Reader-Response Critical Strategy

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Reader-Response Critical Strategy According to The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, reader response criticism focuses its attention on the reader rather than the work itself. This approach to literature describes what goes on in the reader’s mind during the process of reading a text (Meyer 1552). While reading My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, a reader can take the words of each stanza in several different ways. Roethke never made it clear about how he actually wanted the reader of the poem to take his words; he left it up to them. My Papa’s Waltz can be looked at in two different ways, as a poem about a happy relationship between a father and son or as a poem about parental abuse. This poem takes the form of a child remembering a past encounter with their father. The four main questions that the reader needs to think about while reading a piece of literature and thinking about reader-response are as follows: 1. How do you respond to the work? 2. How do your own experiences and expectations affect your reading and interpretation? 3. What is the work’s original or intended audience? To what extent are you similar to or different from that audience? 4. Do you respond in the same way to the work after more than one reading? (Meyer 1567). Once the reader answers these following questions, it will be easier for them to determine what kind of reader response they got from the piece and what the author actually wanted them to get. The main feeling I got after reading this poem is it being about a son being abused by his father, while his mother sat by and did nothing. The first line of this poem is the most striking to me which gave me the thought of abuse right off the bat, “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.” These two lines not only give me the idea that someone has been drinking too much, but whoever is saying this is a
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