what is a reader response criticism essay

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Reader-Response Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 17, 2020 • ( 0 )

Reader-response criticism can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Plato , both of whom based their critical arguments at least partly on literature’s effect on the reader. It has more immediate sources in the writings of the French structuralists (who stress the role of the perceiver as a maker of reality), the semioticians, and such American critics as Kenneth Burke (esp. his “Psychology and Form,” which defined “form” in terms of the audience’s appetite), Louise Rosenblatt, Walker Gibson (who developed the notion of a “mock reader”), and Wayne Booth . But reader criticism became recognized as a distinct critical movement only in the 1970s, when it found a particularly congenial political climate in the growing anti-authoritarianism within the academy.

Calling it a movement, however, is misleading, for reader-response criticism is less a unified critical school than a vague collection of disparate critics with a common point of departure. That is, reader-response critics share neither a body of critical principles (as Marxist critics, for instance, do), nor a subject matter (as Renaissance critics do). Indeed, they barely share a name. “Reader theory” and “audience theory” are perhaps the most neutral general terms, since the more popular term “reader-response theory” most accurately refers to more subjective kinds of reader criticism, and “ Reception Theory ” most accurately refers to the German school of Receptionkritik represented by Hans Robert Jauss . But these and other terms are often used indiscriminately, and the boundaries separating them are cloudy at best.

What affinity there is among reader-critics comes from their rejection of the New Critical principle (most clearly enunciated in W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley ‘s pivotal essay, “ The Affective Fallacy “) that severs the work itself from its effect and strongly privileges the former, treated in formal terms. Refusing to accept this banning of the reader, reader-critics take the existence of the reader as a decisive component of any meaningful literary analysis, assuming, as Michael Riffaterre puts it, that “readers make the literary event” (116). But once past that first step, there is little unanimity. Indeed, even the meaning of that first step has generated considerable debate, for different critics mean different things when they talk about “the reader.”

Stanley Fish (Christine Buckley/UConn Photo)

For some critics, readers are abstract or hypothetical entities, and even these are of various sorts. The category of hypothetical readers is often thought, for instance, to take in what Gerald Prince calls the “narratee,” the person to whom the narrator is addressing his or her narration (e.g., the “you” to whom Huckleberry Finn directs his opening sentence). For as Prince himself insists, the narratee, like the narrator, is really a character (even if sometimes only implicitly present in the text) and should therefore not be conflated with readers who are outside the text. Also included among hypothetical readers are readers who are implied by the text, that is, readers whose moves are charted out by (and hence more or less controlled by) the work in question. This is the kind of reader referred to, for instance, when one says, “The reader is surprised by the end of an Agatha Christie novel.” Wolfgang Iser describes the implied reader’s progress in phenomenological terms: although he pays particular attention to the indeterminacies in the texts—the gaps that the reader has to fill in on his or her own—his reader remains very much controlled by the author, since those gaps are part of the strategy of the text. On a more general level, some reader-critics examine the hypothetical reader who is implied, not by any specific text, but rather by the broader culture. In Structuralist Poetics , for instance, Jonathan Culler, influenced by French Structuralism and especially by Semiotics , develops the notion of “literary competence,” highlighting the ways in which the reader’s knowledge of conventions allows him or her to make sense of literary texts.

Narratees and implied readers need to be distinguished, however, from at least two other types of hypothetical reader. Since they are in principle the product of textual features, narratees and implied readers both differ from the intended reader (what Rabinowitz calls the “authorial audience”). The intended reader is presumed by rather than marked in the text and therefore can be discovered only by looking at the text in terms of the context in which it arose. In addition, there are postulated readers. Such readers’ characteristics do not emerge from a study of the text or its context; rather, the text’s meaning emerges from perceiving it through the eyes of a reader whose characteristics are assumed by the critic to begin with. Thus, in his early and influential “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” Stanley Fish follows the experiences of a “reader” word by word, insisting, in a self-conscious reversal of the Wimsatt-Beardsley position, that what “ happens to, and with the participation of, the reader” is in fact “the meaning” of a text ( Is There 25). But that is not the implied reader; it is, rather, an abstraction Fish calls the “informed reader.” He argues that real readers can become informed readers by developing linguistic, semantic, and literary competence, by making their minds “the repository of the (potential) responses a given text might call out” and by “suppressing, in so far as that is possible,… what is personal and idiosyncratic” (49). As is often the case with postulated readers, Fish’s informed reader is presented as an ideal, the best reader of the text. The distinctions among narratees, implied readers, intended readers, and postulated readers are significant, but they are subtle and not always recognized. As a consequence, they are sometimes blurred as critics (including Fish and Iser) fuse them or move from one to another without notice.

