CHAPTER 1.

RESPONDING TO LITERATURE
1.1 Responding to a short story
- Professional writing: The story of an hour
- Techniques for responding to literature:
+ Understanding the assignment and selecting a possible purpose and interpret a work
of literature
+ Actively reading, annotating, and discussing the literary work: highly condensed
experiences
+ Focusing your essay on a single, clearly defined interpretation.
+ Supporting your interpretation with evidence.
- Purposes for responding to literature
+ Explaining: what, why, and How of your response
+ Evaluating: appreciating its value or worth, measure both strengths and weaknesses
+ Problem solving: how the reader overcomes obstacles
+ Arguing: evidence that refutes an opposing or alternate interpretation
1.2 Responding to short fiction
- Character: their behavior is affected by internal or external forces; conflicts among
characters
+ Major characters: reveal themselves directly or indirectly
+ Minor characters: be flat, static or stereotyped
- Plot:
+ Exposition: initial circumstances, what happened before the story opens
+ Foreshadowing: hints of what will occur before it happens
+ Conflicts: explain why one event leads to the next
+ Climax: the high point, st important about the main character
+ Denouement: the unraveling of the complications and conflicts at the end of the
story
- Narrative point of view
+ A first-person narrator: tells the story from his or her point of view; a minor or
major character; reliable or unreliable
+ A third-person omniscient narrator: not a character or participant in the story; a
selective omniscient narrator; stream of consciousness narration
- Setting: the physical place, scene, and time of the story; reveals about the characters,
the plot, or the theme of the story
- Style: refers to sentence structure, figurative language, and symbols, tone or use of
irony
- Theme: the focus of an interpretive essay; ask how the characters, plot, point of
view, setting, and style contribute to the main ideas or point of the story
1.3 Responding to literature - the writing process