THE
ACTIVE
By Vivian Folkenflik
You’ve already learned a lot about interpretation when you are responding to others’ words, as well
as when you are the speaker or writer. The better you are at “reading” what
other people say, the more persuasive your own interpretation can be. Active reading is your first step. To help you apply what you know to your new work this
quarter, here’s an exercise you can do alone, with a friend, or with your
entire class. For our text, we’ll be using
Circe’s description of Skylla’s cave in the Odyssey (XII, 80-100; tr. Lattimore,
p. 187):
80 Halfway
up the cliff there is a cave, misty-looking
and turned toward Erebos and the
dark, the very direction
from which, O shining Odysseus, you and your men will be
steering
your hollow ship; and from the hollow ship no vigorous
young man with a bow could shoot to the hole in the cliffside.
85 In
that cavern Skylla lives, whose howling is terror.
Her
voice indeed is only as loud as a new-born puppy
could make, but she herself is an evil monster. No one,
not even a god encountering her, could be glad at that
sight.
She
has twelve feet, and all of them wave in the air. She has six
90 necks
upon her, grown to great length, and upon each neck
there is a horrible head, with teeth in it, set in three
rows
close together and stiff, full of black death.
Her
body from the waist down is holed up inside the hollow cavern,
but she holds her heads poked out and away from the terrible
hollow,
95
and there she fishes, peering all over the cliffside,
looking
for dolphins or dogfish to catch or anything bigger,
some sea monster, of whom Amphitrite
keeps so many;
never can sailors boast aloud that their ship has passed her
without any loss of men, for with each of her heads she
snatches
100 one
man away and carries him off from the dark-prowed
vessel.
Context:
Skylla
has just warned Odysseus that, as captain of his ship, he’s going to have to
make a difficult choice after he gets his ship past the Sirens. She’ll tell him the “two ways of it,” but he
must choose in his “own mind” what to do.
Should he navigate past the huge cliffside
What are the
key words here for us as readers?
How can active readers identify the most important words for this
passage and for the story as a whole? You already know a number of answers to this question. Here are two
time-tested close reading procedures for this
passage. The first is organized around rhetoric: ethos, logos, and pathos. The second goes
line-by-line.
Ethos-Logos-Pathos: Close
Reading Exercise #1
1]
Register your own first reactions. Read the passage through, underlining
the words you yourself notice, whatever they are. Some of them may be important to you
individually; others may be important to you as a Core Courser, because they were part of your Fall quarter, or
because Prof. Lupton has been talking about them in her Odyssey
“Journeys of Discovery” lectures, or because your
section leader has mentioned them in class.
You are an individual, but you’re also a member of the Core Course
community.
2] Now
use your rhetorical analysis. [Ethos, Logos, Pathos = ELP= help!]
·ETHOS: How does Circe establish her credibility and
authority as a speaker here? What does this passage tell us about her? For
example, can we tell she is a goddess from the way she speaks? Are there persuasive words that seem to have
moral or ethical implications? Or: What can we tell about Odysseus, her listener? What is
her opinion of him? Circle two
or three places where the words give you some insight into the way Homer is
presenting them. Put E in the margin
next to these places. If any of your underlined words from Step 1 are Ethos-words, use them, too.
On the
basis of your close reading, what could you say about Circe as speaker, and/or
Odysseus as listener?
·LOGOS: Circe is
persuading Odysseus to make a rational choice.
To set up this decision-making process, how is she describing Skylla? How can she
make Odysseus realize the details of the specific dangers she is describing,
step by step? What are the logistics of the journey? How is she measuring the
danger Skylla presents, and (ultimately) the basis
for her listener’s choice? Circle a
few of the words or phrases that would help you focus on these questions and
put L in the margin. If any of your underlined words from
Step 1 are Logos-words, use them, too. (A dictionary can help remind you of a word’s
connotations; the glossary in the back
of the book will help you identify the references to Erebos and Amphitrite.)
On the
basis of your close reading, what could you say about the rational decision Odysseus is being asked to make?
