Lit-Crit Part 2

Example 1
The assignment: Look at the picture, “Solitary Confinement: Insects Witness My Agony,” then answer “What aspects of the story (“Marine Corps Issue”) can you find in the painting?” The story is about a boy whose father was in the Vietnam War. When he returns, he never talks about the war, but keeps three locked boxes in the garage. After watching a movie about the war, the boy becomes very interested in finding out more about the war and more about his father. He makes it his mission to find out what is in the boxes. He gets away with looking at the contents of two of the boxes and as he is looking at the third, his father finds him. Obvious anger is seen in his father’s eyes and stature, but he does not punish the boy. Instead, his eyes well up with tears and he goes out to his garden, where he digs up two more boxes. The picture that the question asks the reader to look at is a picture of a man in solitary confinement and in obvious agony. The assignment is an example of New Criticism because it is asking the reader to look at the piece of art and find out how it fits together with the reading. How does the picture work with the structure and the writers craft to unravel the universal human condition? Any person who is in forced solitude will suffer. This is a universal truth that is recognizable in the story as well as in the picture. The father is suffering from an internal solitude, and the man in the picture is suffering from solitary confinement.

Example 2
The assignment: “Connect to life.” After reading the two poems, “Young” and “Hanging Fire,” the reader is asked the following question: “Based on your own experience and your observation of adolescence in general, which of these poems do you think is more true to life?” This question is definitely an example of Reader Response because asking the reader to come up with their own meaning and interpretation of which poem they believe to be more realistic. Answers will certainly differ according to each reader, because no two people have experienced adolescence in the same manner. The question also encourages the readers to relate to the text by comparing the poems to their own life and perspectives.