Based on your reading of Gallop’s essay, apply her method of close reading to her own writing and write an interpretive essay attempts to uncover the effects of her writing choices by observing, questioning, and interpreting the “minor” details of her text. That is, in this essay you need to examine and interpret the significance of one or more “minor” details in Gallop’s writing that you have observed that you find to be surprising, interesting, striking, confusing, or worth noting for some reason. You may focus on any detail of her writing, such as the types she herself discusses when she defines close reading at the beginning of her essay “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters.” This could be her use of a repeated term (a word or group of connected words) or phrases, how she links concepts together, her use of pronouns or adjectives, words that seem to “insist” to be written, etc.
Your essay needs a clear focus and a thesis statement that describes what feature of Gallop’s writing you are close reading, and what your evidence will demonstrate about that feature of her writing. In other words, you need to have an interpretation of what the significance is of that minor feature. Describe what you are “tracing” and following as you close read her essay, looking at the details and trying to explain them in themselves, rather than only trying to explain the “main idea” of the essay. Create a thesis statement that states your argument about those details that you have traced and that answers the following questions: why are they significant? What about her use of language – as evidenced by the terms you traced – is revealed that is surprising, interesting, confusing, or worth noting, and why?