Draft Instructions for Unit I: Interpretation
Writing/Reading Skills: Annotating a text, Summarizing a Source, Interpreting a Source,
Reflecting on How Interpretation Works
Sources: 1. S.Y. Agnon’s “Fable of the Goat” or Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”
2. Stanley Fish’s “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One”
Pre- and Post-drafts: See course wiki for due dates and copies of handouts
Draft: (4 pg., double spaced) due Monday, September 21 in class [2 copies + 1 copy
emailed to Brian.Meredith@umb.edu ]
Revision: (5 pg., double spaced) due Monday, October 5 in class [+ draft with my
comments]
Experts often spend a good deal of time interpreting primary source materials. The same is
true in our daily lives, where we often are confronted with a puzzling story or incident and
have to make sense out of it. In doing so, we search for clues, meanings, repetitions, and
patterns (or breaks in patterns) so that we can come up with an interpretation that is based
on careful analysis. This is what you will do in your first assignment, but you will also step
back to reflect on how you did it. In other words, you will interpret a puzzling text, but you
will also think critically about how and why you came up with a certain interpretation.
Your task as a writer is to explain all this to your readers. So, in this first assignment you
will learn to construct an interpretation of a piece of writing by finding and examining
support for your interpretation. You will also reflect on how your own knowledge and
broader cultural assumptions influence the way you go about interpreting a text.
To do so, you will use the work of legal scholar and critic Stanley Fish to help you think
about how readers interpret. In his famous essay "How to Recognize a Poem When You See
One," Fish argues that we recognize and interpret poems – or any "text," including physical
gestures – not just by discovering the meaning that is inherent in the text and not just by
bringing our personal interpretations. Instead, he argues, readers interpret by working
with shared, cultural knowledge and also with what is inherent in a text. Two texts that
we’ve read – S.Y. Agnon’s “Fable of the Goat” and Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War
Story" – offer themselves to readers, but these texts resist telling us what they mean. This
leaves readers with the task of interpretation. In your essay you will undertake the twofold
task of (1) arguing for your interpretation of Agnon’s or O'Brien's text – i.e., explicating
what it means, and (2) explaining, with the help of Stanley Fish, where your interpretation
comes from – i.e., how or why you interpret it in the way that you do.
Draft due in class on Monday, Sept. 21th:
In your four-page draft you will argue for your interpretation of the story you chose, carefully
offering supporting examples from the text. Along the way, you'll need to consider some
objections to your interpretation (e.g., parts of the text that don't fit your interpretation).
Spend the last page or so taking a close look at how you've chosen to interpret the story, so
that you can respond to Fish. Think about each step you took to construct your interpretation.
In doing so, ask yourself these kinds of questions:

How did you decide what means what?

How did you come up with your perspective?

What might you say about how you went about interpreting the story?

To what extent do you think your interpretation would be the one any reader
would come up with, and to what extent is it unique?

To what extent – i.e., exactly where and how – might you argue that the story’s
meaning lies in the actual story or in your own head?

Was your interpretation influenced by anyone else? A group? A community? A
specific person?
Please print TWO COPIES of your draft. EMAIL a third copy to me at Brian.Meredith@umb.edu.
Staple the printed copies and bring them to class on Monday, Sept. 21st