9/10/19 Annotations on The Birthday Party - Riya Agrawal - PD 5

Riya Agrawal
Sophomores 2020
September 10, 2019
Period 5
Blogger #1

Aim: How can we develop our close-reading skills through the analysis of Katharine Brush's "The Birthday Party"?

Today was the second day that we worked on annotating the short story, The Birthday Party. We worked on close reading the short story and worked with a few lines at a time to annotate. We tried to understand the text further than just what the text said. We highlighted words or phrases that stood out to us and talked about why they stuck out to us and what they told us about the story and the plot as a whole.

In the story, a married couple goes out for dinner on the husband's birthday. The wife sets up a little surprise for his birthday in the form of a simple birthday cake with a pink candle in the center. We annotated and inferred that, based on previous information on the story, since the man seemed smug and arrogant, the small cake may not be appealing for the man. He seems like he would be embarrassed or dissatisfied with the small gesture.

We can use annotating to help us close read other pieces of writing. As we continue with the year, we will be reading other books and plays and by practicing annotating we will be able to understand further than just what the text says.

In a short story, I feel like annotations are especially important because since the story is so much shorter than a regular book or article, every word and line is important. The author packed much more purpose in how they described the characters and why s/he decided to write it the way they did. I think that if we are able to understand why the author chose the write the story the way they did, we will be able to go beyond just the surface of the text.