SETTING
For this reading response, you will analyze the setting of a literary text of your choosing. Analysis of Setting explores how and why a work’s time and place affects the events and/or the characters of the work. The setting helps create the mood and set the tone for the literary piece. You can analyze the setting by examining the surrounding environment, background, historical place in time and geographic location. Use specific examples from the story or poem to support your analysis.
Some questions you may wish to ask yourself as you write: Why is the work set during a certain era, season or time of day? Is any part of the setting symbolic? How does the setting establish atmosphere or mood? How is the setting presented ? With photographic detail? Through a few suggestive details? Indirectly through thoughts and actions? Does the setting influence the plot or characters?
Your response should be between 500 – 750 words.
MOTIF
A Motif is a literary technique that consists of a repeated element that has symbolic significance to a literary work. Sometimes, a motif is a recurring image. Other times, it’s a repeated word, phrase, or topic expressed in language. A motif can be a recurring situation or action. It can be a sound or smell, a temperature, even a color. The key aspect is that a motif repeats, and through this repetition helps to illuminate the dominant ideas, central themes, and deeper meaning of a story.
Authors utilize motifs for multiple purposes. Motifs can: evoke a mood; illuminate main themes; engage the audience on an intuitive level; create unique symbolic meanings through repetition; and establish a pattern of ideas.
A Theme is different from a motif. Themes are the main ideas of a work of literature. They represent the meaning or question behind the series of events that make up the narrative. Motifs are recurring elements that point to these themes. In other words, motif is a tool used to craft theme. While themes are abstract and conceptual, motifs are tangible and concrete.
For this Reading Response, identify a single motif that you see appear in a story of your choosing. Offer examples of how and where this motif occurs in the text as well as the meanings it evokes. How does it create meaning and contribute to text themes? What mood does it evoke? Does it engage or alienate the reader? Is it an effective motif?
Your response should be between 500-750 words.
PARAGRAPH
For this reading response, your task is to undertake a careful, sustained interpretation of a passage from an assigned reading. Identify a specific paragraph and analyze it closely. First take a look at the paragraph and underline/highlight any words or phrases that stick out to you. Next notice any patterns of organization. How does the passage begin and end? How do the words relate to one another? Is there a specific tone to the language? Imagery? Contrast? What is the mood of the passage? Are the sentences long and windy or short and abrupt? What impact does it have on the reader? Pay attention to the various facts and ideas that compose the passage to present a sustained analysis and argument for what that passage contributes to the text.
Your response should be between 500-750 words.
SENTENCE
Just like close reading a paragraph, when you close read a sentence, you undertake a thoughtful and critical analysis that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the its form, craft, meanings, etc. For this Reading Response, focus on a single sentence (or two) that you think is essential to the text. You will want to notice its rhetorical features, structural elements, and cultural references. How does the sentence fit into the larger narrative of the text? What comes before and after? And how does this specific sentence encapsulate a key aspect of the text’s meanings? Use your observations of particular facts and details in the sentence to come to a conclusion, or interpretation, about its significance to the text.
Your response should be between 500-750 words.
Further Directions. Write four reading responses to course literary texts of their choosing. These short essays will be based on students’ own responses to the literature, enabling them to develop skills in close reading and literary analysis. In each case, students will closely examine a single key sentence, paragraph, image or graphic panel from their chosen text. The goal is to be precise and clearly communicate the “meanings” gleaned from the chosen selection. Reading responses should be submitted before class on the day we discuss the selected text. Students can choose when to submit the responses but should aim to distribute them over the course of the semester. Each response paper should be between 500-750 words.
