Questions to Consider after First Reading

1. Plot Summary
What is the story? What is happening, to whom, where. when, and how?

2. Free Association

• What personal or cultural associations come to your mind as you read? What literary associations?
• What do you most "recognize" as "true to life"?
• What do you most like or dislike about the story?
• If you've read anything by this author before, what do you expect to find in this story?

Character

• Who are the characters and what are they like? What are their relationships to each other?
• What character interests you the most and why?
• Do any characters seem extraneous? Do they act as you would expect?
• Do changes or behavior in any of the characters seem plausible or implausible?
• How has the author caused you to sympathize--or--not with certain characters?

Point of view

• Who is telling this story and how much does he/she/it know?
• Do you think the narrator is reliable? Does it matter to the story?

Setting

• How much of a role does the setting seem to play in this story?
• Would anything be lost from the story if the setting were different or the descriptions deleted?

Symbolism and Style

• Do characters or setting seem to represent something besides themselves?
• Do you notice anything special about the style of the story?

4. Preliminary Interpretation
What (in fairly simple terms) would you say that a major theme of the story is? Is it closely connected with the title?

(Linear, sequential, emotional, subjective, uncritical, superficial, selective.)
Emotional Experience = Reading "through" the work

• Reading for pleasure ( "a willing suspension of belief" as you inhabit the created world.)
• Reading to experience a semblance of reality (naturalization )That's the way life is, as I know it." (Often this response involves "translating" the text into situations or persons that seem familiar to us. Elements in the text which do not "naturalize" easily are often ignored or even distorted).
• Responding to "events," "people," "characters" (Sympathizing or hating, accepting or resisting the situation and/or characters. Such a response generally begins with "I like..." or "I don't like...")
• Reading for recognition
• Reading through identification, absorption (Vicarious connection with characters, events, situations; making them part of your world rather than joining theirs.)
• Reading "over" frustrating gaps, questions

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  Prepared by Ann Woodlief