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: 18 th – 21 st 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 has  Garden  Serpent  Plagues  Flood  Parting of waters  Loaves  Fishes  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