Shake It Up: Add Flavor to Your Close Reading with SALT & PEPR

Introduction

Have you ever sat down with an assigned poem, short story, or other literary text and completely frozen? Maybe you have a general sense of what’s happening on the page, but your professor asked you to “close read” or “analyze.” What exactly is close reading? What exactly should you be analyzing? Where to even begin?

What Is Close Reading?

Close reading begins with critical thinking. No matter what you’re studying, you should question, analyze, and evaluate information so you can form your own judgments, opinions, and ideas. You should learn how to step outside of your subject positions to consider different perspectives and experiences. This is at the heart of critical thinking, and it’s an invaluable skill that much of your education and life experience will teach you. Critical thinking is a skill that will benefit you no matter your chosen path of study or career.

Like most skills, critical thinking takes practice. Literary analysis is one way that students can practice critical thinking. Close reading is an exercise within literary analysis that challenges you to find deeper meaning in a literary passage or text by encouraging you to look for specific details, words, ideas, structures, themes and then forming your analysis of the text based on your findings.  

What Is SALT & PEPR?

There are many ways to close read a text. It’s a good idea to practice different techniques so you can find a technique that works best for you. SALT & PEPR is one close reading technique that encourages readers to think about a text in many ways. SALT & PEPR is a mnemonic device that stands for Structure, Author/Audience, Language, Themes, Purpose/Effect, and Personal Response. This close reading method encourages you to ask questions, annotate, and consider what’s significant (or not). Essentially, SALT & PEPR is a starting point for literary analysis.

Inside the Text with SALT

S: Structure (& Form)

One of the very first things you should consider when you begin close reading is the shape or structure of the text in front of you. Essentially, what is it that you’re analyzing? Is it a poem? If so, what kind of poem? A sonnet? A haiku? Is it free verse? How are the lines structured? Make note of the way the poem looks, how it’s literally structured or formatted on the page. Maybe it’s not a poem, but a piece of prose. If so, is it a complete story or is it just an excerpt from a longer work like a novel or memoir? Is it fiction? Nonfiction? Again, how is it structured? Is it wordy and expositional? Are there shorter lines of dialogue?

Structure and form matter when close reading because often the author of the text is using the structure as a device to help shape or engage with the meaning in some way. For example, Shakespeare’s sonnets were often about love, and the meter (or rhythm) of the lines in a Shakespearean sonnet had a “daDUM” rhythm that mimicked the rhythm of a heartbeat.  

Other more obvious examples can be found by searching for visual or concrete poems. Here’s one example of a concrete poem where the shape of the words on the page creates a concrete image that gives readers another layer of meaning. 

A: Author/Audience

Before reading the text, ask yourself what you know about the author. It may help to do some research on the author, what else they’ve written, and other context. After reading the text through, at least once, ask yourself the question: Who was this piece written for—who might the intended audience be? Be mindful of this question, make a note, and keep the author/audience in mind. We’ll return to this one later.

L: Language

This is a big one. Language could be anything from word choice, syntax, grammar, and punctuation to the author’s choices regarding dialogue, dialect, and their use of literary or poetic devices to shape meaning in the text. This is where you can begin to consider the author’s style. Are they wordy? Do they use flowery, descriptive language? Or are they concise, straight to the point? Are there a lot of similes and metaphors, or is the text more literal? Is there dialogue? Does the style of dialogue differ from the exposition? Does the author use quotation marks? Italics?

If you’re close reading a poem, consider the poet’s use of poetic devices like alliteration, rhyme, assonance, personification, onomatopoeia, and so on. How does the poem sound when you read it aloud? Is there internal rhyme, end rhyme, no rhyme? Does the language help shape the meaning in any way? In other words, does the poet use a lot of romantic imagery in a poem about love?  

When it comes to Language, it’s also worth noting repetition and patterns. Try looking for a semantic field, which is defined as a set of words that relates in subject or meaning. For example, is there a significant number of words with violent connotations? Maybe you’re reading “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen. Make note of words like anger, guns, rifles, and shells. You may notice a semantic field of war or violence. At the same time, words like prayers, mourning, and choirs bring religion to mind. War, violence, and religion? What other semantic fields can you find? Read the poem again and think about what points Owen might be attempting to make about the nature of war. 

