Join Amanda weekly starting January 15th at 4:30 pm EST as she helps us understand Shakespeare’s play, ‘King Lear’.
Do you remember reading your first book? I mean really reading. Not deciphering. You sat down, and for the first time in your life the difficulty of the task fell away as you lost yourself in the great story.
When we are lost in a great piece of literature we are engrossing ourselves in one of the most intimate acts in the world. It is as though we lose ourselves in the mind of someone else. Words are powerful. We should know this. After all, words are what God used to reveal Himself to us. He wrote the law, torah, bible, and sent his son to speak to us directly. Jesus Himself is called the Word.
Not all books are as easy to understand as Dr. Seuss (although some of us struggle to understand him).
Many of the great pieces of literature require more than one read to fully comprehend. The bible itself can be read over and over and still teach us something new. That is the definition of a classic, it’s also evidence of an eternal God.
How do we begin to read hard literature? How do we even begin to understand it?
For particularly difficult pieces of literature, we can find someone to lead us through the material. That is exactly what Amanda is doing for us in her ‘King Lear’ class, which starts tomorrow, by the way.
Even with a mentor leading the way, we still need to get down to business and read. According to Mortimer Adler there are three levels of reading. Each level goes a bit further into the text. Each level is more difficult than the previous. Each level is needed in order for us to fully understand the material.
The First Level:
This is the glance. The ‘I have 20 minutes to choose a book from the library’ read. In this quick survey of the book, we do these few things:
- Read the cover
- Read the back cover copy or summary
- Check out the table of contents
- Check out the index, looking for words used a lot
- Read any appendices or works cited referenced in the back
- Read the introduction, preface, or prelude
- Maybe read the first paragraph of a few chapters to get an idea for the writer’s style.
These 7 steps can usually be completed in 20–30 minutes and should give you an idea of the thoroughness of the author, the types of words used, the genre of the book, and a glimpse of the author’s style.
The Second Level:
The second level is simple. You read the book. You may mark down words you don’t understand, but you don’t stop your reading to look them up. That comes later. So just read it. Take it in. Try your best to understand what you’re reading, but acknowledge that you probably won’t understand it all.
Most common fiction books are only read through this level.
The Third Level:
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. You read the book again. Only this time, you read with a pen. You underline, mark it up, lookup words you don’t understand. You don’t just ingest the book this time, you digest this book. Let it get down deep and fester. Sounds great right?
This is the level of reading required to truly understand the bard, the bible, and many of the classics that are worth reading over and over again.
It is because it takes these three levels for us to understand the great works that we advise you to have read the text before class.
King Lear starts tomorrow, so go get your book and walk through the first two levels with act one. Amanda will see you in class to lead you through level three and into a great new world of comprehension of the great work before you.