AP Literature (Barraza)

Fall 2018

Unit: William Faulkner’s “The Bear”

COGs: Centers of Gravity

In response to your reading of William Faulkner’s “The Bear,” you will write a 1-2 page critical response stemming from a chosen passage in the story. You need to be CONCISE: quote what you will discuss, and discuss what you quote.

To begin, quote the portion of text you feel acts as a central moment in the “The Bear,” (I call these COGs, or centers of gravity). You can select your passage from anywhere in the story. A COG might be a sentence or a passage. It should not be too long; however, it should serve to illuminate Faulkner’s intention for the entire story or a major component. You need to cite your passage (using MLA citation), so I can access the whole passage if I need to in reading your work. This should be the header to your paper (the copy I gave you is ten pages long—absent of printed numbers, however).

It helps if you annotate or mark potential COGs that you come across as you read (this was your Thursday night homework; once you have finished the assigned reading and can consider the piece as a whole, choose the section of the story that you feel acts as one of these centers.  The passage may reflect a significant theme, have elements of repetition that seem noteworthy, or contain a central image, metaphor or significant discovery around which the rest of the reading develops. 

Beneath your quoted COG passage, OBSERVE the elements that shape this COG; consider how the writer’s choices (in language and syntax) shape meaning in this moment of the text.  A close reading should never be a summary of the reading or passage or a personal reflection,but should relate specific elements of the piece you have observed and be isolated to the intentions of passage or larger work. (Rules associated with analytical writing apply here.)

You are graded for three elements in a close reading:

• You have set up the assignment correctly (see examples).
• You have specific observations of the passage.
• You connect those observations to the emerging ideas of the COG.

I believe, both as a matter of common sense and from my own personal experience, that the discipline of reflecting as you read has the potential to change the quality of attention that you pay to a text, a particular goal of an AP literature class. If you read with the idea that there is something you want to save from your readings, you read differently.

SAMPLE COG:

12 AP COG Sample Story of An Hour