Reading Fiction

What is fiction?

 Written in prose to narrate, or tell stories

 About realistic characters

 Set in physical environments

 Offers sustained attention to descriptive detail

Elements of fiction

 Tone

 Plot

 Characterization

 Setting

 Point of view

 Theme

Why do we read fiction?

 To organize and make sense of our experience

 To give us mental and emotional satisfaction

 To help us understand what we want to do with our own lives

Allegory: A narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning

because its events, actions, characters, settings, and objects represent specific

abstractions or ideas. Although the elements in an allegory may be interesting

in themselves, the emphasis tends to be on what they ultimately mean.

Characters may be given names such as Hope, Pride, Youth, and Charity; they

have few if any personal qualities beyond their abstract meanings. These
personifications are not symbols because, for instance, the meaning of a

character named Charity is precisely that virtue.

 Which of the stories we have read is an allegory?

Antihero: A protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional

attributes of a hero. He or she may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or

merely pathetic. Often what antiheroes learn, if they learn anything at all, is

that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute values.

 Which of the stories we have read has an antihero?

Symbol: A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a range of

additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal significance.

Symbols are educational devices for evoking complex ideas without having to

resort to painstaking explanations that would make a story more like an essay

than an experience.

 Conventional symbols

 Contextual symbols

Conflict: The struggle within the plot between opposing forces. The protagonist

engages in the conflict with the antagonist, which may take the form of a

character, society, nature, or an aspect of the protagonist’s personality. See also

character, plot.

Stories: “Young Goodman Brown” “The Lesson” “Araby”

What do we need to know?

Think about the points of analysis that we discussed for these stories. Look at
the elements of fiction and determine which of the elements are evident in each
of the stories.

Consider the similarities and differences in the stories’ tones, themes, characters,
settings, etc.

Read the authors’ biographies carefully in order to determine what social or

cultural context might be important for understanding the meaning of the
stories.
 Reading Poetry

What is poetry?

 Poetry is language organized by rhythm.

 It is more than just emotional expression. It often deals with the

experiences that make us human beings.

 They can encourage action, describe experiences, or comment on social

situations.

Elements of poetry

 Word choice

 Figurative language

o Imagery

o Metaphor

o Simile

o Personification

o Allusion

o Symbol

o Irony

 Rhyme—the repetition of the final stressed vowel sound and any sounds

following in a line of poetry

 Alliteration—the repetition of a consonant sound, usually at the beginning

of words in close proximity, used to underscore key words and ideas

 Rhythm—created by the relationship between stressed and unstressed

syllables, it is the natural rise and fall of the voice when something is being

spoken or read aloud

  Meter—the pattern formed when the lines of a poem follow a recurrent or

similar rhythm

 Foot—the smallest repeated unit in a line of poetry

 Tone—The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader or the people,

places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author’s

style. Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic, sad or happy, private

or public, angry or affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other attitudes

and feelings that human beings experience.

 Speaker—The voice used by an author to tell a story or speak a poem. The

speaker is often a created identity, and should not automatically be

equated with the author’s self.

Why do we read poetry?

 For entertainment

 To learn and remember things we want to remember

 For many of the same reasons we read fiction

 But poetry is written to be heard, not just read from the page to ourselves

I will give you lines from the poems and ask you to identify poet, poem, and an

element of poetry and how it contributes to the theme.

Poems: “Mother to Son” “My Papa’s Waltz” “Incident”

“Advice to My Son” “Behind Grandma’s House” “Hanging

Fire”

“Plus C’est La Meme Chose” “in Just” “The Man He Killed”

What do we need to know?

Think about the points of analysis that we discussed for these poems. Look at
the elements of poetry and determine which of the elements are evident in each
of the poems.

Consider the similarities and differences in the poems’ tones, themes, speakers,
use of figurative language, etc.

Read the authors’ biographies carefully in order to determine what social or

cultural context might be important for understanding the meaning of the
poems.
 Reading Nonfiction

What is nonfiction?

 They are essays based in fact, not fiction.

 They “[examine] personal experience” and “explore and clarify ideas by

arguing for or against a position” (31).

Analyzing nonfiction

 First read to discover the author’s thesis: “What does the writer wish you

to understand about his or her experience, the world, or yourself?” The

best clues for this are in the introduction and conclusion of the essay in

most cases.

 Next, examine the essay’s structure and rhetorical strategies the writer

uses to form the essay.

o What kind of essay is it? (narration, description, exposition,

argumentation)

o How does the author use rhetorical strategies (definition, cause/effect,

classification, exemplification, comparison/contrast) to fulfill his/her

purpose in writing?

 “Then, analyze the sources of the essay’s effectiveness by closely analyzing

the language of the essay” (36).

o Details

o Figurative language

o Tone, voice, style

Why do we read nonfiction?

 To understand the issues that drive the intelligent, thinking world

  To improve our critical thinking abilities

 To understand and encounter differing points of view

 To challenge our own preconceived assumptions and worldviews

Essays: “On Morality” “Salvation”

What do we need to know?

Think about the points of analysis that we discussed for these essays. Look at
the elements of fiction and determine which of the elements are evident in each
of the essays.

Consider the similarities and differences in the stories’ tones, themes,

speakers/narrators, settings, etc.

Read the authors’ biographies carefully in order to determine what social or

cultural context might be important for understanding the meaning of the
essays.