Fiction: Re-reading Questions

Exploring the text

• Look up any words or allusions you are unsure about
• Look for any gaps you have have read over and into quickly
• Look for any repetitions or patterns in the story

Exploring formal features of the text:

• Is the story more or less interesting this time, now that you know the plot?
• What conflicts do you see now? Any more or any different ones? Are they all resolved or are any left open? If open, then why? If there are any dislocations in order (e.g. of time or place) in the story, do you see any logic behind the arrangement?
• Foreshadowing of the climax and resolution of the story? How effective are they?

Character

• How are the different characters defined--by words, actions (including thoughts and emotions), dress, setting, narrative point of view, etc?
• Are the characters revealed directly or indirectly?
• What purposes do any minor characters serve? Do any characters act as "foils" for each other, similar yet different in significant ways?
• If a character changes, why and how does he or she change? Or did your attitude toward a character change because you know him or her better?
• Are the characters round (complex) or flat (one-dimensional)?
• How does the author cause you to sympathize with certain characters?
• How does your response--sympathy or lack of sympathy--contribute to your judgment of the conflict and the "meaning" of the story?

Point of View

• How does the point of view help shape the story and its meaning?
• What in the narrator's language tells you what sort of person he/she is and what his/her strengths and limitations might be?

Setting

• Does setting play a major role in the story? What might that be? Could this same story have happened in another place and time?
• Is the setting a kind of character in the story? If so, how is it functioning?

Symbolism and style

• What additional dimensions of representation do you now see in certain characters, the setting, or the situation(s).
• ´How would you characterize the style of this story? Is it heavily shaped by a narrator?
• Does the style ever shift dramatically? If so, why?

Theme

• Are there any details, sentences, or repetitions that particularly embody a "theme" in the story?
• Does the author ever seem to "editorialize" about the story's meaning? Is she/he to be trusted?
• Does the story reinforce values that you hold; does it also challenge these values to any degree?

Reading for cultural and literary repertoires

• How do you think the life or the age, gender, race, social or financial status of the author might be relevant to this story?
• hat do you know about the time, the place, and social, cultural, and/or political conditions of the work? Which of these might be relevant to this particular text?

Matching up your own personal, literary, and general repertoires

• What expectations do you have a story like this? How does it meet or disappoint those expectations?
• How do your relevant personal experiences (as recorded in your free association) match or clash with those suggested in the poem? Are they so strong that they might shape your interpretation?
• What differences (from the author) in age, race, gender, social or political status, etc. might color and shape your reading of this poem?