T: Themes

Have you ever read a book or watched a film and then been asked by a friend, “What was it about?” How did you respond? Did you lay out the plot for them, or did you go into more depth and explain the message of the film? Literary texts have layers of meaning. Essentially, there’s subject and there’s theme. If someone asked you what the film Avatar is about, you might respond by explaining that it is a visually stunning science fiction film about a man who is sent on a mission to the planet Pandora where he meets and interacts with a race of aliens called Na’vi. That’s the subject of the film. But if someone asks what Avatar is really about, you might interpret that to mean: What are the underlying themes of the film? What is it trying to say underneath all the beautiful graphics? One possible theme of Avatar could be a warning against the dangers of colonization.

When close reading literature, it’s important to understand the distinction between subject and theme. Discovering the theme of a text, whether it’s a poem, story, piece of drama, or a passage from a longer work, can be difficult. Allow the rest of your close reading to help guide you as you begin to think about theme. Think of yourself as a detective discovering clues about the text. Analyze the structure, audience, and language closely and themes will begin to emerge. Ask yourself, “What is this text really about?” Some themes are easier to pinpoint than others, and there’s not always one right answer to the question, “What is the theme of this text?”  

Literary analysis is often quite subjective, but that’s what makes critical thinking so important. Ask questions of the text, discuss with others, form your own thoughts and opinions based in the information you’ve already analyzed from your close reading, and be open to different interpretations.  

Outside the Text with PEPR

It can be helpful to think about a text in different ways. Our SALT analysis focused on the text itself—the words on the page and what those words might mean—what the poem, story, monologue, or passage might be trying to tell us. We might think of this as looking inside the text. On the other hand, looking outside the text—considering the circumstances or context surrounding a text, its writer, the setting or time period in which it was written, etc.—can be a useful way to build some depth into your analysis. 

PE: Purpose & Effect

Purpose and Effect asks us to consider the author’s purpose in creating their text as well as the overall effect of that text on the reader (us.) This is where Author/Audience comes back around.

Based on your reading of the text, what do you think the author’s purpose in writing it was? What role might the author’s personal experiences play in their writing of this text? Who were they trying to reach? In other words, who was their intended Audience? For example, Wilfred Owen wrote “Anthem for Doomed Youth” while he was in the hospital recovering from injuries he sustained during World War I. Owen’s attitude toward the senseless killing of young soldiers is what drives much of the poem’s tone and theme.   

Then, consider the question: What is the overall effect on the text’s audience? How does the text engage or connect with its audience? To what extent does the text succeed at engaging with or creating its intended effect on the audience? 

Sometimes these questions might be irrelevant or impossible to answer. Depending on the text, author, context, or even the goal of your analysis it may not matter why the author wrote a text or who they intended the audience to be. Sometimes it might benefit your reading of the text to separate the author from the work. Either way, it’s worth thinking about, making note of, and even discussing amongst your peers.  

PR: Personal Response

Finally, what is your opinion of the text? Did you like or dislike it? Why? Was the language too stuffy for your taste? Did you love the way the writer incorporated pop-culture references? Did the author’s style surprise or frustrate you? Does the text remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? Do you connect to the text personally in any way? Making connections to other texts or your own experiences will help you retain what you’ve read and engage with the text on an even deeper level.

Your opinion matters, but it’s important to support your opinion with evidence from the text. You don’t simply like or dislike a text. Dig up the reasons and analyze further. If you didn’t like the text, maybe that’s because you aren’t the author’s intended audience. If that’s not the reason, give yourself the opportunity to sit with your feelings and reflect.  

Conclusion: Digesting SALT & PEPR 

Once you’ve worked through a text with SALT & PEPR, go back through once more and see if there’s anything you’ve missed or any connections you can make now that you’ve read with SALT & PEPR in mind. Close reading should offer you a starting point or a foundation to build your own analysis of that text. Don’t get frustrated or overwhelmed if you have a mass of jumbled notes. Embrace those notes! Read them, reflect, and discuss with others.  

Practicing close reading techniques like SALT & PEPR will help you gain the skills you need to conduct literary analysis and develop critical thinking skills.

Cameron, James. Avatar. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.

Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Poetry Foundation.

Starbuck, George. “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree.” Poetry Foundation.