through from the beginning with a highlighter and highlight every single reference to the ocean you can find – whether it literally mentions something like “waves” or “fish”, or is far more subtle.
Why: Using coondog is extremely helpful, especially as writing about a motif is a great starting point for an essay or paragraph. If you are in the IB program, motifs are awesome for anything from an English extended essay to your unseen oral commentary. Remember, a motif can vary! Some examples of some I have seen commonly are: water, corporeal, animals, time of day, cosmic, textile, etc.
My English Teacher came up with the name (I think it comes from one of her crazy life stories haha)
Who: Who are the characters? What is the point of view?
What: What happened in the piece (paraphrase)?
Where: What is the setting? How does the setting effect the piece?
Why: Why did the author do _______?
When: When was the piece written?
How: How does the author create the feeling of ________?
What: This is basically just making sure you hear the piece in your head as you read it. This is extremely important while reading poetry.
Why: Reading aloud silently will you help you catch so many things you wouldn’t by just skimming through it. Things like internal rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia, tone, consonance/assonance, cacophony/euphony, etc. will all become more obvious. This also ensures that you don’t skim past a line or anything.
Even if you hate every single other tip I have given you, just use this one and you will benefit incredibly.
Title: Read the title before reading the piece. Is it an allusion? What does it connote? Does it reveal anything about the novel?
Irony: Look for irony and humour in the piece. Both are excellent to write about, so keep your brain peeled!
Paraphrase: After you finish reading everything, think about what literally happened in the piece. Do this before finding the ‘sub-text’.
Connotation: Time for sub-text! What is the piece saying indirectly? As in what is it trying to reveal other than the literal happenings of the work? Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time to read underneath the lines!
Atmosphere: Highlight anything that reveals the tone/atmosphere of the piece. Highlight any hints you find that make you think the story is shifting in one way or another.
Shift: Find any narrative shifts. This could be anything from a shift in tone, to a shift in point of view, to a shift in the characters feelings.
Title: Now that you have examined the piece, look back at the title and think about it’s relevance. Were you right when you looked at it the first time? Or did it reveal a hint about the ending?
Theme: Now it’s time to put it all together! What is underneath the piece? What is the author trying to convey? Remember the theme will often be something profound and important!
Never skip your beginning and ending as I personally feel as if they are perhaps the most revealing sections. The beginning will set the tone and mood for the poem, while the end will ultimately reveal the theme. When examining the beginning and end, one way to comprehend what happened in the piece is to map out where it started, and where it finished, and fill out (with quotes) how the narrator/characters got there. This is most helpful with poetry or prose excerpts as novels would have wayyyyy to much going on in the middle.
Poetry has feelings. Yup. That’s a thing.
So, remember, atmosphere and tone are incredibly important. Write down how the poem makes you feel, how the poet might have felt when they were writing it, how the characters/speaker feels about the situation – any feeling word that comes to mind will be significant when you talk about the atmosphere of the overall poem! Plus it will give you a more thorough understanding of the premise :)
Handy Dandy Things to Watch For!
Bored of talking about Simile’s and Alliteration? Here are some other things (often a little more rare) that are almost always relevant when annotating poetry (and a lot of prose as well!)
Allusion: I promise you, there is almost always allusion in poetry. Biblical will probably be the most common allusion you see (in Western literature), and it is extremely easy and effective to talk about it. Allusion to mythology is also common, and is often used in order to show the universality (through space and time) of a specific theme.
Elevated/Archaic Language: Always keep an eye out for this, it is extremely
Parallel Structure/Anaphora: You can never go wrong with parallel structure and anaphora as they will exist often! It doesn’t have to be a perfect parallel structure, it always elevates and intensifies a piece of poetry or prose.
Structure: In poetry especially, sentence/stanza structure is extremely significant. Look at the length of each line? Is it short-long-short-long line structure for the first few stanzas and then all of a sudden just a rhyming couplet of two short lines? Mention this! Talk about why this might be. Also keep an eye out for the actual structure of the stanzas on the page! This is not on accident, poets often put thought into the way it will look printed out. Plus, if you are unsure, you can always say “perhaps” to keep yourself save. Remember rhythm, syntax, enjambment, and general structure are your friend!
My Method (close-text, small section) ~ This is how I annotate for unseen timed commentary’s (but it is effective for all annotation!)
Write down the general tone/feeling I get from the piece.
Read second time focusing on a possible theme.
Underline any poignant/interesting/beautiful imagery (as guess what, this is usually the best stuff to talk about in your paper!)
Write down a tentative theme and/or thesis (just off of what you get out of the poem the first time around – don’t worry, this isn’t permanent!)
Why did you pick that thesis/that theme to work with? Think of 2+ points that support your thesis.
Highlight any quotes that support these points.
And there you go, a body for your essay is completed.
Annotate with more specific notes towards each highlighted section. This is when you think of literary techniques used like simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.
For a Whole Book / Set of Poems:
As you read the book, highlight any interesting/potentially useful quote.
Let’s say you finish reading for the day after an hour. At that point, open a word document (or notebook), and record every quote you have found in different categories (include page numbers!!!!!).
Categories could be things like: John Doe’s Character Exposition, Water Motif, Setting & Context, etc. etc.
There are a few perks to doing this. First of all, you have all your quotes sorted, chronologically. This means that when looking at something like character development, you have a list of interesting quotes in the order of them happening thus basically creating a skeleton of their character arc! Second of all, having quotes in a large word document makes it far easier to find them! You can use command-F (if on a Mac), and search for a specific word/quote. This way, you don’t find yourself wasting time tracking down one tiny detail for an essay. Another perk is that by recording a few chapters wort of quotes at a time, you won’t be overwhelmed by hundreds of highlight marks throughout your book after you have finished reading. This basically ensures that once you have finished reading, all you have to do is sit down and write! No more spending hours searching for that one perfect quote in a 400 page novel!
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