reader response essay template

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How to Write a Reader Response

Last Updated: July 23, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 461,165 times.

A reader response assignment asks you to explain and defend your personal reaction to an assigned text. Reader response papers can be difficult because they force you, the reader, to take responsibility for giving meaning to the text. Often these assignments feel open-ended and vague, but don't worry, a good reader response paper will follow a standard essay format that you can easily master. This guide will walk you through the creation of a well-crafted reader response paper that's sure to wow your instructor and earn you an awesome grade.

What to Include in a Reader Response

• Introduce the name and author of the text.
• Explain what the text is about.
• Write about what you thought of the text, and why.
• Answer any guided reading questions you're assigned.
• Give examples to support your thoughts.
• Conclude with a summary of your thoughts.

Writing the Reader Response

• It is often helpful to use the first body paragraph to include more information about the text, the plotline, major themes, etc., and then use the rest of the paragraphs to provide an analysis of how you felt about the text.

• Remember that a reader response is meant to be personal, so it's OK to incorporate personal anecdotes and opinions into your analysis.
• Example: "Forcing Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet "A" reminded me of a time when I was cyber-bullied in eighth grade, and my "friends" spread rumors about me online where the whole school could see."

• Example: "At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, Manolin promises to once again fish with Santiago, so the old man no longer has to be alone. This was Santiago's greatest wish, but it was a different kind of success than he initially set out to achieve."

• Example: "'My big fish must be somewhere,' said Santiago. This is exactly how I felt after I received my third rejection letter, but like Santiago, I kept trying, and eventually I was accepted."
• Make sure and cite your examples per class directions. You will usually be required to note the page numbers of any quotations or specific examples in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

• A great way to think of your conclusion is that it's one last chance to explain to your reader how you see all of your points fitting together.

• Sometimes it's hard to see our own mistakes, so it can really help to exchange papers with a friend, and proofread each other's work.

Drafting the Reader Response

• "Even though I found The Scarlett Letter hard to follow at times, Hester Prynne's story is still relatable, and made me think a lot about the effects of publicly shaming people online."
• "Some people believe the Old Man and the Sea is a book about failure, but it is really a story of perseverance that teaches us that success may not always come in the form we expect, and even disasters can lead to positive outcomes."

• Introduction: 1 paragraph.
• Analysis/Body Paragraphs: 3-4 paragraphs. How you organize these paragraphs will depend on the parameters of the assignment.
• Conclusion: 1 paragraph.

Reading the Text

• Do you like or dislike the text?
• Can you identify the author's purpose?
• Do you agree or disagree with the author?
• Does the text relate to you and your life? If so, how? If not, why not?
• Does the text agree with, or go against your personal world view?
• What, if anything, did you learn from the text?

• Taking a bit of extra time during this phase will save you a lot of time in the writing process. [9] X Research source

• I think that...
• I feel that...
• I see that...
• I have learned that...

Sample Reader Response

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://penandthepad.com/rules-writing-reading-response-essay-3968.html
• ↑ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jefferson-english102/chapter/reader-response-criticism-american-literature-i/
• ↑ https://writingstudio.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/Reading-Response.pdf
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/steps_for_revising.html
• ↑ https://faculty.washington.edu/momara/Reader%20Response.pdf
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
• ↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
• ↑ http://education-portal.com/articles/Step-by-Step_Guide_to_Writing_a_Great_Reading_Response_Paper.html
• ↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

About This Article

To write a reader response, develop a clear thesis statement and choose example passages from the text that support your thesis. Next, write an introduction paragraph that specifies the name of the text, the author, the subject matter, and your thesis. Then, include 3-4 paragraphs that discuss and analyze the text. Finish up with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes your arguments and brings the reader back to your thesis or main point! For tips on analyzing the text before writing your assignment, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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15 Student Essay Example: Reader Response

“the bees without a king”.

By Ethan McCall

When reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “The Drone King,” most readers would come away from the story with the idea that Sheldon Quick is just a crazy businessman who invested in the wrong idea. I mean, what sane person would think that inventing carrier bees in a world with the wireless telegraph is a good idea? That’s just the thing though. No sane person would think that it’s a sound business idea. However, this story by Kurt Vonnegut likely speaks differently to a particular audience. This story’s implied readers are a specific demographic of men who call themselves Incels. While it at first appears to be a story that reflects with and represents the ideologies of Incels, it eventually reveals itself to be a critique of their worldview and ideologies.

