reader response criticism of dead stars

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Wednesday, january 14, 2015, dead stars by paz marquez benitez (an analysis), 31 comments:.

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is this fiction or non fiction??

Fiction for me

Only the formalism approach

What is the milieu?

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Very comprehensible analysis. It helps a lot.

Phil. Literature Group ONE

Saturday, july 4, 2009.

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A Feminist Reading of Paz Marquez-Benitez's "Dead Stars"

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Read our complete notes on the short story “Dead Stars” by Paz Marquez Benitez. Our notes cover Dead Stars summary, themes, and critical analysis.

Introduction

Dead Stars is a short story of an over thirty years old bachelor, Alfredo Salazar who was about to get married to his fiancée, Esperanza. His love and passion for his fiancé started getting fade as he was attracted to another woman named Julia Salas. As Alfredo knew that his family will disapprove his desire of having another woman, he unwantedly married with Esperanza and started his own family. Later, after eight years, Alfredo went on a business trip to Julia’s place. In his visit to Julia, to his surprise, he recognized that he no more feel attracted to her anymore. He compared his love for her as dead stars, his memory of a long way to get a girl he thought he loved.

Dead Stars Summary

The story of the short story Dead Stars revolves around a man, Alfred Salazar, and his affairs. Alfred Salazar believes in true love and optimism to discover ecstasy in its stir. Esperanza is the first woman he falls in love with.

The families of both of them are acquainted with each other and hence they start a loving relationship. Both get engaged after three years of their relationship. Alfredo is a lawyer who has strong desires and wants warmth and compassion, however, Esperanza is an impassionate woman having strong will and principles. Alfredo’s love for her soon fades away when he meets Julia. Julia, now, becomes a new object of his desire.

Julia Salas is sister in law of the Judge, who is a friend of Alfredo’s father. Julia is an optimistic and enthusiastic person having her own dreams and desires.

When Alfredo comes across her, he is strongly attracted to her. On his visit to her with his father, he engages himself in conversation with her and is attracted to her charm. Even he is so passionate that he doesn’t disclose his engagement to Esperanza.

So as to avoid the discovery of his fiancée, he keeps secrets from Esperanza too. His eyes are doomed when he learns about Julia’s return to his native town. With the fear of losing her, Alfredo decides to declare his true feeling for Julia.

When the Church’s function ends, Alfredo goes to meet her, though his fiancé is waiting for him. When he reaches there, he learns that Julia has already known about his engagement to Esperanza. She wishes him for his marriage and leaves him.

On his return home, he gets a double blow. He finds Esperanza talking to her friend about loyalty and faithfulness. Alfredo senses a desire to communicate. He supports the reason for craving and choice over dishonesty.

Esperanza soon confesses that she knew about his affair with Julia. In pursuit of his lust and heart’s content, she encourages him to cancel the wedding. However, the wedding goes ahead as scheduled and Alfred surrenders to reason.

Near Julia’s native town, Alfred, after eight years, is sent to some work duty. On his visit, he feels nostalgic and cannot resist his lust for Julia and soon finds an excuse to meet her.

Julia is still single that forces Alfred to dream about starting a new life with her; however, he soon realizes that everything is not the same as it were before. Moreover, Julia has also changed lost something.

Themes in Dead Stars

Forbidden love:.

Dead Stars  expresses the subject of forbidden love. Forbidden love is only apparent and curses and disturbs the person until a person realizes his or her faults.

Responsibility:

Responsibility is another underlying theme of the story. Alfred is engaged to his beloved to get married, yet, he distracts himself with another woman Julia. He forgets his responsibility towards his to-be wife, even after eight years he still thinks of Julia until he realizes that Julia has changed herself.

Dead Stars Characters Analysis

Alfredo salazar:.

He is the son of Don Julian. He is over thirty years old bachelor. Alfred Salazar believes in true love and optimism to discover ecstasy in its stir. Esperanza is the first woman he falls in love with. After their engagement, he falls in love with Julia Salas.

She is the wife of Alfredo Salazar. Esperanza is an impassionate woman having strong will and principles. A homely woman, she is also among the lucky women who have the aptitude of consistent beauty.

