Reading Framework—Jamaica Kincaid

This take on reading essays offers a framework for analysis and interpretation—here the reading of essays, though it is useful for reading works in any literary genre. In reading essays, as with the reading of literary works in other genres, everything hinges on observation—on what we notice about the text. I have been illustrating the process of analysis and interpretation throughout the book. Here I step back and recount the stages of that process: making observations; connecting them; from those connections making inferences; considering values embodied in the text, from that work, developing a provisional interpretation. The essay under consideration this way: Jamaica Kincaid’s “On Seeing England for the First Time.”