In contrast to those who write about hypothetical readers are those critics who focus on the activities of real readers. In Readings and Feelings , for instance, David Bleich, starting from the assumption that “the role of personality in response is the most fundamental fact of criticism” (4), talks about the specific students in his classes and uses the actual interpretations they have presented in papers they have written, in order to learn where they originate and how the classroom, as a community, can negotiate among them. Janice Radway moves further from the academic center by studying the ways nonacademic women interpret popular romances.

Reader-critics not only differ with respect to what entity they mean by “reader”; they also differ with regard to the perspective from which they treat it. To put it in different terms, most reader-critics admit, to some extent, the necessity of “contextualizing” the act of reading. Stanley Fish, in essays written after “Affective Stylistics,” has made some of the strongest arguments along these lines, claiming that meaning is entirely context-dependent and that there is consequently no such thing as literal meaning. Even audience critics who do not take this extreme position recognize the close relationship between meaning and interpretation on the one hand and context on the other. But readers are not simply in a single context; they are always in several. And there is no more agreement about what constitutes the most appropriate context to study than there is about what the term “reader” means.

For example, one can look at what might loosely be called the cultural context of the reader. Culler, in his discussions of literary conventions, examines the process of reading in the context of the shared cultural practices of the academic community. Fish takes a related but more radical position, rejecting the notion of a generalized literary competence and arguing instead for the study of literature in terms of disparate “interpretive communities” united by shared “article(s) of faith” (e.g., commitment to authorial intention) and “repertoirefs] of [interpretive] strategies.” According to Fish, these strategies do not decode some preexisting meaning, for the meaning of a literary work is not in the text at all. Rather, the very “properties” of the text are in fact “constituted” by whatever strategies the reader happens to bring to bear on the text: “These strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around” ( Is There 171). More recently, Steven Mailloux has expanded on this notion by developing a “rhetorical hermeneutics” that examines, with particular attention to institutional politics, the ways in which interpretations become accepted by given groups.

Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

Alternatively, one can look at the psychological context of the reader. In Dynamics of Literary Response Norman Holland deals primarily with hypothetical readers; in Five Readers Reading he turns his attention to actual students. In both cases, he tries to make sense of interpretive activity by passing it through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis. Still other critics look at the historical context of the reader. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Receptionkritik , most familiar through the writings of Hans Robert Jauss, who argues that the reader makes sense of literature in part through a “horizon of expectations.” Since that horizon varies with history, the literary work offers different “views” at different times (Jauss 21-22). Jane Tompkins, following Fish, pushes the idea further, claiming in her study of American literature ( Sensational Designs ) that the reader’s historical situation does not simply affect our view of the work but actually produces whatever it is that we call the text in the first place: “The circumstances in which a text is read … are what make the text available .. . [and] define the work ‘as it really is’—under those circumstances” (7).

Betty Tompkins is a feminist as well as a historian, and her work reminds us that yet another perspective is offered when the act of reading is studied in the context of gender. Like other forms of reader criticism, feminist reader criticism has moved in several different directions. In The Resisting Reader , for example, Judith Fetterley talks about the effects that reading particular texts can have on women. Radway, more willing to credit the reader’s power to “make” the meaning of the text, asks instead how women (especially women of a particular socioeconomic class) read differently from men (especially male academic critics).

Betty Tompkins, Apologia /Artsy.net

There is disagreement among reader-critics not only about the subject of inquiry but also about the whole purpose of critical activity. It is here that debates can become especially acrimonious. In particular, there is disagreement about the proper relation between the critic and interpretation, and consequently about the descriptive/prescriptive nature of the critical enterprise. Granted, most audience critics agree that to some extent, readers produce literary meaning; but since there are such widespread disagreements about who that “reader” is and what that production consists of, this apparent agreement yields no unity whatever on the issue of the reader’s ultimate freedom to interpret as he or she wishes.

