Lesson on Critical Reading (adapted from The Arlington Reader, Fourth Edition)
What Is Critical Reading?
One. Identify the main idea, claim, or thesis in a piece of writing.
Two. Identify the form and structure. Essays use a variety of expository modes: contrast, comparison, argumentation, description, narrative, cause and effect analysis, extended definition, to name several.
Three. What problem is the writer trying to define?
Four. What bias, if any, does the writer bring to the topic?
Five. Notice the shifts from specificity to generality (induction) or generality to specificity (deduction).
Six. Notice the transitions used to establish a number of reasons (additionally), contrast (however, on the other hand, to the contrary), and comparison (similarly).
Seven. Use annotations, writing key ideas in the margins and underlining key words and phrases. Annotating increases your memory and reading comprehension. Using a pen is better than a highlighter because you can write your own specific response to what you’re reading whereas a highlighter is too fat to make comments. Another advantage of using a pen is that you might come up with ideas for your essay response, even a thesis, and you don’t want to forget that material.
Eight. Look up unfamiliar words to build your vocabulary and increase your understanding of the piece.
Nine. Identify the writer’s style and tone (voice). The voice could be conversational, supercilious (arrogant), morally outraged, friendly, condescending, ironic, etc.
Ten. Notice if the writer is being implicit, using implication or suggestion, rather than being direct and explicit in the expression of the main idea.
Eleven. Ask if the writer considered opposing views fairly before coming to his or her conclusion.
Twelve. What political point of view, if any, informs the piece?
Thirteen. How strong is the evidence in the piece that is used to support the writer’s claim?
Fourteen. What is the intended readership? Educated adults? Experts? Children?
Find the main idea in this short piece about consumer shopping habits.
Essay 1: Back in the World by Tobias Wolff, 150 points
Option One
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a 5-page paper, typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Back in the World. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 2
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a 5-page essay, analyze McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Back in the World.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 3
One camp of readers argue that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 5-page essay. For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
If you want to use another structure, that is fine. The above is merely a suggestion. For example, look at Choice B:
Back in the World, the title, refers to leaving our lies and delusions.
Define the "back in the world" experience to explain the book's title by comparing at least two stories in which characters awaken from their Jahiliyyah (prolonged period of ignorance and darkness) and go "back into the world."
In your first page, you might write a personal narrative of such a "back in the world" experience, followed by a transition to your thesis explaining what such an experience entails. The body paragraphs would compare two or more stories.
“The Missing Person” by Tobias Wolff
Part Two: Lexicon
1. Sloth posing as a Christian 19: a lot of lazy people claim an interest in religion when they've run out of options. This is their lie: They hunger for religion when in reality they want to take a hiatus (an absence) from life. They're escaping their own character flaws. This is a form of lying.
2. Jerry the mountebank, a professional hustler, a charlatan. It's ironic that Leo has to go through the act of being a charlatan in order to become more real than he was as someone "pursuing religion." A charlatan is a hustler and a liar.
3. Mendacity, the art of lying and BS.
4. Duplicity, the art of being two-faced, showing one face to hide the real one and one's real motives. One of the story's ironies is that the more Leo learns about duplicity the more he becomes his true self.
5. Obsequiousness, the art of butt-kissing, an essential component of the mountebank. It is a form of deception.
6. Sobriquet, nickname, “Slim” 31 A mask is a form of deception.
7. Jerry’s B.S. is intoxicating and contagious 32, 33 Of course B.S., which is differently than lying, is a form of deception.
8. Certain lies are indomitable juggernauts 35 and 49 (can’t put the genie back in the bottle): Once Leo becomes Slim, he cannot become his old self again.
9. Sagacity; Leo’s thoughts show wisdom on page 43. He becomes more self-aware, more street smart.
Why irony is an important part of going back into the world
Irony is a quality that requires maturity and wisdom and is so complicated it requires a guide. It's the ability to have insight and go past the common and superficial assumptions most people have when they respond to certain situations.
Irony is the ability to the see the complexity of an occurrence and thus not overreact to it as "good" or "bad."
A person who has a "sense of irony" has wisdom and tends to be more even keeled, avoiding emotional ups and downs. Additionally, a person with a sense of irony has a wry sense of humor, which is neither cynical or overly optimistic, but a strange mix of both.
Irony is, specifically, being able to see certain contradictions when others cannot see these contradictions.
There is no single definition of irony, but here is one that is applicable to Wolff's short story collection:
Irony is a reversal of expectations born from hidden contradictions in a person's character.
Leo goes on a journey in which the more he sees his life contradictions, the more he matures and emerges from his false self to his real self. The missing person is no more.
Part Three: Types of Irony
1. Plot Irony: A reversal that results in the opposite of our expectations like a car death after wearing seatbelt. This is one of the most common forms of irony.
A vegetarian becomes a world-famous butcher.
In all romantic comedies, the potential lovers hate each other at the beginning of the film.
In 10cc's famous song, "I'm Not in Love," the persona tries to convince himself, and the woman, that he is not in love but the more he says this mantra the more he reveals that he is helplessly in love.
