Close Reading Exercise
You have been given two pages from the play Rossum’s Universal Robots (or RUR), by Karel Capek, which you will use for this exercise.
- Read the two pages slowly and uninterruptedly at first. Your goal is to read this text to comprehend as much as possible, to get a general sense of what these pages attempt to convey. You have not read either the preceding or the succeeding pages so you are working limited context.
- Once you have completed your first reading, read the text again, but this time focus on identifying at least five passages that are interesting, surprising, or remarkable to you in any way. These can be ideas or statements with which you agree or disagree, or that connect with something else you have experienced, read, or watched. Every time you feel compelled to highlight or underline anything, write in the margins of the paper why you felt you needed to mark this passage.
- Finally, read the text one more time from start to finish focusing on questions that arose in your previous two readings. First, see if the questions you asked yourself can be answered with the text. Second, write them on the margins of the text at least five questions that cannot be answered by the text alone for discussion in class.
