Instead of asking what this essay means, in our reading responses, we ask: how was it made? What can we learn for our own writing from how this was made? This is not a class focused on teaching you how to analyze literature. This is a class focused on teaching you how to make literature. So the goal of the reading response is practical: how can we look closely at a piece of published work in a way that will help us become better writers. Choose from any of the prompts below which compel you as they relate to an essay for this class. You can write your entire response on one question. You can write a response to three questions or nine or six, or four! Be thoughtful. Look closely and avoid vague generalizations.
The Reading Response Buffet
Do a line by line close reading of a passage, focusing on explicit and implicit meaning. Focus on one or many craft features.
Who is the limited persona?
Why is this story being told?
What's the situation? (in two sentences)
What's the story? (the insight, the wisdom, the thing the author has come to say)
What's the conflict? What does the protagonist want? What's in the way? Are the obstacles formidable? What are they? Chart the narrative arc: the rising action and turning point
How is the essay a record of choices?
How is the essay a record of change? (How does the protagonist change?)
What are your impressions? (Did you like it? Not like it? Feel ambivalent about it?)
What is it about? What about what it's about? What are the large and small questions the essay raises? So what?
Analyze closely at any one craft feature you particularly admire: Point of View, Characterization, Dialogue, Image, Setting, Atmosphere, Narrative Structure, etc.
How does this influence your own writing? (Be specific: what changes in your piece does it make you want to make?)
Compare this essay to another essay we've read and discussed
TURN the reading response into a writing exercise.
If Phyllis Rose's "The Music of Silence" is about solitude and silence and renunciation, then in your reading response, write about what solitude means to you. Or write about what silence means to you. Or write about renunciation, or deliberate deprivation, means to you. Is there are story or scene which relates to these themes? Write it.
If Rick Moody's "Why I Pray" is about the relationship between prayer and desperation, then in your reading response, write about what prayer and desperation mean for you. Is there are story or scene which relates to these themes? Write it.
If Cynthia Ozick's "Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep it Holy" is about the relationship between the sacred and time, then in your response, write about how time is related to spirituality. Is there are difference, for you, between the sacred and the secular? Is there such a thing, in your vocabulary, as a desecration? What do you mean? Is there a scene that relates to this idea? Write it.
If Wendell Berry, in "An Entrance to the Woods" is describing a camping trip he took into the wilderness, then in your response, write about a camping trip you took into the wilderness.
IF YOU (OCCASIONALLY, OR EVEN OFTEN) CHOOSE PROMPT #14, YOU MUST INCLUDE ONE PARAGRAPH WHICH IN SOME MEANINGFUL WAY RELATES WHAT YOU'VE PRODUCED TO THE ESSAY THAT INSPIRED IT. YOUR RESPONSE TO PROMPT #14 MAY BE USED TO DEVELOP OR REVISE A PIECE THAT YOU'RE ALREADY WORKING ON, OR IT MAY BE USED TO TRY SOMETHING OUT THAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT INCLUDE IN YOUR PORTFOLIO.
I think "exercises" like these are valuable for three reasons:
for the low stakes
for the ability to explore a single question in depth
because exercises often give you something hard to find: access to memory, access to material, access to ideas, access to the unconscious, and finally, access to meaning.
(Isn't all this a big pitch for prompt #14. Sure. It's a writing class, after all. Not an analysis of lit class. Is analysis of lit (close reading) really important. Yes. Is close reading anything like writing? No. Can close reading make you a better writer? Sure, but only indirectly. Only writing can make you a better writer.)
Note: If two or three essays are assigned for the date the reading response is due (one personal essay, and one craft essay, for example), then feel free to write your response on both essays, or just one, or mostly on one but a little bit on the other. The idea behind the multiple prompts and the latitude of your response is to encourage you to write about what compels you most.
Reading Responses will be graded the following way:
check plus = Excellent/surprising/edifying. Full credit
check = Good. Full credit.
check-minus = Not thoughtful enough. Marred by mechanical or grammatical mistakes. Half credit.
0 = Not turned in.
Reading Responses should be two to three pages, double-spaced, typed. Good Luck!