READING ACTIVELY AND

CRITICALLY
In a well-ordered universe, you would enjoy all your reading—and your
delight would derive from your complete absorption in and understanding of
what you read. But just as sports require physical conditioning in order for
you to perform at your best, you may need to build up your stamina as an
effective reader.

Reading Actively
First of all, pay attention to how you read. Can you read fifty pages in one
sitting, or do you find your mind wandering after a page or two? If you fall
into the latter category, don’t worry—we all succumb to the allure of
distractions once in a while. But it is up to you to train yourself not to let it
diminish your reading experience. If you feel your attention beginning to
wander, stop and look back to the place in the text where you began to drift.
When you come back to your reading, commit yourself to reading another
portion of the passage that’s longer than the last one you read. You can hold
yourself accountable by writing a short summary—from memory—of what
you’ve read every few sentences, paragraphs, or pages. When you
deliberately “train” your mind in this way, your ability to focus and
concentrate—and think—will be enhanced, and you will be a better reader
for your efforts.

Equally important to reading actively is paying attention to what you

read. It can be easy to get bogged down by the sheer volume of words on a
page, but you can help make sense of them by keeping a pencil in hand and
interacting with the page. Mark words you don’t recognize and look them up
in the dictionary. Note when you feel a protest rising in your throat. Jot down
places where the text reminds you of something in your own life or in
another work of art—any kind of connection. Active reading takes you
beyond the role of an observer, removed and separate from the things you
read, and makes you a participant in a conversation with the author or even
with the characters. So don’t be shy—speak up!

Reading Critically
Beyond being an active reader of literature, you must also become a critical
reader. Beyond simply perceiving the words on the page, critical reading
invites you to question those words in profound, meaningful ways. When we
ask you to read critically, we ask that you use the complex set of experiences
that define you as a human being—as well as a sense of the cultural
imperatives among which you live—to analyze the work you encounter. As a
critical reader, you learn to address your biases, enlarge your universe, and
test your comfortable convictions. Thus, when you adopt a critical position
toward a piece of literature, you need to test and question that position. Ask
the following:

What perspective does the author have that led her to write this work?

What social, cultural, or historical conditions influenced the production

of the work?

What other ways might the author have presented the ideas or subjects
of the work?
 Are the author’s values different from my own?

How do my views and experiences affect whether I like or dislike the

work?

Such questions are stepping stones toward being able to write about
literature meaningfully and compellingly.

Annotating
As an active and critical reader, you must attempt to ask questions as you
read—and note your responses as you do. Later in this chapter, we discuss
specific questions you can raise for each literary genre. For now, we invite
you to look at the considerations we raise for readers of poetry (pp. 16–22).
We asked some students to apply this questioning and annotating technique
to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, a moderately difficult poem. Here is a
composite of what they produced: