"Getting" literature can be frustrating. There are often too many things to talk about. Or, sometimes, we only get a shaky "sense" of the text's meaning. What do we do to gain clarity over the meaning of the text?
Ask yourself questions about the text.
1.Use 5Ws1H to clarify basic details of the text.
What is the form of the text? Is it drama, prose or poetry?
Who is involved in the text?
What are these people doing? Or, what is happening in the text?
Where is the action occurring?
How is the action of the text occurring?
Is the text addressed to someone? Perhaps it is an epistolary poem or novel. Who is this someone? Why are they being addressed?
2. Ask yourself: What is the text about?
For starters, examine the title of the text. What information does it offer you?
For instance, Age of Iron by J.M Coetzee alludes to the Iron Age of Hesiod's Five Ages, in which humans live an existence of toil and misery. In Hesiod's Iron Age, children dishonour their parents, brother fights with brother and the social contract between guest and host (xenia) is forgotten. During this age, might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good. As a first-time reader, we may come to expect the human condition in the novel to be an unpleasant one, with hostile human relationships.
As the reader delves into the epistolary novel (form), they may realise that Age of Iron is indeed a befitting title, for the text is set in apartheid South Africa, or more specifically, the State of Emergency in mid-1980s (setting), exploring police brutality and widespread socio-political unrest (relevant actions and setting/space). The images of the burning shanties of the black community, black youth insurgents who only believe in conquering state-sanctioned violence with violence, and the loss of parenthood and childhood, "There are no more fathers and mothers", coheres with the connotation of armageddon in the title.
Yet, not all of the elements of Hesiod's Iron Age find parallels in Coetzee's novel. Children, specifically black children, in Coetzee's Age of Iron do not dishonour their parents. Rather, they are a source of honour, serving as figures of apartheid resistance and Black hope, as Florence, a black woman and domestic helper of Mrs Curren, comments, “These are good children, they are like iron, we are proud of them.” Florence's girls are even named "Beauty" and "Hope", representative of her outlook of a South Africa and of a future without apartheid.
List some topic words that you think appropriately summarise the text (such as loss, grief, self-actualisation, etc).
Then, consider furnishing these topic words with more detail, perhaps in phrases (loss of individual freedom, grief over death of a beloved, etc).
Finally, try expressing the subject matter in a full sentence, or multiple sentences. However, keep the sentences succinct!
Example: One might posit that the subject matter of Playing for Time by Arthur Miller is about the personal compromises faced by the musicians of the Birkenau Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz in trading (or prostituting) their musicianship/musical talent for the chance of escaping the Holocaust alive.
In the aforementioned example, you may realise that the candidate has decided to include essential details of plot and a central tension/struggle/problem/concern in their summary. You may consider doing so too.
3. Examine the text in universal terms that are relevant to the human condition, in terms that are more accessible to you.
Whilst J.M Coetzee's Age of Iron is linguistically complex and abstruse, the autodiegetic narrator Mrs Curren's words are ultimately emotional confessions, a means of helping her make sense of the world around her. As an insulated, and privileged, white woman in apartheid South Africa, her journey into the heart of societal turmoil of Guguletu is deeply confusing, a direct confrontation to and subversion of her world-view/peaceful white existence in white suburbia.
The epistolary novel thus, can be read as a narrative of existential crisis, as Curren undergoes an epistemological awakening and re-evaluates all of her formative experiences, for she can never be certain of what she thinks she knows anymore.
Let's practice!
The following poem is titled "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" and is written by William Wordsworth.
Earth has not any thing to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
The title offers the reader some information of the setting of the poem: Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
On first glance, the poem is about the Westminister Bridge and the views it offers, specifically that of the River Thames. Let us furnish that with more detail. What are some characteristics of said views?
Wordsworth describes the view as a"sight so touching in its majesty". Thus, it must be about the sublimity of the view upon Westminister Bridge, of River Thames.
Although the poem is set in the "City", Wordsworth is not precluded from the sublimity of the natural world, perhaps suggesting that a profound and genuine appreciation of nature can still occur in an urbanised environment.
It is also difficult to miss out on the transcendental effects of experiencing nature's sublimity in the poem, in considering the passionate hyperbole with which Wordsworth relishes in nature's company, "Never did sun more beautifully steep/In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;/Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!"
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