Keola Raiser's Response # 1 to Prompt # 6

Power and Knowledge Through Shifting the Critical Approach

When we as readers engage a fictional text, our initial reading is the most primitive and necessary for our understanding of the characters and events.  At this stage we utilize our intellectual and emotional response through our appreciation (or rejection) of the text because we as readers are a part of the subjective and dynamic process of reading.   Adolescents are full of opinions and emotional responses to everything in their environment and will seek wisdom and knowledge through their subjective transactional theoretical approach to any fictional text.  Teachers can gain valuable information about their young readers through class discussion of reader response and students can feel empowered in the classroom through developing their opinions and knowledge of a piece of fiction.  This power and information can be the fuel for teaching and developing a secondary critical approach to a text through further class discussion. 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is an emotionally charged text that will elicit a rich variety of reader response from young adults.  Holden Caulfield as character, the language of the narration, the short, action-filled plot, and the themes of anger, hate, and disdain for others provide a rich field for students to develop complicated opinions with their first readings.  Through focusing on reader response as an initial classroom discussion, a teacher can learn about what issues might be relevant to their students independently: “Readers, as individuals, enter into their own transaction with the text, and each reader’s transaction will be unique,” (Bucher & Hinton 65). 

Journals are an excellent way to gather information on student opinion and issues with a text in a private, introspective activity.  Assigning direct and detailed questions for writing will encourage students to react to the text and develop ideas based on what they determine is important.  Using chapter 14 in The Catcher in the Rye, some sample questions to elicit initial reader response are:  1-In chapter 13 Holden tells us Maurice says five bucks for a throw, but in chapter 14 Maurice says he quoted ten bucks.  Who do you think is lying and why?  How do you feel about the character you choose as the liar?  2-In this chapter Holden goes through a whole range of difficult emotions, including despair.  How is despair described through Holden’s thought patterns in this chapter?  Write an example of another way someone might describe the feeling of despair. 

Journaling allows teachers to learn valuable feedback on their students’ interests and personal issues that may arise from reading a text.  It also empowers students to create their own interests or dislikes with a text.  Transitioning to a critical lens allows students to open themselves up to different perspectives necessary for intellectual and emotional development.  Bucher and Hinton argue, “When students apply literary theory to young adult literature, they consider the multiple ways a text may be read,” (67).  After journaling, discussion of The Catcher in the Rye would mature further through the lens of New Criticism and in the format of group discussion.

New Criticism works well with The Catcher in the Rye because the text lends itself to be analyzed on its own without authorial intention and historical and social context.  Literary elements such as character, point-of-view, narration, setting, and plot in this novel are hugely self-contained and transcend history.  Transitioning from personal reader response to examining literary elements from an objectified point-of-view through a critical lens is necessary.  It gives students a criticism toolbox they can apply to one another’s views and ideas as well as to other critical approaches and texts.   

Revisiting the discussion of chapter 14 above, group discussion questions could include the following:  1-In chapter 3 Holden admits that he is “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.  It’s awful,” (Salinger 16).  This novel presents the unreliable narrator of the plot.  How does this compromise the plot itself?  Specifically, in this chapter, when Holden fantasizes about being shot and shooting Maurice, do we trust him again as he admits this fantasy is not true?  In other words, how do we learn that we cannot trust Holden as a narrator and at what points do we trust him and why?  2-Together, map a chart of Holden’s feelings as he moves through the events of this chapter.  Use specific examples directly from the text to illustrate each stage of emotion within the plot of this chapter and expressed directly from his narration.  What language does he use – what words does he say and what is his tone in the narration? 

Initially young adults will develop their own personal interpretations and knowledge with a text that can be empowering for them to use to develop other insightful perspectives through different readings and critical lens.  Teachers are implemental in filling that critical toolbox for young readers to apply to their higher education courses as well as other personal readings they encounter in their lives.  All throughout their lives reader response will be just as important as learning to view text through different critical lens.
 Works Cited:

Bucher, K. & Hinton, K. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation 3^rd Edition.  Boston: Pearson,      2014.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye 3^rd Edition. New York: Little Brown and Company, 1951.