How Does Your Brain Grapple with Difficult Text?

Every once in a while I choose a hard book—often a canon classic. I do this for 2 reasons: (1) to continue to be a learner in my field of literature and (2) to understand what I’m asking students to do when I ask them to grapple with texts that are difficult for them. 

Because I love to read, and because I read a lot, I’m a pretty skilled reader. I don't even think about what my brain is doing to make meaning. But many students are not as skilled. So every once in a while it’s helpful to put myself in their shoes, so to speak. To read something that doesn’t naturally capture all of my attention and fully submerge me, until I emerge, blinking, into the real world again, 3 hours later—like the latest Inspector Gamache mystery or Blake Crouch sci-fi thriller. To read something where I need to think about monitoring my comprehension and making meaning from the text. To understand what I am asking my students to do when I ask them to read texts that are difficult for them.

My recent challenge was the Iliad. 

In my class, we talk about 7 strategies of effective readers. They (1) plan and monitor their comprehension, (2) determine importance, (3) ask questions, (4) visualize, (5) make connections, (6) make inferences, and (7) synthesize thinking. What did that look like as I read the Iliad?

(1) Plan and monitor comprehension: I wanted to understand why this text is considered a foundational work of literature to western culture, and to what extent, if any, that is still relevant today. And I want to think about the strategies I use when I encounter difficult text. There are 24 books in the Iliad, and I planned to read 1 per night. Sometimes I realized I’d read several pages and hadn’t really been paying attention. Sometimes I’d go back and re-read it. Sometimes I’d glance over it and decide it was not important to my plan, so I’d just move on. Sometimes (true confessions) I’d check Wikipedia. (Note: I do tell students to feel free to use resources to support your reading—but not to replace it. Decide for yourself whether you need the summary before to have a mental construct for what’s coming, or after to check your comprehension.)  
  
(2) Determine importance: There are so many characters and so many allusions to other Greek stories—sometimes I’d look them up (see next section) and sometimes I’d just decide all I really need to know about those pages is Hector fights and kills a bunch of Greek heroes—I don’t need to know all their back stories.

(3) Ask questions: There were factual questions for comprehension: Who are these various people and gods? How are they related? Which side are they on? Half the time, at first, I didn’t know whether I was reading about who I’ve traditionally thought of as the Greeks or the Trojans—Danaans, Argives, Achaeans are all synonyms for Greeks. Then there were the bigger questions: What is honor? What is worth fighting and dying for? What is winning? What are the women, the ordinary citizens of Troy, and the Greek families left behind for 10 years thinking? How much agency and responsibility do people actually have? How do humans and the divine interact?

(4) Visualize: The descriptions of armor, fighting, and killing are pretty vivid and pervasive. Sometimes I’d stop and search Google Images for things like “greaves.” This is going to lead right into connections….

(5) Make connections: After visualizing many Homeric battle scenes, I came in my daily Bible reading to the death of Saul, and suddenly I visualized that scene in a way I never had before. The Philistines even stripped him of his armor, just like the Trojans did Patroclus, though the Greeks finally reclaimed Patroclus’s body—as the people of Jabesh Gilead did with Saul’s (1 Samuel 31).  

(6) Make inferences: I really don't like Achilles. He has anger issues and no respect for women. (Not that any of them did--especially Agamemnon. Seriously--he offers to return #1 prize woman, plus the pick of the top 12 women of Troy when sacked, plus the hand of any 1 of his 4 daughters in marriage!)

(7) Synthesize: The gods make even the worst interpretations of the God of the Old Testament seem...trustworthy and just...by comparison. They bicker, compete, play favorites, make intentionally misleading promises, and just plain manipulate people for the sake of their own Olympian politics.

All told, I'm just really glad I didn't live in that world--it wasn't much of a Golden Age for men or women. But I am glad I read the book. I felt immersed in the world, culture, and values distant from me in time and place for the month it took me to work my way through it. It has enriched the way I think about any related story, concept, or allusion.  

Plus, it feels really cool be able to say, “Yes, I’ve read the Iliad.”

How does your brain grapple with difficult text? Why is that important?

P.S. The last time I blogged on my reading of a difficult text was with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Here's what I learned then.