Julia Salas:

She is the sister in law of Judge Dal Valle, a friend of Alfredo’s father. She is the second woman with whom Alfredo falls in love with. She remains single for her entire life.

Don Julian:

He is the father of Alfredo Salazar.

She is the only sister of Alfredo Salas.

Judge Del Valle:

He is Julia’s brother in law.

Donna Adella:

She is Julia’s sister. A pretty, small, plump woman with baby complexion.

He is a note-carrier of Esperanza and Alfredo Salazar.

Donna’s husband.

Carmen’s husband.

Brigida Samuy:

The elusive woman whom Alfredo is searching for.

Dead Stars Literary Analysis

Dead Stars  is a narrative short story by Par Marquez Benitez. The story is written in the third person point of view using the pronouns he, she, it, they, etc.

The short story  Dead Stars , written in 1925 has a significant place in Philippine English Literature as it gives birth to modern English writing in Philippine. At that time, English was newly introduced and the writers were struggling hard while using English as a medium of expression.

Dead Stars is the masterpiece of Paz Marque Benitez. In this short story, he didn’t only talk about love. His writing is significant as it reflects the spirit of the time. It depicts the language, norms and the manners of the people during that time. The readers are enabled to understand how marriage, fidelity, and courtship were viewed during the early twentieth century. This serves as a mode to compare the past and the present, and the fading traditional culture and the predominating modern culture.

The short story also illustrates the rising conjunction of sociopolitical feminism. In this story, women are represented as meek and dependent on men. Men are considered to be superior to women. Women are faithful who easily falls in love while the male is shown as uncertain, inconsistent and rational. However, the story also ruined the concept of patriarchal society as it sees the man rational and logical while woman as emotional and kind.

The setting of the short story Dead star are various:

Calle Real,

House of Judge Del Valle,

House of Don Julian in Tanda,

House of Don Julian,

Dead Stars symbolizes the unspoken present things. The affection and love between Alfredo and Julia seemed to be existing and real, however, with the passage of time, it fades away like a dead star. Hence, the disillusionment and memories of the past do not exist anymore. After the eight years of reunion, the fading love was not because of the fading youth, but because Alfred finds her different from what he perceived in the past and all the gone years. He is disillusioned. The illusions that he concealed all the years turns out to be nothing but dead stars; it was dead long ago, yet it emits apparently real lights to travel the long distance.

The devotion of Esperanza for Alfred also symbolizes love, however, she believes more in the reformative virtue than true love, that why we can say that she is in a relationship because of moral obligation.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Reader Response Theory

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Reader Response Theory by Susan Browne , Xiufang Chen , Faten Baroudi , Esra Sevinc LAST MODIFIED: 21 April 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0107

This annotated bibliography presents influential work in the area of reader response theory. While providing an overview of major research in the area of reader response, the annotated bibliography also provides current research representing various categories of reader response. The citations are organized by their dominant characteristics although there may be some overlap across categories.

Reader response theory identifies the significant role of the reader in constructing textual meaning. In acknowledging the reader’s essential role, reader response diverges from early text-based views found in New Criticism, or brain-based psychological perspectives related to reading. Literacy scholars such as David Bleich, Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser are instrumental in crafting what has come to be known as reader response. The theory maintains that textual meaning occurs within the reader in response to text and recognizes that each reader is situated in a particular manner that includes factors such as ability, culture, gender, and overall experiences. However, according to Tomkins’s 1980 edited volume Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-structuralism , reader response is not a representation of a uniform position, but is rather a term associated with theorists whose work addresses the reader, the reading process, and textual response. Although Tompkins omits the work of Louise Rosenblatt, it is Rosenblatt’s work that has come to have a vast influence in the field of reader response. Prior to the work of the New Critics, Louise Rosenblatt wrote the now-seminal text Literature as Exploration , first published in 1938, which was distinct in emphasizing both the reader and the text. In later editions of the text, Rosenblatt draws on the work of John Dewey and shifts from the use of the word “interaction” to describe reading as a “transaction,” thus giving life to the transactional theory of reading. The references in this section, including Applebee 1992 , Beach 1993 , Barton 2002 , and Harkin 2005 , provide an overview of reader response theory.