·PATHOS: what emotional
response or responses do Circe’s words inspire?
Do they move us pleasurably, or painfully? Do any of the words have sexual implications?
Sometimes a response involve mixed feelings; Freud has taught us that
contradictory emotions can be meaningful, too. Circle
a few words or phrases that might trigger positive or negative responses (including any you underlined in
Step 1, of course!). Put P next to these
in the margin.
On the basis of your close reading, what could you say about the
emotional response our hero might have to this speech? What could you say about our feelings as readers? Are they the same?
Line-By-Line:
Close Reading Exercise #2
Some
students find a line-by-line prompt helpful in getting started, either
individually or in groups. You might
write down your ELP marks here on this page, as
you look at these phrases from the text.
This close reading exercise should help you articulate your responses as
a reader.
·Halfway up the cliff: Start making a list of phrases in which Circe
is giving specific directions to a ship’s captain.
·misty-looking/ and
turned towards Erebos and the dark: In how many
different ways does this phrase work to suggest danger? Look up Erebos in
the back of the book. The term is sometimes used also to mean “westwards.”
·direction: How is the ship
placed in relation to the cave? Why is this an
important word for navigators before the time of the compass?
·your hollow
ship: If this is an epithet Homer
uses elsewhere in the text to describe Odysseus’s ship, what have you learned
about heroic epithets that makes this a key word? Optional:
Here Homer has chosen a different word for hollow (“glaphyra”) from the
Greek word he’s using to describe the hollow cave (“koilos”), although
elsewhere he does use koilos to describe the
Greek boats (“hollow vessels,” I, 211; “hollow ships,” II, 19; “hollow vessel,”
III, 344; “hollow ship,” IV, 817). Is there
a relationship between the hollowness of Skylla’s
cave to the hollowness of the Greek boats? Similarity? Difference?
·O shining Odysseus: What does this
direct address do for the speech rhetorically? Why is the heroic epithet
important here?
·no vigorous/
young man with a bow could shoot… What do you know about
skill with a bow in general as a measure of strength? What kind of measure is
this for our hero?
·the hole
in the cliffside./ In that cavern: How do these
phrases relate to line 80?
·whose
howling is terror: What makes this apparently simple declarative
statement so effective? Word choice? Diction?
·Her voice…Why is the
gender of this monster interesting?
·indeed is
only as loud as a new-born puppy/ could make: Why is this a discovery
that might surprise Odysseus? Which word tells you that Circe is aware that
she’s saying something unexpected? What kinds of emotion does the phrase
“new-born puppy” arouse? Homer’s word for puppy in Greek is skylax. How does the sound of that word
relate to Skylla’s name?
·an evil
monster: How strong are these words? Who is Circe, to be
using such terms?
·No one,/
not even a god… Why is this important to the speaker? To the
listener?
·She has twelve feet, and all of
them wave… Can you form an image of Skylla’s
shape at this point? If not, keep reading through each neck and head. At what point
in the lines 89-92 could you say that you understand Skylla’s
shape?
·a
horrible head, with teeth in it… Think back to the
distance-measuring of line 80. Is Circe
speaking here as if Skylla is still so far away? How does this help her listener imagine the
point of view of those on the sailing ship?
·full of
black death: Is this a contradictory expression? What is Skylla’s mouth “full of”?
·Her body/ from the waist down is
holed up inside the hollow cavern: What
about the lower half of this female creature’s body? Can anyone see it? Does that make it more of
a pathos-word, or less?
·she holds
her heads poked out: How does the first part of this phrase help
us imagine the strange shape of this creature’s body? How does the second part
of it remind us of what’s not poked out?
·away from
the terrible hollow: Which words are an echo of other lines in the
passage?
·there she
fishes, peering all over the cliffside, looking: Fishing is a normal activity
for sailors. Why does the point of view of this phrase give you a sense of a
monstrous situation?
·for
dolphins or dogfish to catch or anything bigger: Are dolphins
and dogfish the same kind of sea animal, or different? Why is the last phrase threatening, though
vague?
