Critical Lens
True or False: A strong literary lens response mostly summarizes the plot before discussing the lens.
What is false?
Rhetorical appeal: Uses facts, numbers, data, reasoning. Strong appeal = verifiable evidence
What is Logos?
"It" symbolizes the suffering and sacrifice that make the happiness of Omelas possible.
Who is the child?
This character is the narrator of Brother, looking back on his childhood and reflecting on the events that changed his family.
Who is Michael?
Where a poet chooses to end a line affects pacing, emphasis, and interpretation.
Answers: Why does the line end here? What words are emphasized by the break? Does the break create tension?
What are line breaks?
This is a character from "The Lottery" that I can look at for a Feminist Lens reading.
Who is Tessie?
Rhetorical Appeal: “Why now?”Persuasion depends on timing and situationSame message can have different impact depending on context
In "The Lottery", this object symbolizes tradition, conformity, and blind obedience to outdated customs.
What is the black box?
This character introduces Michael and Francis to hip-hop culture and helps shape Francis’s identity as a DJ.
Who is Jelly?
The turning point in a poem where the mood, thought, or argument shifts (“yet”, “however”, “but”, etc.).
What is a Volta?
This short story is well suited to a Marxist reading because its society depends on the suffering of one powerless individual.
What is "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"?
Visual element: Looking at the font, boldness, shape, and colour of the words
What is typography?
In "The Paper Menagerie", this handmade object symbolize love, cultural identity, and the bond between Jack and his mother.
Who are Laohu (origami animals)?
This object/event from Francis’s life represents his dreams, creativity, and desire for recognition.
What is his DJ equipment/music collection?
This makes the poems sound emotional, easy to speak aloud, and pleasant to the human ear. It mimics a heartbeat; it is perfect for writing about love, passion, and deep feelings.
What is iambic pentameter?
This character from "The Paper Menagerie" would be the best choice for a Psychoanalytical reading because of his internal conflict and identity struggles.
Who is Jack?
Rhetorical Device: Using emotionally charged words with strong positive or negative to encourage emotional reactions rather than neutral analysis
What is loaded language?
This recurring location in "Brother" symbolizes chosen family, belonging, and the strength of community through DJing.
What is Desirea's?
This character provides a contrast to the violence surrounding Francis and Michael by representing care, stability, and another vision of community.
Who is Ruth?
A grouped set of lines in a poem (like a “paragraph”); can vary in length (e.g., 2 lines, 4 lines, 6+ lines)
What are stanzas?
This literary lens would examine how Um-Helat redistributes power and rejects systems of inequality found in other societies.
What is the Marxist lens?
Hall's Theory: Readers of the advertisement interpretthe ideology directly, and decode itexactly the way it was encoded.
What is the dominant position?
In "The Ones Who Stay and Fight", this character represents the danger of allowing harmful beliefs (he doesn't have a name - explain what he does and his fate)?
The man who promotes harmful ideology in Um-Helat.
- He got ideas from "our" media and gets killed (as painlessly as possible) to prevent the spread of harmful words.
This narrative technique used with Michael’s narration affects how readers understand the events of the novel.
What is fragmentation?
a writing style that mimics how the human brain actually thinks, shifting rapidly between thoughts and memories - unusual lineation (common in Modernism poetry)
What is "stream of consciousness"?