Applebee, A. “The Background for Reform.” In Literature Instruction: A Focus on Student Response . Edited by J. Langer, 1–18. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1992.

This book chapter reviews a series of studies of the elementary and secondary school curriculum, providing a rich portrait of literature instruction and suggesting a series of issues that needed to be addressed in the teaching of literature. It set the background for reform.

Barton, J. “Thinking about Reader-Response Criticism.” The Expository Times 113.5 (2002): 147–151.

DOI: 10.1177/001452460211300502

An article that outlines reader response criticism through the lens of biblical scholarly inquiry.

Beach, R. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories . Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

This book offers an in-depth review of reader response theory for teachers to build foundational knowledge to aptly use in their classrooms. Topics discussed include textual theories of response, experiential theories of response, psychological theories of response, social theories of response, cultural theories of response, and applying theory into practice, eliciting response. Key reviews of reader response criticism and glossary terms are also explored throughout the text.

Harkin, P. “The Reception of Reader-Response Theory.” College Composition and Communication 56.3 (2005): 410–425.

This essay provides a historical explanation for the place of reader response theory in English studies. The author takes a genealogical look at how reader response theory has been celebrated or rejected in English departments and what this suggests about conflicted relations between composition studies and literary studies and between research and pedagogy during the past two or three decades in the United States.

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Literary Analysis

Reader-response criticism.

We have examined many schools of literary criticism. Here you will find an in-depth look at one of them: Reader-Response.

The Purpose of Reader-Response

• why you like or dislike the text;
• explain whether you agree or disagree with the author;
• identify the text’s purpose; and
• critique the text.

Write as a Scholar

Criticize with examples.

• Is the text racist?
• Does the text unreasonably puts down things, such as religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or democrats, etc?
• Does the text include factual errors or outright lies? It is too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive?
• Is the text poorly written?
• Does it contain too much verbal “fat”?
• Is it too emotional or too childish?
• Does it have too many facts and figures?
• Are there typos or other errors in the text?
• Do the ideas wander around without making a point?

In each of these cases, do not simply criticize, but give examples. As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “confusing” or “crazy,” since readers might simply conclude that  you  are too ignorant or slow to understand and appreciate it.

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

• title of the work to which you are responding;
• the author; and
• the main thesis of the text.
• What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
• How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong?  Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human.   Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
• What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all?   Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not?   Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
• How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world?   How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition?  If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test?   Use quotes from the text to illustrate.
• What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it?  Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
• How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art?  Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.
• your overall reaction to the text;
• whether you would read something else like this in the future;
• whether you would read something else by this author; and
• if would you recommend read this text to someone else and why.

Key Takeaways

• In reader-response, the reader is essential to the meaning of a text for they bring the text to life.
• The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text.
• When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars.
• As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “boring,” “crazy,” or “dull.”  If you do criticize, base your criticism on the principles and form of the text itself.
• The challenge of a reader-response is to show how you connected with the text.

Reader-Response Essay Example

To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman’s Reading of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

At its simplest, reading is “an activity that is guided by the text; this must be processed by the reader who is then, in turn, affected by what he has processed” (Iser 63). The text is the compass and map, the reader is the explorer. However, the explorer cannot disregard those unexpected boulders in the path which he or she encounters along the journey that are not written on the map. Likewise, the woman reader does not come to the text without outside influences. She comes with her experiences as a woman—a professional woman, a divorcée, a single mother. Her reading, then, is influenced by her experiences. So when she reads a piece of literature like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, which paints a highly negative picture of Mitty’s wife, the woman reader is forced to either misread the story and accept Mrs. Mitty as a domineering, mothering wife, or rebel against that picture and become angry at the society which sees her that way.