A man hates academia and education and he becomes a professor.
A woman grows up hating dogs, then falls in love with them only to discover that she has developed a dog allergy.
2. Serendipitous Irony: The more we deviate from our original plan, the better the outcome. A botched play on the athletic field becomes a huge score.
3. Faustian Irony: The more we think we’re rising and succeeding in life, the more we are actually falling as we become crushed under the weight of our own vanity, which blinds us and leaves us vulnerable to failure.
4. Idle Irony: The better our life becomes the more we are compelled by boredom to sabotage our happiness. In other words people often cause problems that don’t really exist. And soon they create very real problems out of nothing.
5. Pathological Irony: Man shoots foot off to get rid of a wart.
6. Sarcastic Irony: Saying one thing and meaning an other.
7. Satanic Irony: A greedy man enjoys a long, healthy life while his innocent victims die cruel deaths and their lives are short. This type of irony refutes notions of justice.
8. Narcissistic Irony: searchers for the self lose their selves while people who don’t think about their selves find their selves. Someone goes into therapy and becomes even crazier. Or the example of Stalingrad in which the selfish die and the helpful live.
9. Jungian Irony: The more extreme we develop a facet of our personality the more extreme we develop its opposite. The macho man is also becoming more and more of a baby.
10. Materialistic Irony: You buy an expensive fur coat but the weather is forever hot so you can’t wear it like the old lady in Buenos Aires.
You fight tooth and claw to get rich, your business partner murders you, and your wife and children are left without the provider whose millions are hidden in bank accounts, which the wife cannot access.
11. Short-sighted irony: You workout to impress a girl but she’s turned off by big muscles. You were looking at what you want, not at what she wants. A woman overdressed and wears too much make-up and men are terrified of her.
12. Ironic Irony: You try to be ironic because you think it’s cool but you come across as a fake and as a poser.
13. Corruptive Irony: The more we get our hands dirty in the mess of life, the more pure we become; the more we stay away from the filth, the more contaminated we become by our lack of involvement, which is a form of narcissism. This is the major theme of the story “The Missing Person.” Leo finds love and redemption while working as a hustler in Las Vegas. “It’s all right. I’m here.” These are the final words and show that he’s not the missing person anymore.
14. Bureacratic Irony: A chef wears hair net but has long beard with dried filth in it. We pay attention to rules but forget common sense.
Irony in "The Missing Person"
Leo joins a religious order to find love and he finds scorn and hate.
Leo develops a reputation as a killer and earns the respect from the nuns who formerly hated him.
Leo goes to Vegas and finds love.
Leo joins a religious order, not to find God or his soul, but run away from responsibilities.
Leo joins a religious order to find an easy job and instead finds drudgery and disrespect.
Leo becomes corrupt and in doing so he finds purification and evolution.
Example of a Successful Introduction, Transition, and Thesis
Overflowing with a rare, unexpected sense of confidence, my armpits felt powder dry and my stomach calm as I sat in Olivetto's Italian restaurant and impressed Diana Mandalay with my little cocktail napkin doodles of goofy looking cavemen. Diana smiled at my crazed cartoon characters and laughed, almost to the point of her falling out of her chair. After she recovered herself, she gazed at me with a glowing face and desirous eyes, and it occurred to me that the date, now forty minutes without a glitch, was going along perfectly, and I regretted that I didn’t have a camera crew following my every step so that someday if I should ever become a grandfather I could show this perfect date to my grandchildren and give them a memento of their wizened patriarch’s dating insouciance.
Shortly after, our waitress arrived with our steamed mussels and started flirting with me. Right in front of Diana, the sultry waitress looked down at my cartoon drawing of a caveman and said she liked her men primitive. Then without trying to be discreet she wrote her phone number on her writing pad and handed me the slip of paper, all before Diana’s jealous gaze.
After the svelte waitress scurried off somewhere, I told Diana that while the waitress’ advances were flattering, they were, under the circumstances, inappropriate and affecting a prudish expression of admonishment at our waitress when she returned, I asked for our bill and announced that we would be leaving immediately.
The date was not over, not by a long shot. Berkeley's Ashby Avenue and College Boulevard afford a richness of shopping and gave me the opportunity to show off my cosmopolitan tastes. I purchased fine men’s apparel made only of the highest quality silks, cotton blends, and cashmere. I bought exotic, hard-to-find spices for my pantry. I purchased attractive ceramic bakeware for my savory, homemade breads, muffins and biscuits. I presented myself as a man of formidable domestic and culinary talents, not to be found in most male troglodytes.
You should have seen the self-assured smile I enjoyed as we walked back to Olivetto’s where Diana’s Audi was parked on the street. I was resolved already to not kiss her. Don’t be needy, I thought, by presuming a first-date kiss. Instead, make her hungry for the kiss later, at a time not yet announced. I was going to play it cool after all. And knowing that I would not kiss her, I had no pressure on me. I felt light, strong and free.
