Reading/Response Criticism

Imagine the Mayans were right about the “Apocalypse” that is soon to convert this entire planet to smoldering ash. Tsunamis and earthquakes combine into a 200 ft. 10 point Kraken, swallowing buildings, plunging them into the crushing darkness. Forest fires ignite from the sparks of broken telephone poles then are spread through the continents by the clusters of hurricanes coming from each hemisphere. Tornados soon join the devastation, creating a pyrographic megastorm, flames engulfing our world resembling the first ten minutes of “T2: Judgment Day.” The aftermath looks like the Beelzebub himself just popped out just to say, “Doubt me now!?” After all the chaos and destruction, few survivors salvaged in caves and bunkers emerge from the ashes like a flock of Phoenix, searching for materials to survive. And usually within these post-apocalyptic stories there is always someone that will try to keep a record of the traumatic experiences they went through as well as keeping track of what they survived off of. Years later, someone will come across this person’s diary, read it, and one day responds in class or to friends. With every disaster, there is hope to rebuild. In comparison, without a reader, literature or any other written work will be useless and unknown, thus creating the Reader/Response criticism.

Emerging from the 1970’s, Reader/Response Criticism is not just a response from a single individual, but a group of critiques that analytically dissect the text “finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examining the ways individual readers or communities of readers experience texts.” (Abrams, 85) Digging deep into the subliminal messages and metaphors behind every sentence, these critiques determine the type of reader or...

... middle of paper ...

...rom Poe, finding connections from his past impunities and how those enraging moments were subliminally woven into the stories and poems he writes. Thanks to that horrible sanity, he was able to construct classics like this which should be introduced to anyone interested in Literature.

Works Cited

Fletcher, Richard M. The Stylistic Development of Edgar Allan Poe. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.

“Brainy Quote”. Bookrags Media Network. Copyright © 2001 – 2011 .

Giordano, Robert. “An Exploration of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe”. Design215 Inc. Copyright 2005-2011. .

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. 2nd. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1982. 274, 277. Print.

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.