The extracts your exam questions are based on might be longer than the one here but you should still be able to write a close analysisThe interpretation of a piece of text which looks closely at the language, structure and themes used.. First of all, have a read, and see what ideas you can come up with. Remember to link each point to a quotation or example.
Question
How does the writer use language to create interest for the reader in this opening to The Picture of Dorian Gray? (10 marks)
Extract
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnumA tree with golden clusters of flowers., whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussoreA type of textured silk.-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdonA low pitch of sound from an organ. note of a distant organ.