1. Reading Analytically

2. On a sheet of paper list three topics on which you’d consider yourself to be an expert.
If a non-expert were to observe one of these three things what would they likely notice about it?
What sort of things would you be able to observe in this area that a non-expert would not likely consider?

3. Emotional Reading
When most “normal” people read they read for pleasure. We’ll call this emotional reading
Focuses heavily on plot and surface level meaning
Some texts pretty much ask to be read this way
“Beach reading” tends to be emotional reading. It’s read for the immediate gratification of the reader.

4. Analytical Reading
As with anything else, an expert reader is able to notice things in a text that a normal reader will probably miss.
When your English teacher tells you that a certain character is a Christ Figure, they’re not pulling this out of the air. They’ve simply been doing it long enough that they know what to look for.
If reading emotionally is reading for plot, then reading analytically is reading for pattern and conventions

5. Analytical Reading
Always remember that the purpose of language is to EXPRESS meaning, not to hide it.
They’re only hidden meanings if you don’t know how to look for them.

6. Respond to the following
Kurt Vonnegut asked Syd Solomon, “How do you tell a good picture from a bad one.” He said, “Look at a million pictures, and you can never be mistaken.” Vonnegut passed this on to his daughter, Edith Vonnegut, who is a painter and she said she “could rollerskate through the Louvre, saying, ‘Yes, no, no, yes, no, yes,’ and so on.”

7. Elements of Analytic Reading -Memory
Quite simply, the more of an art form that we ingest, the more patterns and archetypes will begin to emerge.
Archetype – Five dollar word for pattern or for the mythic origin on which a pattern is based
E.G. A dark and stormy night typically foreshadows some sort of future turmoil.

8. Elements of Analytic Reading - Symbolic Thinking
Everything isn’t always symbolic, but in good literature symbols do show up a lot.
An analytical reader always has his or her eyes peeled for symbols.
In the epic poem Beowulf, Grendel is a monster, but an analytic reader will be asking what else Grendel might represent.

9. Elements of Analytic Reading Pattern Recognition
With a big enough memory bank and symbolic thinking engaged patterns will emerge that can be analyzed by the perceptive reader.
THIS is what literary analysis is! It’s not reading someone else’s literary criticism! It’s about thinking for yourself and developing solid opinions that you can present confidently.