At one extreme, there are critics who start with the text and use the concept of the reader as an analytic tool to perfect traditional interpretive practices. As Mary Louise Pratt has argued, the study of many types of hypothetical readers is consistent with formalism. In traditional formalist interpretive practice, certain textual details are foregrounded, and an interpretation explaining those details is posited as “the” interpretation of the text. To the extent that the implied reader is simply a mirror of those textual features, an implied-reader analysis is often a formalist analysis in different language. Thus, for instance, Wolfgang Iser ‘s interpretations, despite their heavy reliance on descriptions of “the reader’s” activities, could in many cases be translated into formalist terms.

Problems become more acute when we come to analyses based on postulated readers whose activities serve as models for correct behavior. In practice, such readers often turn out to be the critic himself or herself, and the readerly terminology serves primarily as a rhetorical device to persuade us of the general validity of individual interpretations. Riffaterre’s semiotic analyses in Semiotics of Poetry rely heavily on notions of what activities the text requires the reader to perform; readers are forced or compelled by the text, and individuals who, for one reason or another, wander in the wrong direction simply cannot find “the true reading” (142). For all the brilliance of his analyses, Riffaterre (as Culler has argued in Pursuit of Signs ) tells us less about what readers do or have done than about the way he himself reads; in fact, he often explicitly notes that no previous readers have followed what he sees as the dictates of the text. In the end, his use of reader terminology gives his prescriptions of how we ought to read the appearance of objective descriptions of what readers actually do.

Other critics, in contrast, use the concept of the reader not to engage in the act of interpretation but rather to explain how interpretations come about. Culler, for instance, like Riffaterre, describes much of his work as semiotic. But his actual practice is quite different. Arguing that “the interpretation of individual works is only tangentially related to the understanding of literature,” Culler strives to construct a criticism “which seeks to identify the conventions and operations by which any signifying practice (such as literature) produces its observable effects of meaning” ( Pursuits , 48). In contrast to Riffaterre, he builds his arguments not on the text but on interpretations already produced; and he aims not to persuade his own readers of the rightness or wrongness of those interpretations but rather to describe the practices that allowed them to come into being.

Culler’s work in this line is not, strictly speaking, concerned with evaluating interpretations. Indeed, he explicitly claims that the semiotic “project is disrupted whenever one slips back into the position of judge” ( Pursuit 67). Nonetheless, there is a sense in which his work tends to justify those interpretations he discusses. This is especially true because, as Pratt suggests, his arguments are frequently based on his notion of literary competence, and that notion is not really interrogated in terms of who determines competence or under what cultural and political circumstances. Since he tends to start with interpretations produced by professionally trained critics (rather than, as Bleich does, with students’ readings), academic practices are implicitly valorized.

Other reader-critics, therefore, use the notion of reader in yet a different way, neither to persuade nor to explain but to question interpretations. In The Resisting Reader, for instance, Fetterley, without giving up the notion that there are more or less correct intended interpretations of the classical American texts she reads, argues that those interpretations are harmful because they “immasculate” women (i.e., train them to identify with male needs and desires). She therefore calls upon readers to recognize them and resist them. Radway questions interpretations in an even more fundamental way. She criticizes those who use traditional academic interpretive practices to determine the cultural meaning of mass-market romances. Starting with a position fairly close to Fish’s, she insists that the cultural importance of those romances depends on the meaning they have for the actual women who consume them. She goes on to demonstrate, through ethnographic study, that since those women use different interpretive strategies than academic critics do, the texts for them have substantially different meanings.

Given the wide variety of interests and concerns exhibited by various reader-critics, it should not be surprising that audience criticism, as a whole, has not taken any definitive stands, except a negative attitude toward New Criticism , an attitude shared by virtually all other critical schools that have developed since the 1960s. Nonetheless, the very raising of certain questions (even unanswered questions) has had profound consequences for the commonplaces of the literary-critical profession and has, in conjunction with such movements as Deconstruction and Feminism , encouraged general shifts in the direction of literary studies. In the first place, talk of the reader opens up talk of psychology, sociology, and history, and reader criticism has helped break down the boundaries separating literary study from other disciplines. In addition, by highlighting the reader’s interpretive practice, even such prescriptive critics as Riffaterre have clarified the degree to which meaning is dependent upon the reader’s performance. Even if one does not agree with such critics as Robert Crosman (who claims that “‘validity’ is a matter of individual conscience” [381]) or Bleich (who argues that “reading is a wholly subjective process” [ Readings 3]), reader criticism has made it increasingly difficult to support the notion of definitive meaning in its most straightforward form. One can hardly claim that no critics, not even audience critics, continue to support the notion of “right” and “wrong” readings, but it is safe to say that the position is being increasingly discarded, and even critics who do argue for it have become ever more wary of how precarious interpretation is as a procedure and how little we can depend on the texts themselves to provide proper interpretive guidance.