Due to pre-existing sociosexual standards, women see characters, family structures, even societal structures from the bottom as an oppressed group rather than from a powerful position on the top, as men do. As Louise Rosenblatt states: a reader’s “tendency toward identification [with characters or events] will certainly be guided by our preoccupations at the time we read. Our problems and needs may lead us to focus on those characters and situations through which we may achieve the satisfactions, the balanced vision, or perhaps merely the unequivocal motives unattained in our own lives” (38). A woman reader who feels chained by her role as a housewife is more likely to identify with an individual who is oppressed or feels trapped than the reader’s executive husband is. Likewise, a woman who is unable to have children might respond to a story of a child’s death more emotionally than a woman who does not want children. However, if the perspective of a woman does not match that of the male author whose work she is reading, a woman reader who has been shaped by a male-dominated society is forced to misread the text, reacting to the “words on the page in one way rather than another because she operates according to the same set of rules that the author used to generate them” (Tompkins xvii). By accepting the author’s perspective and reading the text as he intended, the woman reader is forced to disregard her own, female perspective. This, in turn, leads to a concept called “asymmetrical contingency,” described by Iser as that which occurs “when Partner A gives up trying to implement his own behavioral plan and without resistance follows that of Partner B. He adapts himself to and is absorbed by the behavioral strategy of B” (164). Using this argument, it becomes clear that a woman reader (Partner A) when faced with a text written by a man (Partner B) will most likely succumb to the perspective of the writer and she is thus forced to misread the text. Or, she could rebel against the text and raise an angry, feminist voice in protest.

James Thurber, in the eyes of most literary critics, is one of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century, and his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is believed to have “ushered in a major [literary] period … where the individual can maintain his self … an appropriate way of assaulting rigid forms” (Elias 432). The rigid form in Thurber’s story is Mrs. Mitty, the main character’s wife. She is portrayed by Walter Mitty as a horrible, mothering nag. As a way of escaping her constant griping, he imagines fantastic daydreams which carry him away from Mrs. Mitty’s voice. Yet she repeatedly interrupts his reveries and Mitty responds to her as though she is “grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in the crowd” (286). Not only is his wife annoying to him, but she is also distant and removed from what he cares about, like a stranger. When she does speak to him, it seems reflective of the way a mother would speak to a child. For example, Mrs. Mitty asks, “‘Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?’ Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again” (286). Mrs. Mitty’s care for her husband’s health is seen as nagging to Walter Mitty, and the audience is amused that he responds like a child and does the opposite of what Mrs. Mitty asked of him. Finally, the clearest way in which Mrs. Mitty is portrayed as a burdensome wife is at the end of the piece when Walter, waiting for his wife to exit the store, imagines that he is facing “the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last” (289). Not only is Mrs. Mitty portrayed as a mothering, bothersome hen, but she is ultimately described as that which will be the death of Walter Mitty.

Mrs. Mitty is a direct literary descendant of the first woman to be stereotyped as a nagging wife, Dame Van Winkle, the creation of the American writer, Washington Irving. Likewise, Walter Mitty is a reflection of his dreaming predecessor, Rip Van Winkle, who falls into a deep sleep for a hundred years and awakes to the relief of finding out that his nagging wife has died. Judith Fetterley explains in her book, The Resisting Reader, how such a portrayal of women forces a woman who reads “Rip Van Winkle” and other such stories “to find herself excluded from the experience of the story” so that she “cannot read the story without being assaulted by the negative images of women it presents” (10). The result, it seems, is for a woman reader of a story like “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” to either be excluded from the text, or accept the negative images of women the story puts forth. As Fetterley points out, “The consequence for the female reader is a divided self. She is asked to identify with Rip and against herself, to scorn the amiable sex and act just like it, to laugh at Dame Van Winkle and accept that she represents ‘woman,’ to be at once both repressor and repressed, and ultimately to realize that she is neither” (11). Thus, a woman is forced to misread the text and accept “woman as villain.” as Fetterley names it, or rebel against both the story and its message.

So how does a woman reader respond to this portrayal of Mrs. Mitty? If she were to follow Iser’s claim, she would defer to the male point of view presented by the author. She would sympathize with Mitty, as Thurber wants us to do, and see domineering women in her own life that resemble Mrs. Mitty. She may see her mother and remember all the times that she nagged her about zipping up her coat against the bitter winter wind. Or the female reader might identify Mrs. Mitty with her controlling mother-in-law and chuckle at Mitty’s attempts to escape her control, just as her husband tries to escape the criticism and control of his own mother. Iser’s ideal female reader would undoubtedly look at her own position as mother and wife and would vow to never become such a domineering person. This reader would probably also agree with a critic who says that “Mitty has a wife who embodies the authority of a society in which the husband cannot function” (Lindner 440). She could see the faults in a relationship that is too controlled by a woman and recognize that a man needs to feel important and dominant in his relationship with his wife. It could be said that the female reader would agree completely with Thurber’s portrayal of the domineering wife. The female reader could simply misread the text.