Now, before I go any further, I must first shed some light on what an Incel is and the community that they belong to. Incel is a term that means “involuntarily celibate.” This online community of Incels is comprised of men who are bitter about their lack of sexual experience, and they blame women for it. The men belonging to this group also blame women and feminism for the “downfall” of society. They believe that women have dominated the world and now unfairly discriminate against men, thus robbing them of the social dominance in society that they believe men should have (Glace 288-289).

The character of Sheldon Quick in Vonnegut’s story is eerily similar to these men who call themselves Incels. Sheldon Quick is a man who has enjoyed a significant level of success and wealth throughout his life. One would think that given his circumstances, he has almost everything that he could ever want. However, from his first appearance, his biases become clear. When the stockbroker enters the Millennium Club to meet Mr. Quick, he is stopped at the front desk and informed that there are no women allowed into the club (Vonnegut). As a reader, this immediately sets off alarm bells in my head and paints an unflattering picture of Sheldon Quick. The Millennium Club and its patrons very clearly have some very negative views on women if they won’t even allow them to enter the building. However, someone from the Incel community would very likely agree with and praise this rule for how it puts women back into their place.

Rather than women dominating men and taking over their spaces as Incels believe women have been doing for quite some time now, they aren’t even allowed in the same spaces as men anymore. This lack of proximity lets men be themselves and innovate as they are supposed to without being disturbed by the lesser sex. To Incels, women have no inherent value aside from being able to have sex with men. This mindset can be seen in Glace’s article on Incels. When women have expressed that men who only want sex are disgusting, Incels have responded callously: “[W]hat the fuck else is there to want from such a vapid shell of a person? Your only redeeming quality is that you can lay still and take a dick. Why are you surprised?” (Glace, Taking the Black Pill 294-295). However, these roles are swapped within the world of the bees. The male bees are exterminated once they fulfill their only function of mating with the queen (Vonnegut). The reason that Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, are so interested in the plight of the male bee is because they are being discriminated against in the same way that Incels discriminate against women.

This is another sentiment that Incels latch onto and agree with. They believe that men are the wrongfully oppressed gender, and women have stolen their rightful place in society (Glace 288-289). This idea that men are being oppressed by women is further expanded upon when Mr. Quick takes the stockbroker up to the roof where his bees are being kept. When they arrive on the roof, they come across the scene of large bees stumbling out of their hives being hunted and killed by smaller bees. As Mr. Quick saved the large bees, the stockbroker asked him what was happening. Mr. Quick replies that it’s a bee war between the large males and the smaller female bees. When the stockbroker asks which bees the hives belonged to originally, Mr. Quick says that “Your question is good enough to be chiseled in granite for all time to ponder” (Vonnegut). From this scene, it becomes very clear how Mr. Quick feels about the plight of the male bees, and by extension, the human males of our world.

Mr. Quick believes that males have constructed society as we know it. They’ve worked tirelessly to construct the foundation of the world. However, now women have come in and pushed the men out of their positions of power, thereby taking the world for themselves. An Incel reader reading this would most likely be agreeing with Mr. Quick and his views on the world. This way of thinking about the role of women is very much in line with how Incels think about women. They have unrightfully taken the roles of leadership that men used to have, and are now discriminating against them, exactly how the male bees from the hives that they built are being pushed out from their homes and being torn to pieces by the female bees.

Much like Incels, Mr. Quick has determined that men are under attack from women, and drastic measures need to be taken in order to save the male species from this unrightful persecution. Due to this unfair exclusion of male bees from their hives, Mr. Quick is determined to save them, because much like the human male, Mr. Quick believes that male bees will be safe from female tyranny if they are kept away from women. He does this by creating a new hive for them that consists only of other male bees that have been forced out of their hives. In their new hives, they aren’t forced to do anything or be productive. According to Mr. Quick, the reason that the male bees can enjoy their lives in such leisure is that they are free from the demanding and thankless females (Vonnegut). This is very similar to the Millennium Club to which Mr. Quick belongs due to the fact that in both the new hive and the Millennium Club, no women are allowed. Mr. Quick’s observations about bees have poisoned his views on women.

