CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES IN LITERATURE - Annotated Bibliography Example

Clarke asserts that Faulkner often writes to cover his masculine anxiety with humor, where his own male characters try to use humor as a way of combining their positions of domination and of ascertaining what masculinity means. She believes that Faulkner sees humor as a form of control, because by ridiculing his flaws, he makes them immaterial. She states that this kind of humor also proposes acrimony that reminds her of Twain, who also likes to jab on his masculinity. Clarke underlines that humor both paradoxically represents male domination and subordination.

This source supports my thesis, because it shows that examining an author’s life can help understand his/her writing. Their fears and insecurities reflect on their characters and writing strategies. Hence, readers can have a more insightful reading if they learn more about the authors of these works. In “Death, Rebirth, and the Night Journey,” Ahmad aims to examine the biographical and psychological aspects of Ghassan Kanafani’s novel All Thats Left to You. He argues that a socio-political reading of All That’s Left to You is inadequate, although it is a crucial and realistic approach to analyzing it.

Instead, he presents that the novel should also be read from a psychological perspective, which will help unravel its sophisticated techniques and internal structure. Ahmad underscores that readers should also examine Kanafani’s life, political aspirations and experiences, and his poignant death, in order to contextualize his novel as a “narrative of resistance” (66). He believes that Kanafani is more conscious as a writer than a political activist. Ahmad’s main argument is that the novel characterizes the theme of death and rebirth through Hamid’s struggle to find his mother, which identifies mother archetypes.

The journey represents the subconscious desire to become one again with the mother, which in Jungian terms, refers to rebirth. This source