Literary Comprehension Paper

The quest to become a better reader should be an endeavor that everyone seeks to fulfill. Such a task is something I have laid before myself not only to understand the author’s intention within certain texts, but to also become a better writer myself by comparing the various literary techniques employed by various authors. However, the task to become the ideal reader is yet to be achieved because I have not mastered the third and final stage of literary development. It is only through time and practice that this final step can ultimately be established.

Previous to Shakespeare’s Tragedies, I consider my reading development to be between the second and third stage because I typically had a personal response toward any given text while comparing that same text to other forms of literature. However, I was not able to similarly evaluate the text from a world perspective. Being unable to implement such world perspective analysis habitually hindered me from fully achieving the third stage of reading comprehension. For instance, while reading fantasy literature I previously had a tendency to analyze the text as I read it in order to determine what textual structures were effective. This process allowed me to have a personal response toward the text at the same time that it allowed me to compare the text to other structural forms that were either more or less effective.

Anne McCaffery’s Pern series, which began as a trilogy and was later expanded by twenty additional texts, is a good example of my customary reading process because I personally felt that the extra texts in the series were unnecessary since each text simply repeated the story line of the Pern trilogy from a different character’s point of view. As a result, I viewed Anne McCaffery as a copout author who over-extended her popular series, including the Acorna series, in order to make more profit.

I also compared Anne McCaffery’s texts to other authors to determine who had a better writing technique as well as any similar textual devices each author implemented, such as the parallels between Anne McCaffery’s Acorna series and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series. When I compared the two different writing techniques I could visibly see that Anne McCaffery’s writing style was more whimsical, while Orson Scott Card’s was bleak and philosophical. I also noted that there was one drastic similarity between the two series, which was their use of an insect-like alien species who was attempting to concur the universe. Even though insect-like aliens are common among fictional texts, the description of McCaffery’s and Card’s species were drastically comparable. Such analogous characteristics and qualities enabled the controversial question as to whether who truly created the alien species first and if one author was guilty of plagiarism. Yet, I was unable to analyze these two authors from a world perspective because the quality of social commentary was either completely absent from the texts or just an unreasonable variable with the given story line.

This was not the case with other fiction writers, such as Margaret Atwood who composes fiction and science fiction texts while conveying rigid social commentaries. The Maiden’s Tale is but one example of this because it is apparently a well written text with a feminist message at its heard. The text itself therefore enabled me to analyze it from a personal, textual comparison, and world perspective. As a result, I was capable of analyzing texts using all three developmental reading stages, but I was unable to always use each reading technique simultaneously. Such a dilemma consequently placed me in-between the second and third stage of reading development previously to this course.

Unfortunately my current reading status has not much improved since the beginning of Shakespeare’s Tragedies because I am still mainly having personal responses to texts with external textual comparisons. For instance, I am completely incapable of enjoying “Titus Andronicus” since I personally do not appreciate violence and gruesome rape scenes. Due to my personal tastes I am hindered from analyzing the text objectively from a world perspective. Yet I still can compare Titus Andronicus to other texts in regards to its structural technique. Since Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare’s first tragedy it is easy for me to compare it to his later refined tragedies and his skillful composition in his previous comedies. Consequently, I am able to determine how Titus Andronicus was a literary failure in relation to the character development of his comedies as well as note how his tragedies improved as he had time to practice the tragic form.

Conversely, like my previous reading comprehension, I can occasionally read texts using all three reading devices, which is particularly evident when I address the question of Hamlet’s insanity in my blog. I state, for example, that as an individual reader I do not perceive Hamlet as insane given the textual evidence in the play as well as that textual comparison to other Shakespearean texts and analysis using world perspectives gives further evidence that Hamlet is not truly mentally unstable. In order to develop this argument, I compare Hamlet’s character to Macbeth and Othello to prove that all three characters are essentially similar and that Shakespeare is simply following a common character template for all of his plays because each main character is fundamentally irrational and dangerous. I further analyze Hamlet by implementing the world perspective that ghostly apparitions during the time period were accepted as an element of reality and that such sightings would not be viewed as hallucinations induced by an insane psyche like it would in this modern era. As a result, like my prior development as a reader, I am still between the second and third level of reading progress.

In order to fully reach the third stage of reading comprehension, I will have to actively employ the third literary technique in each text covered in order to eventually master it since it is not always natural for me to incorporate a world-based analysis of every text. I will therefore have to be consciously aware of my personal reaction toward a text as well as my comparison of the text to other forms of literature, and any potential cultural, gender related, or other world perspective analysis feasible for the text under scrutiny. In this manner, it will be useful for me to employ theorists in order to enable my achievement of the third reading level, such as our in-class analysis of Hamlet from a Feminist and Freudian perspective. This method actively aloud me to interpret Hamlet by two different world perspectives, which would generally be difficult for me to accomplish left to my own devices because I am not a serious Feminist or Freudian theorist. It is consequently crucial for me to employ theorist in my future textual analysis to enable me to finally reach the third level of reading development.

It is through this process that I hope to finally achieve the highest level of reading comprehension so that I can interpret, discuss, and eventually teach various texts effectively. Once this is accomplished, I will be able to analyze texts through multiple world perspectives simultaneously in order to allow all possible literary deductions. As I suggest in my blog, the author is dead, so it is imperative that I become the best reader I can in order to get into the mind of the author through the heart of their written text.