What is most important, perhaps, as definitive meaning is undermined, so is the notion of definitive evaluation, since value is even more contextually determined than meaning. Statements of value are increasingly being put under pressure by the question, Value for whom? and value is increasingly being viewed not as a quality inherent in texts but rather as a function of particular social, historical, and cultural circumstances. By helping to throw into question the belief that texts have determinable, unvarying literary quality, reader-critics have helped fuel the attacks on the canon that have been launched from a number of other quarters, most notably, in the 1970s and 1980s, from feminist critics.

Further Reading David Bleich, Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism (1975), Subjective Criticism (1978); Robert Crosman, “Some Doubts about ‘The Reader of Paradise Lost/ ” College English 37 (1975); Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (1981), Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (1975); Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979); Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978); Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989), Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980); Elizabeth Freund, The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism (1987); Norman N. Holland, Five Readers Reading (1975); Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (1976, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, trans. Iser, 1978), Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett (1972, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, trans. Iser, 1974); Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. Timothy Bahti, 1982); Steven Mailloux, Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (1982), Rhetorical Power (1989); James Phelan, Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative (1989); Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies I Strategic Interpretations: On Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 (1981-82); Gerald Prince, “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee” (Tompkins, Reader-Response Criticism); Peter J. Rabinowitz, Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (1987); Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984); Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (1978); Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978); Michael Steig, Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding (1989); Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, eds., The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (1980); Jane P. Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (1985); Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (1980). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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Tags: Affective Fallacy , affective stylistics , Betty Tompkins , David Bleich , Interpretive Communities , Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities , Jonathan Culler , Linguistics , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Michael Riffaterre , Mock Reader , narratee , New Criticism , Reader Response Criticism , Reader-Response , Reader-response criticism , Reader-Response Criticism Notes , Reader-Response Essays , Reader-Response Theory , Reader-Response Theory and Criticism , Receptionkritik , Stanley Fish , Wimsatt and Monroe , Wolfgang Iser

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15 Student Essay Example: Reader Response

“the bees without a king”.

By Ethan McCall

When reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “The Drone King,” most readers would come away from the story with the idea that Sheldon Quick is just a crazy businessman who invested in the wrong idea. I mean, what sane person would think that inventing carrier bees in a world with the wireless telegraph is a good idea? That’s just the thing though. No sane person would think that it’s a sound business idea. However, this story by Kurt Vonnegut likely speaks differently to a particular audience. This story’s implied readers are a specific demographic of men who call themselves Incels. While it at first appears to be a story that reflects with and represents the ideologies of Incels, it eventually reveals itself to be a critique of their worldview and ideologies.

Now, before I go any further, I must first shed some light on what an Incel is and the community that they belong to. Incel is a term that means “involuntarily celibate.” This online community of Incels is comprised of men who are bitter about their lack of sexual experience, and they blame women for it. The men belonging to this group also blame women and feminism for the “downfall” of society. They believe that women have dominated the world and now unfairly discriminate against men, thus robbing them of the social dominance in society that they believe men should have (Glace 288-289).

The character of Sheldon Quick in Vonnegut’s story is eerily similar to these men who call themselves Incels. Sheldon Quick is a man who has enjoyed a significant level of success and wealth throughout his life. One would think that given his circumstances, he has almost everything that he could ever want. However, from his first appearance, his biases become clear. When the stockbroker enters the Millennium Club to meet Mr. Quick, he is stopped at the front desk and informed that there are no women allowed into the club (Vonnegut). As a reader, this immediately sets off alarm bells in my head and paints an unflattering picture of Sheldon Quick. The Millennium Club and its patrons very clearly have some very negative views on women if they won’t even allow them to enter the building. However, someone from the Incel community would very likely agree with and praise this rule for how it puts women back into their place.

