Course 3—Lecture

Evaluating Literature

Why bother? Evaluating literature is a useless, academic exercise—something that's best left to arid, tottering old professors.

What's worse . . . you can ruin a good story by trying to read too much into it. Right?

Evaluating Literature—why?

Evaluating literature enables us to . . .
• increase our enjoyment of reading
• open up a work's deeper meanings
• ponder our own lives and the world around us.

Evaluating Literature—how?

LitCourse 3 examines the "elements of storytelling"— plot, character, setting (and more) to see how they fit together as a unified whole.

Evaluating Literature—how?

Close Reading . . .
is an analytical technique that requires us to pay close attention to words, ideas, and structure in order to see how they work together to form a unified story.

We'll be using close reading to discuss this and other stories in the remainder of these courses. Now, let's reverse the usual LitCourse order . . .

Evaluating Literature—title

Welcome back. Let's consider the story's title. "Powder" highlights the importance of fresh white snow in the story. It reinforces the last line, "If you haven't driven fresh powder, you haven't driven."

Evaluating Literature—setting

Mount Baker provides a perfect setting for the story: it enables the father to expose his son to risk and uncertainty, teaching him valuable life lessons. The setting supports the story's central ideas.

Evaluating Literature—plot
The story's plot has a classic pyramid structure.

Evaluating Literature—plot

Evaluating Literature—character

Characterization is brilliantly handled in this very short story. We come to know three characters rather well —including the mother, who isn't even present.

Evaluating Literature —viewpoint

Whoever tells the story determines its point of view. A narrator shapes a story by controlling how much information readers are given and when.

Evaluating Literature—symbols

Symbols convey and enlarge meanning, telling us indirectly what the author doesn't have to.

Evaluating Literature—irony

Irony, the opposite of what is expected, resides in the story's father-son relationship: boy and father seem to trade places.

Evaluating Literature—theme

The story elements (plot, setting, character, et al) come together to support the story's central ideas.

Evaluating Literature—approaches

Close reading (see slide #4) is used by critics to analyze texts based on specific areas of interest. Here are 4 analytical approaches to the study of literature:

Feminist criticism—considers how literature reflects female cultural roles, past and present. In doing so, feminists have re-discovered writers long ignored (see LitCourse 1 and Kate Chopin).

Psychological criticism—uses the framework of Sigmund Freud and others to examine characters' actions and motivations...and even the author's psychological state.

Mythological criticism—looks for patterns that reflect timeless, universal myths. The Cinderella motif or the hero's journey are two enduring ones.

Reader Response cricitism—focuses on how readers experience a work. The text remains the same but how each reader experiences it changes. It has even been said that a text does not exist—until it is read.

And now . . .

Congratulations!
You've completed Lecture 3. To continue LitCourse 3, click "Study Guide" on the Course Tools menu to the right.