1.4–Reading and Annotating Literature: Beginning the Dive
Claire Carly-Miles
Examining how and why the creator of a work forges connections and what they may mean constitutes a huge part of what literary scholarship involves. In order to begin to consider how the writer establishes connections, we want not only to read the text but to engage with it, and we do this through a close reading and annotation of the text. When you annotate a text, you are, essentially, beginning to identify and/or make connections with the words on the page. Think of your annotations as a way to begin a conversation with the work you’re reading. In order to illustrate the beginnings of such a conversation, we’ve included a page from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening[1] and our annotations of it below:
| The Awakening Text | Reader Annotations |
|---|---|
|
Madame Ratignolle was very fond of Mrs. Pontellier, and often she took her sewing and went over to sit with her in the afternoons. She was sitting there the afternoon of the day the box arrived from New Orleans. She had possession of the rocker, and she was busily engaged in sewing upon a diminutive pair of night-drawers. [. . .] |
A box of sweets and other goodies sent by Mr. Pontellier to Mrs. Pontellier (EP) a few days after he criticizes her. |
|
Robert was there, seated as he had been the Sunday before, and Mrs. Pontellier also occupied her former position on the upper step, leaning listlessly against the post. Beside her was a box of bonbons, which she held out at intervals to Madame Ratignolle. |
EP seems bored here, watching as Madame Ratignolle (MR) sews baby clothes. |
|
That lady seemed at a loss to make a selection, but finally settled upon a stick of nougat, wondering if it were not too rich; whether it could possibly hurt her. Madame Ratignolle had been married seven years. About every two years she had a baby. At that time she had three babies, and was beginning to think of a fourth one. She was always talking about her “condition.” Her “condition” was in no way apparent, and no one would have known a thing about it but for her persistence in making it the subject of conversation |
So MR has spent half of her marriage pregnant. “Condition” = a euphemism for pregnancy. In other words, even though MR uses a euphemism to refer to it, she talks about it persistently and frequently. |
|
Robert started to reassure her, asserting that he had known a lady who had subsisted upon nougat during the entire—but seeing the color mount into Mrs. Pontellier’s face he checked himself and changed the subject |
Interesting! MR and Robert are both completely comfortable talking about pregnancy, but EP blushes at the conversation, and Robert cuts his comment short because of this. Also notice that EP is always “Mrs.” whereas Adele Ratignolle is “Madame”—this indicates that they are different in terms of being “American” or “Creole.” |
|
Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a Creole, was not thoroughly at home in the society of Creoles; never before had she been thrown so intimately among them. There were only Creoles that summer at Lebrun’s. They all knew each other, and felt like one large family, among whom existed the most amicable relations. A characteristic which distinguished them and which impressed Mrs. Pontellier most forcibly was their entire absence of prudery. Their freedom of expression was at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to be inborn and unmistakable. |
“Absence of prudery” = comfortable talking about pregnancy and, probably, what causes pregnancy. Again, an interesting detail: EP recognizes that while they may talk very frankly, they are also very chaste, so it’s really just all talk. |
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Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock with which she heard Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail. She was growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color back from her cheeks. Oftener than once her coming had interrupted the droll story with which Robert was entertaining some amused group of married women. |
This is the first time the narrator refers to EP by her first name in the text and this is Chapter IV! So formal! And also, without her first name used until now, when she’s been named, her relationship as a wife to a husband is always prioritized. Accouchements is French for “childbirth.” “Droll story”: Probably a story about sex or some rake’s escapades. |
|
A book had gone the rounds of the pension. When it came her turn to read it, she did so with profound astonishment. She felt moved to read the book in secret and solitude, though none of the others had done so,—to hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was openly criticised and freely discussed at table. Mrs. Pontellier gave over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease. |
Chopin repeats the word “solitude” several times throughout the book; why? EP is embarrassed to be seen reading this book, and she is also fascinated by it. No one else is embarrassed about having read it; discussing it at table would mean the book’s contents are being openly talked about in front of everybody. |
Annotating the text helps you think more deeply about the work, and your notes can be extremely useful, providing placeholders, reminders, or signposts for you to return to as you read, when you discuss, and when you begin to engage in the initial stages of discovering and exploring what others have said about the work. Any valid argument (whether spoken aloud as part of a class discussion or written as an essay) about a work of literature should be grounded in its text. You will need to support your points with specific quotations (or summary or paraphrase), and those points will need to be valid not only with the use of specific textual material but also with the entire story taken into consideration. In other words, the better you remember specific places in the text that strike you, the better you’ll be able to think about how they work within the text as a whole.
In one of the annotations above, for example, we notice the “droll story” Robert mentions. Having noted this here in Chapter IV, when we get to Chapter VIII and an actual name (Alcée Arobin) is mentioned and then when Alcée himself makes an actual appearance in Chapter XXIII, we can begin to characterize him. Noting that he’s referred to in the earlier chapters (and in a particular way) might help you to think about what kind of character Alcée is and to remember how Robert feels about him when he finally makes his entrance. If you want to write an essay comparing and contrasting Robert and Alcée, you are then able to look back at your annotations to see that there is plenty of evidence throughout the text to support a claim that Robert and Alcée have very different roles to play in Edna’s life.
To begin a close reading and annotations of any piece of literature, consider the following questions (please note: many of the terms included below are discussed within the chapters dedicated to each genre):
- What genre is this piece of literature classified as, and are there specific elements unique to that genre to consider as you read and annotate?
- What structural elements do you observe as you read?
- Are characters present? If so, who are the main and who are the supporting characters, and how are they developed? Are they flat and/or static, or are they round and/or dynamic? Do certain characters serve as foils for the main character, and if they do, what is revealed by comparing and contrasting these characters?
- Where is the action set, and why might this be important?
- Who (or what) is the speaker or narrator? Is the narrator reliable or unreliable?
- What is the plot? What is the main conflict?
- Are there images or symbols that seem significant because of where they appear and/or how frequently the author incorporates them? Are they “universal” symbols or ones that have meaning only within the bounds of this piece of literature?
Making these observations will help you to begin the dive that may eventually lead to your constructing a particular argument about the text.
Attribution:
Carly-Miles, Claire. “Introduction: Reading and Annotating Literature: Beginning the Dive.” In Surface and Subtext: Literature, Research, Writing. 3rd ed. Edited by Claire Carly-Miles, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Christie Anders, Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt, R. Paul Cooper, and Matt McKinney. College Station: Texas A&M University, 2024. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
- Kate Chopin, “The Awakening,” in The Awakening and Selected Short Stories, by Kate Chopin (1994), Project Gutenberg, produced by Judith Boss and David Widger, www.gutenberg.org/files/160/160-h/160-h.htm. ↵
The practice of reading a text in a way that tunes itself to form and content, limiting the influence of information from outside the text.
Beginning to identify and/or make connections with the words on the page of a text.