Rather than women dominating men and taking over their spaces as Incels believe women have been doing for quite some time now, they aren’t even allowed in the same spaces as men anymore. This lack of proximity lets men be themselves and innovate as they are supposed to without being disturbed by the lesser sex. To Incels, women have no inherent value aside from being able to have sex with men. This mindset can be seen in Glace’s article on Incels. When women have expressed that men who only want sex are disgusting, Incels have responded callously: “[W]hat the fuck else is there to want from such a vapid shell of a person? Your only redeeming quality is that you can lay still and take a dick. Why are you surprised?” (Glace, Taking the Black Pill 294-295). However, these roles are swapped within the world of the bees. The male bees are exterminated once they fulfill their only function of mating with the queen (Vonnegut). The reason that Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, are so interested in the plight of the male bee is because they are being discriminated against in the same way that Incels discriminate against women.

This is another sentiment that Incels latch onto and agree with. They believe that men are the wrongfully oppressed gender, and women have stolen their rightful place in society (Glace 288-289). This idea that men are being oppressed by women is further expanded upon when Mr. Quick takes the stockbroker up to the roof where his bees are being kept. When they arrive on the roof, they come across the scene of large bees stumbling out of their hives being hunted and killed by smaller bees. As Mr. Quick saved the large bees, the stockbroker asked him what was happening. Mr. Quick replies that it’s a bee war between the large males and the smaller female bees. When the stockbroker asks which bees the hives belonged to originally, Mr. Quick says that “Your question is good enough to be chiseled in granite for all time to ponder” (Vonnegut). From this scene, it becomes very clear how Mr. Quick feels about the plight of the male bees, and by extension, the human males of our world.

Mr. Quick believes that males have constructed society as we know it. They’ve worked tirelessly to construct the foundation of the world. However, now women have come in and pushed the men out of their positions of power, thereby taking the world for themselves. An Incel reader reading this would most likely be agreeing with Mr. Quick and his views on the world. This way of thinking about the role of women is very much in line with how Incels think about women. They have unrightfully taken the roles of leadership that men used to have, and are now discriminating against them, exactly how the male bees from the hives that they built are being pushed out from their homes and being torn to pieces by the female bees.

Much like Incels, Mr. Quick has determined that men are under attack from women, and drastic measures need to be taken in order to save the male species from this unrightful persecution. Due to this unfair exclusion of male bees from their hives, Mr. Quick is determined to save them, because much like the human male, Mr. Quick believes that male bees will be safe from female tyranny if they are kept away from women. He does this by creating a new hive for them that consists only of other male bees that have been forced out of their hives. In their new hives, they aren’t forced to do anything or be productive. According to Mr. Quick, the reason that the male bees can enjoy their lives in such leisure is that they are free from the demanding and thankless females (Vonnegut). This is very similar to the Millennium Club to which Mr. Quick belongs due to the fact that in both the new hive and the Millennium Club, no women are allowed. Mr. Quick’s observations about bees have poisoned his views on women.

From this point on, a reader from the Incel community would likely expect that Mr. Quick would continue to fight against the female rule that the world has come to be subjected to. However, subverting these expectations of the reader, the story starts to slowly show that Mr. Quick’s philosophy is incorrect. When Mr. Quick tells the stockbroker that they will only have to provide each of their bees with a penny’s worth of honey for an entire year, the stockbroker asks a very astute question: why don’t the male bees make their honey? This is when Mr. Quick reveals that it’s only the female workers that make honey. The stockbroker then points out the obvious. “Huh. I guess that’s why the female workers knock off the males, eh? The males are nothing but a drain on the community” (Vonnegut). This is a key moment in the story that shows just how biased Mr. Quick is. Even though he knows that these male workers contribute nothing and instead are only a burden on the colony, he still believes that the female bees clearing them out of the hive is unjust.

This echoes back to his situation. He was left a large sum of money by his father and has spent his life doing anything but work. Mr. Quick sees himself in the male bees. They’re both useless and provide nothing to their respective societies, yet Mr. Quick thinks that they both deserve a respected spot in the societies that they’ve contributed nothing to. A reader from the Incel community would likely be affected negatively by this development in the story. While the story was at first reiterating and reaffirming Incel ideology, all of a sudden, it’s pointing out flaws in their beliefs.

The ideals of Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, continue to be challenged, and ultimately proven wrong, at the press conference that he holds to demonstrate how bees can live in a male-only hive. According to a study by Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan on political narratives, telling a story means to lie or speak falsely. This story is a distortion of an otherwise uncomfortable reality and lying (70). This sort of story is exactly what Mr. Quick tells to the press during his conference. He goes on about how the only crime that male bees have committed is that they can’t make honey, yet they are discriminated against and killed for it. He declares that this system needs to be stopped for the safety of bees, but it’s obvious at this point that Mr. Quick is also talking about human women as well as bees.

