{"id":24133,"date":"2019-10-04T21:11:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T04:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=24133"},"modified":"2019-10-04T21:11:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T04:11:36","slug":"the-scarlet-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-scarlet-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scarlet Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading can be a daunting challenge.\u00a0 As someone who loves to read, there have been many books that I have come across where I can feel my eyes glazing over as I try to decipher the meaning of the text.\u00a0 I vividly remember this occurring for the first time when I was in high school in my AP English class when we were assigned to read Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s The Scarlet Letter<\/em> (ironically, for this class I had to read Mortimer Adler\u2019s other book, How to Read Literature like a Professor<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Now, I had read difficult books before, but nothing had prepared me for this drudgery.\u00a0 I remember trying to parse through the old language that seemed to be as foreign as Greek at times, feeling like I would have better luck if it were<\/em> Greek!\u00a0 My eyes would cross, I could feel myself dozing off, and the next thing I knew it was the due date for the exam and I had barely made it through a quarter of the book.\u00a0 Praise be to the mighty Spark Notes for its omniscience and ability to help struggling students pass high school English!<\/p>\n

This had a profound impact on me and from that moment on, I decided that I no longer enjoyed reading.\u00a0 What was once a joy and a pastime was now a chore (and a bore).\u00a0 When people would ask me if I was reading anything, I would boldly tell them, \u201cNot a chance!\u00a0 Nathaniel Hawthorne destroyed any love of reading that I once had.\u201d\u00a0 For all intents and purposes, I embroidered a metaphorical scarlet letter on my chest.<\/p>\n

On reflection, a big part of the reason I had such difficulty with The Scarlet Letter<\/em> was that I had not been taught how to read for understanding<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 I had grown accustomed to reading for information<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0 I could not appreciate the intricacy of theme or literary devices because I did not know how to look for them (sure I had a basic knowledge of what they were, but no real idea of what they looked like).\u00a0 It would not be until my senior year of high school that our teacher would teach us a method of reading a book intelligently (much to my high school self\u2019s dismay since it required much<\/em> more work than I wanted to put into it).\u00a0 But this methodology opened a up a new world of understanding in the world of literature and, what\u2019s more, it restored a joy in reading.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a travesty that we do not know how to read because there is so much we miss in literature.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I appreciate about Adler\u2019s book is that it acknowledges that different books require different modes of reading.\u00a0 One should not read a history book in the same way as one reads poetry, or Plumbing for Dummies <\/em>the way one would read To Kill a Mockingbird.\u00a0 <\/em>Different genres require different skillsets for reading effectively.\u00a0 To try and create a \u201cone size fits all\u201d mentality for reading is to do a disservice to not just the book, but the author as well.<\/p>\n

An area this comes up most frequently is in the interpretation of Scripture.\u00a0 Adler\u2019s methodologies can be applied to the different genres found within the Bible.\u00a0 Should one interpret the Psalms as one would interpret the Gospel of Matthew?\u00a0 Or should one interpret the narrative passages of Samuel and Kings with with the imagery of Revelation?\u00a0 We need to be aware of how we approach various genres if we are to aptly interpret them in a way consistent with the text.<\/p>\n

There is a level of discernment that goes into reading books, particularly in whether or not they are actually worth reading and how fast one should actually read them.\u00a0 Adler writes, \u201cEvery book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension\u201d (42).\u00a0 Should one read Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s The Cost of Discipleship <\/em>as fast as one should read Twilight?<\/em>\u00a0 I would imagine that a quick read without much deep thought into the latter would suffice while a more careful reading of the former would be more beneficial.<\/p>\n

Adler also poses four questions a reader should ask that I find beneficial to any sort of reading (pp 46-47):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What is the book about as a whole?<\/li>\n
  2. What is being said in detail, and how?<\/li>\n
  3. Is the book true, in whole or part?<\/li>\n
  4. What of it?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When we look at these questions, we find that these are active questions that allow us to not only be engaged with the reading, but to help us discern why<\/em> we read a book.\u00a0 If we read a history book for the purpose of discerning how to fix a faucet, we may not get the answers we\u2019re looking for.\u00a0 When we know an author\u2019s purpose in writing a book, it opens a window to the motivation behind it and what they are trying to communicate.<\/p>\n

    Since I learned to read a book well, it\u2019s almost become a game to discern the meaning of a book (even the \u201cnot so serious\u201d books I read).\u00a0 I would argue that every book has some<\/em> message it wants to portray (though not every book has the same depth of meaning).\u00a0 Unlocking the hidden secrets of a text and then cross examining it with other books gives a level of satisfaction that I find hard to get anywhere else.\u00a0 What I find interesting is how oftentimes I will read an academic book regarding some level of philosophy or ideology and then will find it interwoven into one of the fantasy books that I read.<\/p>\n

    My ability to read and appreciate literature has changed immensely since my junior year AP English class.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s time that I give The Scarlet Letter <\/em>another chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Reading can be a daunting challenge.\u00a0 As someone who loves to read, there have been many books that I have come across where I can feel my eyes glazing over as I try to decipher the meaning of the text.\u00a0 I vividly remember this occurring for the first time when I was in high school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[660,1626,1627],"class_list":["post-24133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-romance","tag-adler","tag-help","tag-second-chances","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24134,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24133\/revisions\/24134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}