Goal: Close reading, rereading, reflection, and synthesis by identifying a key word to explore how deeply you can read. This assignment also encourages you to tune into textual echoes, or patterns of words and ideas that recur over the course of a single text.
Task: In Edwidge Danticat, “A Wall of Fire Rising,” choose one word (or series of synonyms) that seems ripe for following. You might think of these as patterns, or echoes, that catch your attention as you read: recurring ideas, themes, concepts, questions, problems that the text is invested in. This word (or its synonyms) should appear across the short story in at least three instances. This word should be a noun, verb, or adjective, and not a word such as “and” or “the” or a pronoun such as “she” or “they.”
Once you’ve identified the word you want to track through the narrative, ask yourself what key word (in other words, a theme, concept, or major idea) your chosen word (or synonyms) suggests to you. For example, if the echoes are words such as “devil,” “diabolical,” and “wicked,” your keyword might be “evil.” Remember that the keyword will be a larger concept, issue, subject, topic, tension, or problem with which the text is concerned, not necessarily the exact word(s) you’ve identified in the text. Again, your word could be related to several synonyms you find in the reading.
As you select your keyword, consider these questions:
What kind of “career” can you describe for your key word as you track each appearance? By “career,” I mean what work does that key word do for the text? How does it develop over time from usage to usage, word to word, synonym to synonym?
When the word appears the first time, what’s happening in the narrative? How is the word used? Consider its connotation and denotation. In other words, what is the word’s meaning and what does the word imply?
Does its usage change or deepen in each subsequent context, in its turns and returns, as the author changes it, chooses different synonyms or positions it in new contexts?
Does the key word have a changing meaning, or connotation, in each instance? If so, how is each appearance different from the one before and the one after?
How might your key word focus the narrative’s larger issues and themes?
If you’re fluent in another language, what’s your key word in that language? Is it used the same way in that language as you see it used by the author of the text?
As you follow your key word across the text, first consult the Oxford English Dictionary aka OED (FIU Library > Research Tools > A-Z List) to investigate the word’s nuanced meaning, its etymological history, its related verbal forms, and its historical usages. This is a key component of the assignment.
With this history of your key word in mind, return to the text and ask yourself:
Why did the author select this word and not another?
What precise ideas or values does the word convey?
Does it vary, repeat, return? Why and to what effect?
Write a paragraph (min: 350 words, max: 500 words) on your analysis of this key word. Consider the following:
What questions occurred to you as you followed the career of your key word?
What larger historical or cultural or linguistic associations does your key word suggest? How has it been used historically? How might your author be “playing” with the slippage of the word’s meaning to suggest other meanings in the text?
What specific thematic or conceptual issues does it evoke in the text?
Example Paragraph: In Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, the murdered boy is consistently referred to as “litel,” little; he even has a “litel book,” and the item that is used to keep him singing after death is a grain—a little seed. In the MED, the connotations of the adjective “litel” suggest “sympathy or affection. . . implying innocence or ignorance.” Indeed, the boy is also referred to as “this innocent” (which the OED’s etymology indicates develops from a negation: in-noxious, without harm). Chaucer thus mobilizes littleness and innocence to engage readers’ sympathies and shape perceptions of the boy as fragile, harmless, and pure. These associations would emphasize medieval readers’ horror at his degradation as his body is mutilated and tainted by disposal in a refuse pit, and delight as God’s might is shown through the smallest of seeds. It seems like the work of littleness in the text would predispose readers to perceive the Jews, in contrast, as great monsters. Yet this treatment of littleness is complicated: In the poem, the Jews live in a ghetto (a little area) in a “greet citee,” and are themselves a minority population (a little group). As a result, how does Chaucer use littleness both to excuse and to justify persecution?
Specifications for a Complete Grade
Print this out to use as a checklist before submitting the exercise.
This assignment will be graded on a Complete/Incomplete basis. You should submit knowing it will earn a Complete.
exercise turned in on time (see Course Schedule)
Identification
identifies a keyword that is repeated across one Edwidge Danticat, “A Wall of Fire Rising”
cites page numbers in parenthetical for each use of the word (like so, Danticat 22).
Analysis
references relevant details from definitions and history of the keyword
describes ideas and values conveyed by the keyword
addresses how the keyword changes as it turns and returns across poems
Synthesis
evaluates historical, cultural, or linguistic associations of the keyword
discusses thematic or conceptual issues in the poems raised by the keyword
identifies at least one question raised by the career of the keyword
Format
a minimum of 350 words and a maximum of 500 words in length
word count identified after last sentence
double-spaced in Times New Roman 12” with 1” margins (MLA format)
Proofreading
demonstrates sufficient proofreading to avoid typos
grammar and spelling do not undermine clarity and precision of paragraph
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