However, despite his grandiose speech to the press, when Mr. Quick releases the bees so that they can go to their all-male colony, they don’t. Instead, they go back to the colonies that are run by the female bees and are subsequently killed. It’s at this point in the story that it subverts the expectations of the Incel reader about where the story was going. They were most likely expecting the story to praise Mr. Quick as a hero who was liberating men from the tyranny of females, but rather, the story shows Mr. Quick as a bitter old man who can’t accept his shortcomings and instead blames all of his problems on women and society as a whole. Thus, condemning Incels and their hatred of women, showing them that their lack of importance in society is their fault rather than a malicious plot by women to overthrow men.

While this story first appeared to agree with and support Incel beliefs, painting Mr. Quick to be a wise old man who has realized that women are the problem with society, as the story progresses, it shows that Mr. Quick is a lot of things, but wise isn’t one of them. Instead, he’s a man who was frightened by the social power of women increasing. Seeing this as a threat to men everywhere, Mr. Quick, in his attempt to prove that women were unnecessary, proved only that the ideals he and many Incels believe in are undeniably flawed and fundamentally wrong. This story uses the sympathy that Incel readers initially had for Mr. Quick as a way to challenge their beliefs. By the end of the story, when the character they supported so much is proven to be nothing but a sad man whose judgment was clouded by hate, Incel readers are encouraged to look inward and examine the beliefs that led Mr. Quick to this point and think about where their beliefs will take them. The story uses the downfall of Mr. Quick to inspire a change from the hateful ideology of Incels to something kinder and more tolerant.

Works Cited

Drăgan, Nicolae Sorin. “The Emotional Arcs of Political Narratives.”  Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies  13.Suppl (2020): 69-86.  d oi.org/10.31926/but.pcs.2020.62.13.3.6.

Glace, Alyssa M., Tessa L. Dover, and Judith G. Zatkin. “Taking the black pill: An empirical analysis of the “Incel”.”  Psychology of Men & Masculinities  (2021).  doi.org/10.1037/men0000328.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “A Newly Discovered Kurt Vonnegut Story.”  The Atlantic , Atlantic Media Company, 10 Jan. 2020,  www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/kurt-vonnegut-the-drone-king/537870/ .

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• A Research Guide
• Literary Movements

What is Reader Response Criticism

History and role of reader’s response theory, what is the reader response theory, purpose of modern reading-response theory.

• The theme and purpose of the text
• Explain why or why not you like the text
• Flaws in the plot
• Explain if you agree with the writer’s perspective or if you disagree with it

How to Write a Reader Response Journal

Evidence-based criticism.

• Is this text racist?
• Is there anything in the text that degrades things like Democrats, religion, adolescents, conservatives and any specific group?
• Are there any factual errors in the text? Is it despairing, falsely positive and dark?
• Does text have high linguistic complexity?
• Does it use poor language?
• Are there any grammatical errors?
• Is it full of figures?
• Does it have too many emotional and childish details?
• Does the text lack cohesion? Moreover, does it make any point?

 Structure of a Response Journal

• Title of your work (the one you have chosen to respond)
• Main thesis and theme of the text
• Author’s name
• Does the text have anything to do with your personal life? Try to establish a connection.
• Does it hold the same opinion or perspective of the world as you have? What is there you consider wrong and why? (Use examples, quotes to raise an argument or to discuss your opinion).
• What is your learning? Or does the text challenge your opinion? If yes, how?
• What is there you like the most in the text? Reflect critically
• How could it have been better? (Fault-finding does not mean that you have to criticize the text. Instead, use positive language and discuss the shortcomings).
• Conclude your reading – response by writing your overall reaction and recommendation.

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Reader-Response Criticism and The Turn of the Screw

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Students are routinely asked in English courses for their reactions to texts they are reading. Sometimes there are so many different reactions that we may wonder whether everyone has read the same text. And some students respond so idiosyncratically to what they read that we say their responses are “totally off the wall.”

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Empirical Pedagogical Stylistics: Reader Response Research in the Classroom

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James, H., Beidler, P.G. (1995). Reader-Response Criticism and The Turn of the Screw . In: Beidler, P.G. (eds) The Turn of the Screw. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13713-8_5

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What Is Reader Response Criticism?

