Readers have been responding to what they have read and experienced since the dawn of literature. For example, we have Plate and Aristotle who were concerned about audience responses and how plays generated pity and fear on them. Still, the audience or readers were passive. After the appearance of reader response theory, readers are activated. They involve themselves to elaborate the text, fill in the gaps and enact their experiences with the text. Most reader response critics can be divided into three groups. One of these groups is, as they are called, the structuralist.
They believe that the reader must be an active participant in the creation of meaning. The meaning, for them, is considered as a complex system of signs and codes that the reader should discover. Borrowing their linguistic vocabulary, theory and methods from Saussure, structutalists believe that codes, signs and rules must be solved in the text to get its meaning. They also think that every reader has literary competence that makes us, as readers, unite with the text, provide interpretation and adjust our reading or other`s interpretation`s to it.
We, as a structualist reader, can see that Edgar Alan Poe`s “the Fall of House of Usher” is a good example to be read through the strucsturalist criteria. We can apply it on the thematic unity and two important codes in the story. To begin with the thematic unity, we know that the unity is not only a textual unity, but it is the way that the readers use to interpret the text. At the begging of Allan Poe`s story, the thematic unity is established. Then we can follow it through the whole story. It is a theme of a mysterious unity of a universe.
The Essay on Beowulf Readers Response Epic Story Grendel
Beowulf is considered the oldest of the great poems written in English, it may have been composed more than twelve hundred years ago, maybe even the first half of the eighth century. The epic Beowulf is the establishment of every story or movie based on Action and Adventure. I found the story extremely descriptive and enjoyable. There have been plenty of movies and stories based on the storyline ...
We can find mystery in words and images such as “a dull, dark, soundless day in the autumn of the year”. Even the year here is not specified to make it more ambiguous. The title itself “the Fall of House of Usher” includes the name of the man and the house itself, so we have analogy between the house and the people which make it more united and ambiguous at the same time. In addition, our literary competence makes us discover that in the opening paragraph, there is a “pathetic fallacy”. We can see that the gloomy natural events reflect the human events.
For example, “oppressively low”, “singularly dreary” and “melancholy house of Usher” all of these represent the gloomy and sad situations of the characters. Moreover, the building has the same atmosphere “bleak wall, black and lurid tarn”. Therefore, we have a mysterious unity that links time, house and people. At the end of the story, all of them collapse in one fall after the death of Usher. To speak about the first code which is hermeneutic one, it is concerned with enigma, puzzle or unanswered question.
We can notice the use of this code through the narrative of the story. The way of narrating mystifies us. It makes us ask several questions such as why the scene is frightening? Why the year is not specified? Who does Usher fear? What will happen next? This code works since the narrator kept the solutions for these questions hidden. He only gives us partial answers such as “I know not how it was… but is was a mystery” and “it was beyond our depth”. The second code is symbolic one. It concerns about the binaries that may control the story.
Binary operation can be pictured in Poe`s story from the boundary between humans and non-humans which are transgressed. For example, the building has human`s features as he said, “vacant eye-like windows”. Therefore, we can feel the merging of human and inanimate things. We also can notice the same thing when Usher refers to the effect of the building as “physique”. This personification of the house relates to his belief that the unique and ghastly atmosphere around the house shares the same “sentience”.
The Essay on Fall Of The House Of Usher 2
Edgar Allan Poe wrote, ?The Fall of the House of Usher?, using characterization, and imagery to depict fear, terror, and darkness on the human mind. Roderick and his twin sister, Madeline, are the last of the all time-honored House of Usher (Jacobs and Roberts, pg. 462). They are both suffering from rather strange illnesses, which may be attributed to the intermarriage of the family. Roderick ...
All in all, reader response theory gives a space to readers to speak out, to enact themselves in the text and to involve their experiences to it. Structualists are one of those critics who find that the meaning of a text can be discovered by readers through following the thematic unity and through solving the codes. In Edgar Allan Poe`s story, we find the mysterious- thematic unity, and we find out the hermeneutic and symbolic codes.
