Did you know that fiction books make you sympathize others? That’s because when you read, you go on an “adventure” alongside the characters and gradually relate to them. To achieve the effects, you must have a deep understanding of the characters’ personalities, thinking, backgrounds, attitudes, and more.…
In the poem The Juggler by Richard Wilbur he uses diction, change in tone, and metaphors to describe the juggler. The use of these things reveals the speaker's amazement and enjoyment with the trick and the juggler.…
Both Dove’s and Wilbur’s poems are written from the perspective of an older writer looking back at youth. Although in “5th Grade Autobiography” the author writes of her own youth from a first person perspective whereas the in “The Writer” the author writes about his daughter’s youth from an outside perspective, both wonderfully impart the blissful feeling of childhood through vivid descriptions of the soft and pleasant nuances that make childhood so blissful. Rita Dove shows us her world through the lens of a fifth grader. She envies her older brother despite the fact that he is depicted as young and inexperienced, shown by his poor choice to squat in poison ivy. Her grandparents have a very strong presence and are given just as lively a role as her young brother. Pictures of luminous felines come to mind when she describes her grandmother, a youthful and vibrant staple in her world. Grandfather smells of lemons, a bright, zesty, lively smell, and is imprinted in her life memories of Christmases. Richard Wilber manages to conjure a similarly blissful/childish world encompassed by the sounds of a typewriter, beautiful linden windows, and the majestic and dreamlike positioning of his daughters room. He pulls us further into this blissful illusion by using words and descriptions alluding to a ship, drifting into the deep open water away from the rest of the world.…
In the first chapter of The Bedford Reader, the techniques of narration and specific narratives are assessed. To begin, a definition of a narrative is clarified, “a narrative may be short or long, factual or imagined, as artless as a tale told in a locker room or as artful as a novel by Henry James” (40). The passages go in-depth into the process of storytelling, picking apart the importance of each piece, and allowing the reader to understand the simplicity of an essay, or in this case, a narrative. The passage evaluates a method of a summary with an analogy, “A summary is to a scene, then, as a simple stick figure is to a portrait in oils” (44). Simply stated, this means that a summary is as effective as a story written in complete and prolific detail. The Bedford Reader supplies the reader with examples and lectures to portray exactly what the detail of the narrative should include, and the purpose of the piece.…
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” (Lee, 39). Authors have the power to show us others point of view, they can put us in their shoes. Literature teaches empathy, gives us a deeper look at things. To Kill a Mockingbird and “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” shows us things very differently than what we initially thought it would was. Things aren’t always what they seem, the truth is mostly being overshadowed by what others want it to be.…
Neil Gainman told us that reading fiction is reading for pleasure that is one of the most important things everyone can do (Gainman, 2013). For him the fiction has two uses , first , “It’s a gateway drug to reading” (Gainman, 2013, p.8), and second, “to build empathy” (Gainman, 2013, p.15).…
Dana Gioia claims that literature is important to our society, but reading of literature has declined. Gioia states that reading influence our life in a positive way because it provides understanding, value and humanity: “If the 21st-century American economy requires innovation and creativity, solid reading skills and the imaginative growth fostered by literary reading are central elements in that program.”(2). Gloria emphasize that in order to have a better future and grow in society, we need to study and learn from our ancestors.…
“Didn’t i realize that reading would open up whole new worlds? A book could open doors for me. It could introduce me to people and show me places I never imagined existed. She gestured towards the bookshelves . (Bare-breasted African women danced, and the shiny hubcaps of automobiles on the back covers of the geographic gleamed in my mind.) I listened with respect. But her words were not very influential. I was thinking then of another consequence of literacy, one i was too shy to admit but nonetheless trusted. Books were going to make me “educated.” That confidence enabled me, several months later, to over come my fear of the silence.…
The power of literature really has no limits: it enables authors as well as readers to make significant revelations and, in turn, embarks us on a journey that leads certain meaning, often in the form of a powerful enlightenment because we are obliged to see the world from the author’s perspective and this leads to the reader’s questioning of meanings.…
The metaphoric poem, “Juggler” by Richard Wilbur draws lyrical parallels between the scientific motions of inanimate objects and the performed acts of a circus to acknowledge the contributions and responsibilities man has on earth and his ability to overcome the weight of the world. With clever double entendres, a parabolic rhyme scheme, and relevant personification that establishes relationships between man and speaker, the speaker subtly reveals his praise for the extent of man’s obligation with how he endure tribulations despite the unstoppable nature of the “ball bouncing”.…
Literature has been an amazing thing to do but for the past years’ technology has taken away its beauty. People had stop reading books and rather watch a movie of it instead. I recently read and watched a short novel called “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck. After I finished watching and reading the book I noticed many things. By reading the book you can experience imagination.…
6) “Most professional students of literature learn to take in the foreground detail while seeing the detail reveals. Like the symbolic imagination, this is a function of being able to distance oneself from the story, to look beyond the purely affective level of plot, drama, characters. Experience has proved to them that life and books fall into similar patterns. Nor is this skill exclusive to English professors.” pg.4…
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.…
This common satisfaction in turn “contributes to the group’s solidarity” (Rehberg Sedo 67). Rehberg Sedo acknowledges that women relate themselves to the text, which leads to the creation of new identities as they are able to “map their developing self-identities”(67) through the fictional and real world. Women’s identity traits allow individuals to escape from undesired aspects of life and “create different ways of being in their world”(Rehberg Sedo 68). Striphas recognizes that women embrace this new world through the influence of novels in order “to create spaces and thus remove themselves both symbolically and practically from their domestic, female role-assigned duties"(302). Women, often living in a patriarchal society, enjoy reading because it allows them to escape from their everyday errands, however “on the contrary [reading] also enable[s] book readers to interrogate their everyday lives as women via characters and events in the books”(309). Davis agrees with Striphas’ notion of readers relating their lives to novels and further explains that “sympathetic reading experiences can play an important role in larger chain of events”(412). Reading allows readers to imagine themselves as the main character and understand the conditions the character is facing. This may lead to a shift in an individual’s perspective of…
book, magazine, newspaper or online. If you carry a poem in your wallet and you look at it once a year, we count you. If you have just finished Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks in German for the third time, or you’ve read one page of a Harlequin Romance and given up because it’s too hard, we count you as equals. We are very egalitarian! What you see for the first time in American history is that less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature. I’m going to talk about what the causes of the problem are, and then I’ll talk about the consequences and the solutions. To go into the data a little big further, we see that we’re producing the first generation of educated people, in some cases college graduates, who no longer become lifelong readers. This is disturbing for reasons above and…