Whereas many discuss literary works objectively, absolutely and with respect to how the author developed the ideas on the page, reader response criticism focuses on the reader and how she or he receives the literary work. In a sense, this moves the text from existing on its own — on, for example, the physical pages of a book — and instead assumes that the text exists only when it is read. This theory makes literary works more like performance art where the reader's act of reading and interpreting the text is the performance. Critical theorists continue to develop this approach, considering the nature of the reader and what he or she brings to the text, along with the different "lenses" through which the text can be viewed.

Foundational Beliefs

In reader response criticism, the act of reading is like a dialogue between the reader and the text that has meaning only when the two are joined in conversation. It redefines the role of the text from an independent object into something that can only exist when it is read and interacts with the mind of the reader. In this way, the reader is not a passive recipient of what the text says, but rather takes an active role. The text then serves as a catalyst to spur memories and thoughts within the reader allowing him or her to link the text to personal experiences and thereby fill in the spaces left by the text. This allows theorists to explain why people can have different responses to and interpretations of the same text.

This form of criticism even goes so far as to examine the role that individual words and phrases in the text play when interacting with the reader. The sounds and shapes that words make or even how they are pronounced or spoken by the reader can essentially alter the meaning of the text, it is suggested. Some reader response critics go so far as to analyze a text phrase by phrase in order to determine how much of the experience of reading it is predetermined and then analyze how each reader's experience changes that initial meaning.

Approaches Within Reader Response Criticism

Reader response criticism starts with what formalist literary criticism called the "affective fallacy " — that the response of the reader is relevant to understanding a text — and uses it as the focus of approaching a work of literature. There are different approaches within this school of critical theory, however; some look at the work from the individual reader's point of view, while others focus on how groups or communities view the text. For these schools of criticism, it's what the text does to the reader that's important, and not necessarily the work itself, the author's intent, or the social, political, or cultural context in which it was written.

The label "reader-oriented criticism" has become popular since the reader's experiences and expectations often change as time passes. In addition, a reader may approach the text with different points of view, or lenses. That is, the reader may be able to see the value in his or her own personal response while also analyzing the text based on another critical approach.

Individual Readers

Louise Rosenblatt is generally credited with formally introducing the idea that the reader's experience and interaction with the text creates the true meaning. This idea developed into what came to be known as Transactional Reader Response Criticism. Rosenblatt argued that, while the reader is guided by the ideas and words that the author laid out, it is ultimately each individual reader's experience in reading the work that actually gives it meaning. Since each person brings unique knowledge and beliefs to the reading transaction, the text will mean different things to different people. It is that meaning — the reader's meaning — that should be assessed, as opposed to solely looking at the author's text in a vacuum.

Other critics focus on how the reader's mind relates to the text, in what is known as Psychological Reader Response Criticism. The reader is seen as a psychological subject who can be studied based on his or her unconscious drives brought to the surface by his or her reaction to a text. Reading the text can become almost a therapeutic experience for the reader, as the connections that he or she makes reveal truths about his or her personality.

Psychological Reader Response Criticism in many ways fueled another similar theory — Subjective Reader Response Criticism — which takes the personal, psychological component even further. In this theory, the reader’s interpretation of a text is thought to be deeply influenced by personal and psychological needs first, rather than being guided by the text. Each reading is thought to bring psychological symptoms to the surface, from which the reader can find his or her own unconscious motives.

The Uniform Reader

Other schools of reader response criticism look not at the reader as an individual, but as a theoretical reader. The "implied reader," for example, an idea introduced by Wolfgang Iser, is the reader who is required for the text — the reader who the author imagines when writing, and who he or she is writing for. This reader is guided by the text, which contains gaps meant for the reader to fill, explaining and making connections within the text. The reader ultimately creates meaning based not only on what is in the text, but what the text has provoked inside him or her. Theorist Stanley Fish introduced what he called the "informed reader," who brings prior, shared knowledge to the experience of reading.

Social Reader Response

Social Reader Response Criticism focuses on "interpretive communities" — groups that have shared beliefs and values — and how these groups use particular strategies that affect both the text and their reading behaviors. It is the group that then determines what an acceptable interpretation of the text is, with the meaning being whatever the group says that it is. A book club or a group of college students for example, based on their own cultural and group beliefs, will generally agree on the ultimate meaning on a text.

As an extension of the social theory, these like-minded groups can also approach and view the text from different lenses. If the group finds certain elements to be more significant than others, it might examine the text from this particular viewpoint, or lens. For example, feminist literary critics may find focus on the female elements of a writing, whereas new historicists might focus on the culture and era in which the text is read.

