Lens: Reader Response
Prompt: Close Reading
To finish things off, I decided to change things up. We haven't read something at point blank in a while.
"She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate." (Chapter 18. Shmoop doesn't give page numbers).
Upon first glance, this seems like an extremely important quote. But upon closer inspection, it becomes blurry. When back away to a reasonable distance once more, things become much clearer. Both literally and figuratively. You now know; close reading is extremely harsh on the eyes. But, did you know that normal reading is as well? It's true. No one wants to read this particular quote. It uses difficult words, such as "that," and "was." It's so much easier to not read anything that it's amazing that anyone ever reads at all.
Going back to the quote, we see Hester lost in a moral wilderness. This wilderness is vast, intricate, and shadowy. It is also untamed. There's a lot of gloom, which seems to be a part of Hester's fate. Sadly, a moose was not part of her fate as well. An HD moose, to be exact. She would have enjoyed that.
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