But Diana, you see, had other plans. Standing ten feet from her car, she embraced me, told me she had a good time, and planted a firm kiss on my lips. She then reared her head back a few inches and studied my face, perhaps to gauge the impression her kiss had left on me.
It was at this stage that my perfect date came to an end, for without warning, to either me or Diana, I did something that was so asinine and so insane that no mortal could have anticipated it. With my face just inches from hers and while still feeling the tingle of her passionate kiss, I let out a huge caveman scream. The scream was unmistakably visceral and seemed to roar from some primitive part of my soul with a pitch and volume of such unmistakable power that I could easily imagine the scream shattering the glass of nearby car and merchant windows. I could tell from Diana’s shocked expression that she did not at first register what I had done. But I could see in the periphery of my vision that onlookers had heard me and they were rushing away from the scene, one woman comforting a baby crying in its carriage, before I unleashed another caveman-like paroxysm. Only after what felt like several minutes did Diana seem to comprehend that I had just screamed in her face and very slowly she inched backward toward her Audi, got inside and, nodding sheepishly at me, drove off.
It should be noted here that that would be the last time I would ever see Diana, for apparently so disturbing was my caveman scream that it was reported to me later from reliable sources that she moved to another country where she changed her name and disguised herself with oversized sunglasses and head-covering scarves.
What a "back in the world" moment it was to realize I can't be too cool because whenever I get cool there is this taunter inside me who shoots me down. And there's the irony: On a date in which I was Mr. Cool, my romantic objectives were undermined by my Inner Caveman, which seemed to derive nourishment from the very coolness that was supposed to impress Diana.
Indeed, we see these same contradictory dynamics of irony in Tobias Wolff's Back in the World in which characters tumble to the wrestling mat engaged in a vicious struggle with their opposite selves evidenced by _____________, _____________, ________________, and _____________.
MLA Format
Basic MLA Format
Why You Should Write Your Introduction Last
Outline Structure for Literary Essay
Sample Literary Thesis Statements
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Identifying Phrases, Independent Clauses, and Dependent Clauses
Identify the group of words in bold type as phrase, independent clause, or dependent clause.
One. Toward the monster’s palace, we see a white marble fountain jettisoning chocolate fudge all over the other giants.
Two. Before going to school, Gerard likes to make sure he’s packed his chocolate chip cookies and bagels.
Three. Because Jack’s love of eating pizza every night cannot be stopped, he finds his cardio workouts to be rather worthless.
Four. Maria finds the Lexus preferable to the BMW because of the Lexus’ lower repair costs.
Five. Greg does not drive at night because he suffers from poor nocturnal eyesight.
Six. Whenever Greg drives past HomeTown Buffet, he is overcome with depression and nausea.
Seven. People who eat at Cinnabon, according to Louis C.K., always look miserable over their poor life decisions.
Eight. After eating at Cinnabon and HomeTown Buffet, Gary has to eat a bottle of antacids.
Nine. Towards the end of the date, Gary decided to ask Maria if she’d care for another visit to HomeTown Buffet.
Ten. Whenever Maria is in the presence of a gluttonous gentleman, she withdraws into her shell.
Eleven. Greg watched Maria recoil into her shell while biting her nails.
Twelve. Greg watched Maria recoil into her private universe while she bit her nails.
Thirteen. Eating at all-you-can-eat buffets will expand the circumference of your waistline.
Fourteen. Larding your essay with grammatical errors will result in a low grade.
Fifteen. My favorite pastime is larding my essay with grammatical errors.
Sixteen. Larding my body with chocolate chunk peanut butter cookies followed by several gallons of milk, I wondered if I should skip dinner that evening.
Seventeen. After contemplating the benefits of going on a variation of the Paleo diet, I decided I was at peace being a fat man with a strong resemblance to the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
Eighteen. In the 1970s few people would consider eating bugs as their main source of protein although today world-wide food shortages have compelled a far greater percentage of the human race to entertain this unpleasant possibility.
Nineteen. Because of increased shortages in worldwide animal protein, more and more people are looking to crickets, grasshoppers, and grubs as possible complete protein amino acid alternatives.
Twenty. The percentage of people getting married in recent years has significantly declined as an economic malaise has deflated confidence in the viability of sustaining a long-term marriage.
Twenty-one. Before you decide to marry someone, consider two things: your temperament and your economic prospects.
Twenty-two. To understand the pitfalls of getting married prematurely is to embark on the road to greater wisdom.
Twenty-three. To know me is to love me.
Twenty-four. To languish in the malignant juices of self-pity after breaking up with your girlfriend is to fall down the rabbit hole of moral dissolution and narcissism.
Twenty-five. Having considered the inevitable disappointment of being rich, I decided not to rob a bank.
Twenty-six. Watching TV on a sticky vinyl sofa all day, I noticed I was developing bedsores.
Twenty-seven. While I watched TV for twenty consecutive hours, I began to wonder if life was passing me by.
Twenty-eight. Under the bridge where a swarm of mosquitos gathered, the giant belched.
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