World Literature

ASUCQ

HOMEWORK: READING JOURNAL

A “reading journal” is a good way of clarifying your understanding of a work of literature.

When you write your reading journal entry, you should express what you feel and think about a
text.

In writing your reaction, you should be honest about your feelings. If you are not sure what the
text is about, then describe your confusion. Or write down what you think the poem/play/novel is
about. It may help you realize something you didn’t realize before.

Here are some guidelines for making a reading journal entry:

1) Explore what you like about the text or what interests you the most (this could be a
character, a line, a description, etc.).

2) Explore what you don’t like or don’t understand about the text.

3) Relate your own experiences or background knowledge to the text.

4) Try to summarize what the text is about in a few sentences.

Read the two sample reading journal entries below. What differences do you notice?
Which is better? Why?

Reading Journal Entry A

I was interested in the title of the poem, but I didn’t like the poem. It was hard. I didn’t
understand anything. I think it was about nature. Many poems are about this theme.

Reading Journal Entry B

What interested me most in the poem were the vivid descriptions which captured the
movement and physicality of a snake. For example, the snake divides the grass “as with
a comb.” This visual description perfectly captures how a snake moves through grass,
parting it. I imagined parting my hair with a comb. There were parts of the poem that
were difficult to understand for me because of the language. For example, I had to search
for the words “Boggy Acre,” and I was unsure about who “Nature’s People” were until it
occurred to me that this was a term for animals. Overall, this text is about the feeling of
encountering a snake. Once, when I was about 10 years old, I went to a summer camp in
the mountains. I happened to come across a green snake in the grass. I remember feeling
both scared and excited. I think this poem captures this feeling perfectly.
Read the selection from Matsuo Bashō’s The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton (pp.
51-64).

Write a reading journal entry about the text answering the following questions. Make your
response a paragraph of 150-200 words (as in the example above).

1) Explore what you like about the text or what interests you the most (this could be a
character, a line, a description, etc.).

2) Explore what you don’t like or don’t understand about the text.

3) Relate your own experiences or background knowledge to the text.

4) Try to summarize what the text is about in a few sentences.

There will surely be several words and phrases that are new to you. Make a glossary of
new vocabulary words you find. Use the following example to get you started.

Reading Journal:

The writing is somewhat confusing to describe and partly to understand in the first reading since
it is necessary to pay close attention and make a repetition of the reading to understand that it is a
combination between a diary of the protagonist and a poem. It is worth mentioning that his way of
analyzing life and death is exquisite when making a deeper analysis of reading.
Something that undoubtedly attracts a lot of attention is how the protagonist is described, since he
seems to be a bald hermit, although we can also compare him with a Buddhist monk, since they
are the ones who used to shave since their philosophy indicates that they do not need anything
material and their physical appearance was not relevant to them.

Page 51:
naught - nothing
ecstasy - rapture
deeply - genuinely
scatter – disperse
glimmering – shine
seclusion - isolation