10: reader response essay

The goal of this essay is to explain how you experienced reading the play relative to specific techniques and elements of the play. In a reader response essay, you may refer to yourself as a reader, (using ‘I’ or ‘we’), explaining how specific elements of the play affected your emotional and intellectual response. You should not express your attitude about the quality of the play: it should analyze the way the author uses the text to have an effect on a specific reader, namely yourself or a reader just like you.

Basically, you are linking technique to the impact it has on the reader, instead of theme. Your thesis statement will identify the specific effect the identified techniques or features have on your reading of the play.

Choose one of the following prompts below: I have listed them in order of increasing difficulty. Again, please choose wisely.

1.    How does the playwright shape your reaction to or identification with one of the characters? In other words, how do you feel about that character and why, using the text as support?

2.    How do specific elements of the plot structure affect your reading of the play?

3.    How does the use of dramatic irony throughout the play affect your reading of the play?

draft due: Friday 13 March

published essay due: Monday 16 March

sample thesis for choice #1:

To the reader, Don Pedro first seems genial and strong as a leader; in the last two acts, however, we see him as foolish and even pitiful because he has relied excessively on intellect rather than emotion.