Reading Literature:AP STYLE

Commercial Fiction vs. Literary Fiction

• To broaden, deepen, and sharpen the reader’s awareness of life

• Understand life’s difficulties and to empathize with others

• Not escapist diversion

• Dramatize human experience rather than moralize about it

• Enhanced understanding of life

Process:

1. Read it twice before you can fully grasp what it has to offer

2. Read the story the first time to enjoy it, and to familiarize yourself with it

3. Read it a second time slowly and deliberately to understand it

- WHY DOES THE AUTHOR EXPLORE A SPECIFIC CHARACTER’S LIFE?

- WHY IS THE STORY CONSTRUCTED THAT WAY?

Expect the Unexpected:

• Unique style or angle of vision to express an artistic truth

• May end in an unsettling way

• Force us to examine our own expectations

• Unconscious way of viewing a certain topic

• Ideas will be challenged

What to watch out for:

1. Quest:• A knight• A dangerous road• A Holy Grail• At least one dragon• One evil knight• One princess

• A quester

• A place to go

• A stated reason to go there

• Challenges and trials en route

• Someone helps

• Real reason to go there = self knowledge

2. Eating:

• Whenever people eat/drink together is significant

• See how characters are getting along or not

3. Ghosts / Vampires:

• Consuming spirits

• Vampiric personality

4. Where have I seen that before?

• Pattern recognition– Patterns– Archetypes– Recurrences

There is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature!

“When a new work is created, it is set among the

monuments, adding to and altering the order.”

-T.S. Eliot

5. When in doubt, it’s from Shakespeare

• Dominance of the bard: 18th – 21st centuries

Lines:

• To thine own self be true

• All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players

• What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet

• Get thee to a nunnery

Lines:

• Who steals my purse steals trash

• A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

• We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

• Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble

• By the prinking of my thumbs / something wicked this way comes

Lines:

• O brave new world / That has such people in it!

• To be or not to be, that is the question.

6. The Bible:

• Consider what it hasGardenSerpentPlaguesFloodParting of watersLoavesFishes

Forty days Betrayal Denial Slavery and escape Milk Honey

Ex: Pulp Fiction

• Between all the swear words, he is a dictionary of biblical language

Ex: Beloved by Morrison

• Slave sees four white men from the slave country riding up the road

Ex: Genesis 3:24 (fall from grace)

• Loss of innocence:– Hits us hard– So final– You can never go

back

Covers:

• Greatest range of human situations

• All ages of life (including the next life)

• All relationships (personal and governmental)

• All phases of human experience (physical, psychological, spiritual)

7. Fairy Tales

• Age of existentialism• Story of loss children

8. It’s Greek to Me!

• Most primal patterns:– Need to protect one’s

family– Need to maintain

one’s dignity– Determination to

remain faithful and to have faith

– Struggle to return home

9. Weather is never just weather

• FLOOD:– Problem– Try to drag us back

into the water– Pull down any

improvements

• RAIN:– Force people together

in uncomfortable circumstances

– Mysterious, murkier, isolating

– Falls on the just and the unjust

• SPRING:– Season of renewal– Season of hope– Season of new

awakening

10. Violence:

• Most personal and intimate act between human beings

• Cultural / societal• Symbolic significance:

– An action that speaks for the experience of a race at a certain moment in history

• Two kinds:1. Characters cause to

one another Shooting, stabbing

2. Narrative violence Death, suffering

*usually creates the great tragic heroines

11. Symbols

• Can’t be reduced to standing for only one thing

• Use questions, experience, pre-existing knowledge to figure out what it means

• Usually expect them to be objects or images, but they could be events and actions too