Reader Response Essay on

"The Law of Human Nature" Reader's Response Thesis: Lewis conveys his ideas of basic normality by appealing to the reader using first person. Continually Lewis assigns his own opinion into the story to keep the reader interested. When writing about his ideas, Lewis states "I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound [ ]"(414 ... ). By using first person, Lewis poses his idea on a one-to-one basis with the reader. The use of first person makes the reader become more involved in his essay and allows him to more fully understand Lewis" w...

• Word Count: 448
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... , the Response Essay, I realized that no matter how easy of a class I take, writing essays is really not my forte. The trickiest, and the most time consuming part of writing an essay for me is coming up with the thesis statement. In most cases, the thesis statement is usually the most important part of an essay because it is supposed to tell the reader what to ... expect from the rest of the paper and hook the reader on to finish the paper. In that case, I will have to make sure my thesis hooks the reader, in this case Mr. Sharpe, on to my paper. Although, mastering the art of writing is...

• Word Count: 1043
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

"What's Your Name, Girl?" is essentially a story about Marguerite's identity. The essay begins by detailing her education and preparation into adulthood as a lady, but right off the bat, the reader is made aware that there is an underlying story of a struggle encompassing something larger than the world of "dainty doilies" and "crocheting" through Angelou's initial set up of the economic and social disparity that she faces. I think the crucial event in the story is the robbing of Marguerite's identity. When Mrs. Cullinan, a symbol of wealth and barrenness, decides to shorten Marguerite's name ...

• Word Count: 565
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... " by Brent Staples, the author describes the reactions of people walking on streets in response to seeing an approaching black man of the author's appearance. Staples begins by describing the first time he had noticed a negative reaction ... in and an in depth description of his appearance the evening he took his "first victim" (258). The original version is more distant from the reader and avoids thorough descriptions of how people's negative reactions towards Staples make him feel. Rather, Staples cites texts in which white men describe the intense anxiety ... comparison between himself...

• Word Count: 1531
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

After reading Birkerts' essay entitled "The Owl Has Flown," I have a better understanding of his views concerning the distinction of reading styles. He makes it evident that reading styles have varied for hundreds of years and they are still being used today. In developing my own conclusion as to the meaning of "intensive and extensive reading" along with "vertical and horizontal reading," several thoughts came to mind. For example, I interpreted Birkerts' definition of "intensive reading" as a form of reading in which the reader is deeply focused on consuming information based on one topic a...

• Word Count: 422
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In any text the author or producer/director of the text makes the choice to what angle the reader or viewer is going to receive the text from. This angle relates to the point of view that the text is written in. Point of view is arguably the uttermost important tool in creating an interesting and successful text. The short story "The Man Who Hated Kids" by James Edward Pedersen is written in first person point of view. This type of narration is one of the most powerful ways of encouraging a reader to accept the ideas and values represented by the central character of a text. In comparison, "Th...

• Word Count: 1348
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... apart from each other as well as viewing both as a whole is important in comprehension of the photographic essay. In W. J. T. Mitchell's essay entitled The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies, Mitchell studies four separate types of photographic essays by his standards and analyzes them to ... a predominant of the two. Mitchell starts off his essay by asking three questions with which he uses as his standard for interpreting all four case studies. He asks about the relationship between photography and language. In response to this question he uses a paradoxical phrase by ... saying t...

• Word Count: 1891
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography

Preserving What We"re Losing If you don't like something the way it is, or if you think you can make it better, then you can change it. That is the mindset of most Americans. Not only do we apply this to our working and family life, but we also apply it to things that I believe should not be changed; nature and the wildlife around us. Why must we "fix" what is already set in harmony to our benefit? Edward Abbey explores this idea in his essay, "The Damnation of a Canyon," published in Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside in 1971. In this piece he attempts to communicate with others who hav...

• Word Count: 776
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Karen Ford's feminist criticism brings up several interesting points pertaining to "The Yellow Wallpaper" that are not necessarily clear to the reader of this short story at first glance. However, once the story is scrutinized, these points become evident. When read with a feminist perspective, certain parts of the story start standing out more and taking on a different meaning. Not all readers will agree with Ford's observations, but she makes several astute inferences that help the reader to ascertain the true meaning of the story and what the author meant when she wrote it. Some of Ford's ...

• Word Count: 552
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... write an essay about it that examines how that text relates to any one of the issues that the class is exploring. These issues might include questions of period, genre, national tradition, the nature of childhood, education, history, gender, literary form, text and illustration, and so on (see ... "Ha, Ha, He", an accurately representative, and yet somewhat adventurous, poetic technique that ensures that the laughter remains resonant, even after the reader has finished reading the poem. The continual and repeated word choice of "laugh", "joy", "merry" and "sweet ... been sold to slavery...

• Word Count: 2182
• Approx Pages: 9