Reader Response Paper – Kate Chopin’s Work
Choose one of the works you read for the discussion, either “Desiree’s Baby” or “The Story of an Hour” and write a reader-response paper about it.
What is a reader-response paper?
Polyvalence reader-response critics are interested in the phenomenon of polyvalence—why texts mean different things to different people. They pay special attention to four factors that often cause readers to understand or experience texts differently.
- Social Location. The social location of a reader refers to identifying characteristics such as age, gender, nationality, race, health, career, social class, personality type, and marital status. Readers who share certain aspects of social location tend to understand texts in similar ways that can be distinguished from understandings produced by readers from a different social location.
- Reading Strategy. The manner in which a text is received affects the way in which it is interpreted. For example, if a text is heard out loud, it might be understood differently than if it is read silently. If a section of a text is read as a pericope, it might be understood differently than if it is encountered as an episode in a longer work. If a book is read as a part of a larger book (“the Bible”), it might be understood differently than if it is read as a freestanding work.
- Empathy Choice. With narrative literature, readers will experience the meaning of a story differently depending on the characters with whom they most identify.
- Conception of Meaning. Diverse interpretations of a text’s meaning are determined at a basic level by different philosophical concepts of what constitutes meaning (a cognitive message to be passed from author to reader, or an affective or emotive response produced in readers through the experience of receiving the text).
Source: Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament. Published by Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Copyright 2009.
What you should include:
- An introduction – You should discuss one specific part of the story that drew your interest and summarize the material.
- Your short response paper can be centered around key important ideas highlighted in the work. Use direct quotations from the work.
- A body – Write a clear and organized reaction to this work. Consider how the work is related to real-life families, your own life, and/or society.
- Evaluate the merit of the work, its strengths and weaknesses, and its completeness or lack thereof.
- A Conclusion-Specify whether you would recommend this story to others and why. How can it influence other readers?
What to avoid:
- Plagiarism.
- Misuse of AI/Non-disclosure of use of AI.
- Writing a chronological summary of the work.
- Writing a thesis paper. This is not an argumentative essay, and it goes beyond stating and proving a point.
- Writing general opinions or opinions that are not substantiated by evidence from the text.
- Repetitiveness
Submission Instructions:
- Write a 2-3 page essay, page count excludes the cover page and works cited page, responding to either “Desiree’s Baby” or “The Story of an Hour.”
- Using reader response critical theory, provide your opinion on the work’s strengths and/or shortcomings. This short paper will demonstrate that you have internalized and understood Baldwin’s work and that you can summarize the material and substantiate your reaction to it.
