I really enjoyed the annotated exercise because it was interesting to do a close reading of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I feel as though when I am required to read a text for class, I try to get through it as quickly as possible. Therefore, it was helpful to be able to do a close reading and dive into different words and phrases that were more complicated to grasp. I decided to write on the word “bore” for stave four. I decided to do this word because I realized that while encountering the sentence I didn’t know what the word meant, and I skipped over it and continued. This is something I believe most people do when encountering new words, therefore I again see the value in doing the annotations. I also enjoyed looking at the illustrated works and hearing the input of my peers. I think the illustrations are important because they demonstrate a time in which artists were trying to link images to words in a meaningful way. Leech did a good job at this as his images often touched upon larger issues in society, such as using common themes (the colour green meaning prosperity, and also growth), to provide a deeper meaning and allude to the class structure within society.