From this point on, a reader from the Incel community would likely expect that Mr. Quick would continue to fight against the female rule that the world has come to be subjected to. However, subverting these expectations of the reader, the story starts to slowly show that Mr. Quick’s philosophy is incorrect. When Mr. Quick tells the stockbroker that they will only have to provide each of their bees with a penny’s worth of honey for an entire year, the stockbroker asks a very astute question: why don’t the male bees make their honey? This is when Mr. Quick reveals that it’s only the female workers that make honey. The stockbroker then points out the obvious. “Huh. I guess that’s why the female workers knock off the males, eh? The males are nothing but a drain on the community” (Vonnegut). This is a key moment in the story that shows just how biased Mr. Quick is. Even though he knows that these male workers contribute nothing and instead are only a burden on the colony, he still believes that the female bees clearing them out of the hive is unjust.

This echoes back to his situation. He was left a large sum of money by his father and has spent his life doing anything but work. Mr. Quick sees himself in the male bees. They’re both useless and provide nothing to their respective societies, yet Mr. Quick thinks that they both deserve a respected spot in the societies that they’ve contributed nothing to. A reader from the Incel community would likely be affected negatively by this development in the story. While the story was at first reiterating and reaffirming Incel ideology, all of a sudden, it’s pointing out flaws in their beliefs.

The ideals of Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, continue to be challenged, and ultimately proven wrong, at the press conference that he holds to demonstrate how bees can live in a male-only hive. According to a study by Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan on political narratives, telling a story means to lie or speak falsely. This story is a distortion of an otherwise uncomfortable reality and lying (70). This sort of story is exactly what Mr. Quick tells to the press during his conference. He goes on about how the only crime that male bees have committed is that they can’t make honey, yet they are discriminated against and killed for it. He declares that this system needs to be stopped for the safety of bees, but it’s obvious at this point that Mr. Quick is also talking about human women as well as bees.

However, despite his grandiose speech to the press, when Mr. Quick releases the bees so that they can go to their all-male colony, they don’t. Instead, they go back to the colonies that are run by the female bees and are subsequently killed. It’s at this point in the story that it subverts the expectations of the Incel reader about where the story was going. They were most likely expecting the story to praise Mr. Quick as a hero who was liberating men from the tyranny of females, but rather, the story shows Mr. Quick as a bitter old man who can’t accept his shortcomings and instead blames all of his problems on women and society as a whole. Thus, condemning Incels and their hatred of women, showing them that their lack of importance in society is their fault rather than a malicious plot by women to overthrow men.

While this story first appeared to agree with and support Incel beliefs, painting Mr. Quick to be a wise old man who has realized that women are the problem with society, as the story progresses, it shows that Mr. Quick is a lot of things, but wise isn’t one of them. Instead, he’s a man who was frightened by the social power of women increasing. Seeing this as a threat to men everywhere, Mr. Quick, in his attempt to prove that women were unnecessary, proved only that the ideals he and many Incels believe in are undeniably flawed and fundamentally wrong. This story uses the sympathy that Incel readers initially had for Mr. Quick as a way to challenge their beliefs. By the end of the story, when the character they supported so much is proven to be nothing but a sad man whose judgment was clouded by hate, Incel readers are encouraged to look inward and examine the beliefs that led Mr. Quick to this point and think about where their beliefs will take them. The story uses the downfall of Mr. Quick to inspire a change from the hateful ideology of Incels to something kinder and more tolerant.

Works Cited

Drăgan, Nicolae Sorin. “The Emotional Arcs of Political Narratives.”  Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies  13.Suppl (2020): 69-86.  d oi.org/10.31926/but.pcs.2020.62.13.3.6.

Glace, Alyssa M., Tessa L. Dover, and Judith G. Zatkin. “Taking the black pill: An empirical analysis of the “Incel”.”  Psychology of Men & Masculinities  (2021).  doi.org/10.1037/men0000328.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “A Newly Discovered Kurt Vonnegut Story.”  The Atlantic , Atlantic Media Company, 10 Jan. 2020,  www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/kurt-vonnegut-the-drone-king/537870/ .

