1. Close/Critical Reading Quizzes
CRQs
Close/Critical Reading Quizzes

2. What is a CRQ? Close/Critical Reading Quiz Purpose:
To analyze a passage or text in a clear, concise format. Writers must address the speaker, context, thematic focus, and devices used within the passage and analyze the meaning/significance of the passage as a whole. Each CRQ must end with a reference to the author’s purpose for including the passage in the text as a whole.

3. CRQ Overview TOPIC STATEMENT (specific )
Speaker + context + thematic focus+ device
Body
Analysis supported by Devices**(w/ examples from passage)
** CERTAINLY will change depending on passage**
CONCLUDING STATEMENT (more general)
Return to the idea of the author’s/speaker’s purpose (THEMES) found in this passage.

4. Potential Devices Tone Irony Metaphor Diction Foreshadow Imagery
You may want to be on the lookout for the following devices to assist you in your analysis:
Tone Irony Metaphor
Diction Foreshadow Imagery
Character Symbolism Allusion
(Anything from your literary devices sheet from the beginning of the year!)

5. Example - TEWWG
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid” (Hurston 11)

6. Example CRQ
Topic Statement:
As a teenage Janie Mae Crawford lies under a pear tree one afternoon, the narrator highlights love’s intoxicating, powerful nature through the use of personification and an extended metaphor.
Context, Speaker, Thematic statement, Device(s)

7. Example CRQ
Analysis
The narrator’s depiction of the “alto chant of the visiting bees,” the sister calyxes that “arch to meet the love embrace,” and the tree’s “ecstatic shiver” creates a desirable, sexual atmosphere for the young Janie Crawford. The personification of the bees, the sister calyxes, and the tree demonstrates love’s power not only over Janie herself, but over nature as a whole. Janie is clearly not alone with her feelings of desire. In addition, the author’s use of nature as an extended metaphor for love is highlighted by Janie’s “soaking in” of the natural connections and reactions taking place around her. Janie desires for her own life the natural, pure love exemplified in her surroundings.

8. Example CRQ
Concluding Statement – (Must relate to author’s/Speaker’s purpose!!)
By focusing on Janie’s attentiveness to her surroundings that ultimately leaves her “limp and languid,” the narrator is able to accurately capture a defining moment in Janie’s life—the moment she realizes the powerful hold that love can have on an individual.
Author’s Purpose/Refers back to Thematic Statement

9. Full CRQ
As a teenage Janie Mae Crawford lies under a pear tree one afternoon, the narrator highlights love’s intoxicating, powerful nature through the use of personification and an extended metaphor. The narrator’s depiction of the “alto chant of the visiting bees,” the sister calyxes that “arch to meet the love embrace,” and the tree’s “ecstatic shiver” creates a desirable, sexual atmosphere for the young Janie Mae Crawford. The personification of the bees, the sister calyxes, and the tree demonstrates love’s power not only over Janie herself, but over nature as a whole. Janie is clearly not alone with her feelings of desire. In addition, the author’s use of nature as an extended metaphor for love is highlighted by Janie’s “soaking in” of the natural connections and reactions taking place around her. Janie desires for her own life the natural, pure love exemplified in her surroundings. By focusing on Janie’s attentiveness to her surroundings that ultimately leaves her “limp and languid,” the narrator is able to accurately capture a defining moment in Janie’s life—the moment she realizes the powerful hold that love can have on an individual.

10. Your Turn!
-- With a partner, practice only the analysis and concluding statement portions for the following quotes. Remember, you need to explain WHAT the quote means and WHY the quote is significant. (Do not say, “This quote means” or “This quote is significant because”.. That is a lame approach!) **Bonus: Include the device(s).** Quote 1: “Today with their failing ivy and stripped, moaning trees the houses looked both more elegant and more lifeless than ever” (Knowles 11). Quote 2: “… I was taller, bigger generally in relation to these stairs. I had more money and success and ‘security’ than in the days when specters seemed to go up and down them with me” (Knowles 9-10).

11. Practice CRQ #1
“The beach shed its deadness and became a spectral gray-white, then more white than gray, and finally it was totally white and stainless, as pure as the shores of Eden. Phineas, still asleep on his dune, made me think of Lazarus, brought back to life by the touch of God” (Knowles 50).