In order to get full credit for a math problem, often a student has to do more than provide the correct answer; the student must also show the instructor how he or she arrived at that answer. A similar situation holds true when writing about literature. Not only should you offer your opinion on a text or passage, but you should also demonstrate the reasoning behind your interpretation so your readers can follow your argument. Close reading is the best way to do so.

It may be helpful to think of a quoted passage as the "problem," your ultimate observation on it as your "answer," and your close reading commentary on individual words, phrases, images, sound effects, etc. as the "work" you should show to your readers.

Let's try a "problem." Here's a familiar passage from "Désirée’s Baby"

Madame Valmondé had not seen Désirée and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L’Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny’s rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master’s easy-going and indulgent lifetime.

One of the ultimate observations you might want to make about these lines is that setting sort of shades into characterization, as Armand Aubigny’s plantation (L’Abri) seems to reflect Armand’s harshness. This would be your "answer." How did you get here? Write a few sentences to "show me your work." What images led you to arrive at your "answer"?

The "problem":

Désirée went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse's arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under the live-oak branches.

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking cotton.

Désirée had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmondé. She walked across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.

Your "answer": What happens to Désirée?

A. She walks home to Valmondé to the mother who loved her despite her unknown origins.

B. She walks into the bayou and dies there, as does her child.

C. She does not go to Valmondé nor to L’Abri; she goes to an entirely new place to start a life for her and her child.

D. Armand realizes that he is "not white" and brings Désirée back to live at L’Abri.

Argue for the most plausible answer, or make up your own, all the while "showing your work."