Or, the female reader could rebel against the text. She could see Mrs. Mitty as a woman who is trying to do her best to keep her husband well and cared for. She could see Walter as a man with a fleeting grip on reality who daydreams that he is a fighter pilot, a brilliant surgeon, a gun expert, or a military hero, when he actually is a poor driver with a slow reaction time to a green traffic light. The female reader could read critics of Thurber who say that by allowing his wife to dominate him, Mitty becomes a “non-hero in a civilization in which women are winning the battle of the sexes” (Hasley 533) and become angry that a woman’s fight for equality is seen merely as a battle between the sexes. She could read Walter’s daydreams as his attempt to dominate his wife, since all of his fantasies center on him in traditional roles of power. This, for most women, would cause anger at Mitty (and indirectly Thurber) for creating and promoting a society which believes that women need to stay subservient to men. From a male point of view, it becomes a battle of the sexes. In a woman’s eyes, her reading is simply a struggle for equality within the text and in the world outside that the text reflects.

It is certain that women misread “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” I did. I found myself initially wishing that Mrs. Mitty would just let Walter daydream in peace. But after reading the story again and paying attention to the portrayal of Mrs. Mitty, I realized that it is imperative that women rebel against the texts that would oppress them. By misreading a text, the woman reader understands it in a way that is conventional and acceptable to the literary world. But in so doing, she is also distancing herself from the text, not fully embracing it or its meaning in her life. By rebelling against the text, the female reader not only has to understand the point of view of the author and the male audience, but she also has to formulate her own opinions and create a sort of dialogue between the text and herself. Rebelling against the text and the stereotypes encourages an active dialogue between the woman and the text which, in turn, guarantees an active and (most likely) angry reader response. I became a resisting reader.

Works Cited

Elias, Robert H. “James Thurber: The Primitive, the Innocent, and the Individual.”  Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 431–32. Print.

Fetterley, Judith.  The Resisting Reader . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.

Hasley, Louis. “James Thurber: Artist in Humor.”  Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 11. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 532–34. Print.

Iser, Wolfgang.  The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Print.

Lindner, Carl M. “Thurber’s Walter Mitty—The Underground American Hero.”  Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 440–41. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M.  Literature as Exploration . New York: MLA, 1976. Print.

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”  Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading . Ed. William Vesterman. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1993. 286–89. Print.

Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism.”  Reader Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism . Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. ix-xxvi. Print.

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Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or “audience”) and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.

Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts “real existence” to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates their own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism,

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“Death of the Author” in the Literature Classroom and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars

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Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students’ engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students’ own interpretations of the authors’ texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of Roland Barthes’s the Death of the Author manifesto to their students. Barthes’s concept helps students to recalibrate the value of an author’s biography and the author’s interpretation when analyzing a text. Just such a power recalibration takes place for teen characters in Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Hazel, the protagonist, demonstrates sharp literary critique informed by Barthes’s theory when she engages with most texts. However, she initially rejects the Death of the Author approach when it comes to interpreting one idolized piece of literature: her favorite novel. During the novel’s emotional climax, Hazel repositions herself in the author-reader relationship and takes a more empowered position. She then discovers a new parallel text that helps her to find solace and to reclaim authority from the Author-god.

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Tara Moore is an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabethtown College where she teaches workplace writing and young adult literature. She has published books about Christmas culture, including Victorian Christmas in Print (2009) and Christmas: The Sacred to Santa (2014). She has previously published articles in The ALAN Review, SIGNAL Journal, Victorian Literature and Culture and numerous collections. Her research interests include young adult dystopian novels and representations of women and girls.

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Moore, T. “Death of the Author” in the Literature Classroom and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars . Child Lit Educ 54 , 97–109 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-021-09450-z

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