·some sea
monster: Compare the use of “monster” here to its use above.
Are all monsters alike?
·Amphitrite keeps
so many: Who is Amphitrite? With which god might she be connected?
·never can sailors boast aloud that
their ship has passed her
without any loss of men, for with each of her heads she
snatches
one man away and carries him off from the dark-prowed vessel:
Who are Skylla’s fish?
ELP: You can think about your Ethos, Logos, Pathos questions if you do your Close Reading this way, too.
For example, Ethos: How and why is Odysseus
still our hero? Logos: Why does it matter for
Odysseus (and for us!) to understand the specific
logistics of Odysseus’s journey here? Pathos: Why is
it so important for Odysseus (and for us!) to feel the emotional effect of the
experience Circe is describing here?
USING THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS GRID: DEVELOPING EVIDENCE
Pre-writing: Now that you
have strengthened your active reading skills, you will be working on material
you and your section leader select. The HCC textual analysis grid offers you a way to use these skills to
generate material for an argument. In this guide you’ll find a
sample grid; on the Web, this quarter, you’ll find new ones keyed to your
assignments. The columns of the grid ask
you to go step by step, choosing a
quotation, paraphrasing, doing rhetorical analysis, and asking yourself how and
why your quotation might be relevant to your essay. The apparently tight structure of this exercise
is actually a framework within which you can experiment, making your own moves
between columns, thinking about how rhetoric might tell you something about
gender or ethnicity, connecting “So what?” responses, color-coding with
highlighters, etc.
Using
the grid is a pre-writing process: it won’t write the essay for you, but it
will get you past that writer’s block, and it should help you organize your
responses towards an interpretation. You can do this exercise alone, with a
partner, in small groups, or in class. You can bring it in to office hours and
work on it with your section leader, when you feel you need help making the
next step. You may be asked to exchange
or comment on a partner’s grid. The more
you practice close reading, the better you’ll become at it. Someday, you won’t need the grid at all.
Meanwhile, go step by step.
·
Using the Grid
1. Page # (and line #, if
you’re working on a text with numbered lines!). You’re an active reader now, so
you pick a detail that strikes you as
interesting or relevant.
2. Paraphrase:
What’s going on? Who’s doing what? Who is speaking? Use your own words,
briefly.
3. Exact
word or phrase: Quote the word or phrase that struck you as
interesting, using the author’s own words. Be careful: if
your entry is too long, you won’t give yourself a chance to work on the next
column.
4. Why is
this word interesting? Here’s where your new skills come into play. We know the word must have interested you somehow, because you
picked it. Look it up in a dictionary to
discover its meaning; etymology and connotations are often helpful. Is it a
word used frequently in the narrative?
Does it have important ethnic, gender, religious, or historical
implications? Do you see how it might work for ethos,
logos, or pathos?
5. So what?
Here you explore the implications of what
you discovered in column 4. How could this relate to the problem or topic you are
working on? Chances are that you think it might, since you picked it. Give this your best shot for now.
You can come back to it later.
6. Draw a
line under what you’ve done and move on to your next word/phrase, starting again
in Column 1.
7. Bring this
pre-writing grid to class, to your section leader’s office hours, and to LARC.
·
Questions students often ask:
1. What if I can’t find a
passage to use? Try practicing on a virtual-reality
pre-writing: pick one you might use. Then
you’ll usually think of one you like better! You can ask your section leader,
too.
2. What if I have too much to fit on one page? Fold a plain piece of paper.
3. What if
I collect a lot of evidence, but it goes in two different directions? Sounds
interesting! Use two colored pens or highlighters to show yourself what you’ve
done, and start thinking about strategy for your
thesis. Will you pick the
stronger direction? Or write a “yes,
but…” argument?
4. What if
some of my quotations don’t seem relevant to the essay topic, even if they are
my favorite ones? Tell your classmates or section leader about them.
Maybe you’ll be able to use them after all, either in your essay or in
discussion. If not, they belong to you: see what you, as an individual, have
discovered…