Arguments Against Reader Response Criticism Generally

It is often argued that reader response criticism allows for any interpretation of a text to be considered valid, and can devalue the content of the text as a result. Others argue that the text is being ignored completely or that it is impossible to properly interpret a text without taking into consideration the culture or era in which it is written. In addition, a larger complaint is that these theories do not allow for the reader’s knowledge and experience to be expanded by the text at all.

• https://faculty.goucher.edu/eng215/reader_response_terms.htm
• https://owl.purdue.edu/

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How to Write a Reader Response

Last Updated: July 23, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 459,934 times.

A reader response assignment asks you to explain and defend your personal reaction to an assigned text. Reader response papers can be difficult because they force you, the reader, to take responsibility for giving meaning to the text. Often these assignments feel open-ended and vague, but don't worry, a good reader response paper will follow a standard essay format that you can easily master. This guide will walk you through the creation of a well-crafted reader response paper that's sure to wow your instructor and earn you an awesome grade.

What to Include in a Reader Response

• Introduce the name and author of the text.
• Explain what the text is about.
• Write about what you thought of the text, and why.
• Answer any guided reading questions you're assigned.
• Give examples to support your thoughts.
• Conclude with a summary of your thoughts.

Writing the Reader Response

• It is often helpful to use the first body paragraph to include more information about the text, the plotline, major themes, etc., and then use the rest of the paragraphs to provide an analysis of how you felt about the text.

• Remember that a reader response is meant to be personal, so it's OK to incorporate personal anecdotes and opinions into your analysis.
• Example: "Forcing Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet "A" reminded me of a time when I was cyber-bullied in eighth grade, and my "friends" spread rumors about me online where the whole school could see."

• Example: "At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, Manolin promises to once again fish with Santiago, so the old man no longer has to be alone. This was Santiago's greatest wish, but it was a different kind of success than he initially set out to achieve."

• Example: "'My big fish must be somewhere,' said Santiago. This is exactly how I felt after I received my third rejection letter, but like Santiago, I kept trying, and eventually I was accepted."
• Make sure and cite your examples per class directions. You will usually be required to note the page numbers of any quotations or specific examples in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

• A great way to think of your conclusion is that it's one last chance to explain to your reader how you see all of your points fitting together.

• Sometimes it's hard to see our own mistakes, so it can really help to exchange papers with a friend, and proofread each other's work.

Drafting the Reader Response

• "Even though I found The Scarlett Letter hard to follow at times, Hester Prynne's story is still relatable, and made me think a lot about the effects of publicly shaming people online."
• "Some people believe the Old Man and the Sea is a book about failure, but it is really a story of perseverance that teaches us that success may not always come in the form we expect, and even disasters can lead to positive outcomes."

• Introduction: 1 paragraph.
• Analysis/Body Paragraphs: 3-4 paragraphs. How you organize these paragraphs will depend on the parameters of the assignment.
• Conclusion: 1 paragraph.

Reading the Text

• Do you like or dislike the text?
• Can you identify the author's purpose?
• Do you agree or disagree with the author?
• Does the text relate to you and your life? If so, how? If not, why not?
• Does the text agree with, or go against your personal world view?
• What, if anything, did you learn from the text?

• Taking a bit of extra time during this phase will save you a lot of time in the writing process. [9] X Research source

• I think that...
• I feel that...
• I see that...
• I have learned that...

Sample Reader Response

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• ↑ https://penandthepad.com/rules-writing-reading-response-essay-3968.html
• ↑ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jefferson-english102/chapter/reader-response-criticism-american-literature-i/
• ↑ https://writingstudio.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/Reading-Response.pdf
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/steps_for_revising.html
• ↑ https://faculty.washington.edu/momara/Reader%20Response.pdf
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
• ↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
• ↑ http://education-portal.com/articles/Step-by-Step_Guide_to_Writing_a_Great_Reading_Response_Paper.html
• ↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

About This Article

To write a reader response, develop a clear thesis statement and choose example passages from the text that support your thesis. Next, write an introduction paragraph that specifies the name of the text, the author, the subject matter, and your thesis. Then, include 3-4 paragraphs that discuss and analyze the text. Finish up with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes your arguments and brings the reader back to your thesis or main point! For tips on analyzing the text before writing your assignment, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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