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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One of the most common classroom activities students are all too familiar with is writing essays. May it be in an exam or just a simple seat work, let’s face it, teachers have always used this method in assessing learning. But despite its becoming a routine, many are still uncertain, if not a bit scared of writing.

Response Essay

Argumentative essay example - 9+ samples in pdf, word, persuasive essay example - 8+ samples in word, pdf, literary essay example - 9+ samples in word, pdf.

Writing is actually a great way to convey your ideas, comments, or reaction. Teachers let you write to get to know you and your opinion about a course, a topic, or a film. But if you are still worried, then our Essay Samples might make you feel better. You can download them for free, so please, take your time.

Literary Response Essay Sample

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An essay is a literary composition that contains analysis or explanation on certain subject matters. You may check out our Sample College Essays  for more details. Anyway, it is an article that is composed of three parts:

1. Introduction – this is where you are going to present your topic or argument.

2. Body – this contains details that strengthen your point or topic.

3. Conclusion – this is where you clinch all of your ideas together, make up a paragraph that summarizes your entire point.

Knowing the parts of an essay cannot get you very far though. The content of your article matters more, thus you should understand that writing is a series of stages and it takes time. I have enumerated these stages to at least appease your worries.

1. The Prewriting Stage – this is the stage when you get to plan, outline, and build your ideas.

2. The Drafting Stage – this is the part when you could write your initial take on your topic.

3. The Revision Stage – reorganizing your paragraphs, establishing your voice and tone, and improving your first draft are in this stage.

4. The Editing Stage – this is when you can check any grammatical errors.

5. The Publishing Stage – this is the moment when you can finally think about submitting your work.

Since I have emphasized the importance of content in essay writing, you should also know that there are four major types of essays. These types determine how you can write about the topic you have chosen. The four types are the following:

1. Expository – this is an essay in which its purpose is to inform, thus be mindful of your facts on this one.

2. Persuasive – this is an essay that persuades or convinces the readers to accept your ideas. You are to present an argument, analyze and discuss all the sides of the point, and express your position or belief. You may check out our Analysis Essay Examples .

3. Descriptive – this is an essay that portrays scenes through images.

4. Narrative – this is an essay that tells a story. Topics of real life experiences can be written this way.

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Writing is not a breeze. To produce an output is not that easy. But it is still great because it is where you can express yourself without worrying about how to pronounce words or getting nervous in front of an audience.

Think about it. We would hardly know history or any of our subjects or courses without writers. And let’s not forget the stories we love when we were kids. Writing gives us a glimpse of ourselves and of the world. Well, Descriptive Essay Examples can specifically do that. So write on!

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Literary Criticism — Reader-response Criticism: a Point of View on “A Rose for Emily”

Reader Response Criticism: a Rose for Emily

• Categories: A Rose For Emily Literary Criticism

About this sample

Words: 915 |

Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 915 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, contents of “a rose from emily”, background of “a rose for emily”, my opinion on “a rose for emily”, works cited.

• Faulkner, W. (1930). A Rose for Emily. The Forum, 84(1), 37-40.
• Blotner, J. L. (1974). Faulkner: A biography. University of Mississippi Press.
• Brooks, C. (1963). The formalist critics. In The critical tradition: Classic texts and contemporary trends (pp. 450-462). Bedford/St. Martin's.
• Duyfhuizen, B. (2005). "A Rose for Emily" and the carceral logic of patriarchy. Journal of Narrative Theory, 35(2), 181-204. doi:10.1353/jnt.2005.0031
• Faulkner, W. (1994). A Rose for Emily. In R. L. Sander & E. R. Peden (Eds.), The complete stories of William Faulkner (pp. 85-92). Vintage.
• Gwin, M. (2015). Reading Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily": Critical overview. In A companion to William Faulkner (pp. 66-76). John Wiley & Sons.
• Hsu, H.-H. (2014). An ecological analysis of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. English Language Teaching, 7(10), 55-64. doi:10.5539/elt.v7n10p55
• Lewis, R. W. B. (1968). The novels of William Faulkner: A critical interpretation. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Sullivan, R. (2005). Faulkner and the self-reflexive novel. University of Nebraska Press.
• West, R. (1986). A stylistic analysis of "A Rose for Emily". Studies in Short Fiction, 23(2), 135-144. doi:10.1080/00393278609511267

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