1. Read the text the way you’re going to enjoy it!
You’re going to have to read the text, there’s no way around that. Teachers get better with every year at being able to tell if you have read the work or not. But you don’t just have to crack open the book and force your way through it in one sitting. Read a half a chapter to a chapter a day and find time to read when you naturally might be on your phone. Taking the bus to school, waiting for an appointment, avoiding having to watch your little brother play tennis etc!
You need to consume the original text, but that doesn’t mean you just have to read it old school. Audiobooks are such a good way of consuming the text without having to sit down and read.
2. Supplement with an adaptation!
When it comes to things like Shakespeare (or any play really) it’s important to watch some kind of performance so you can get a fuller understanding of the text (the language makes a lot more sense in conversational and physical context) and you can see how characters interact. Typically, it’s easier to see the intention behind a text when you see it performed, since that’s how the playwright intended it to be consumed!
3. Find the moral of the story
When it comes to writing your theses for your essays/exams, they should all come from a singular understanding of what the author wanted the audience to think/feel/know by the conclusion of the piece. Classic fairytales and fables all have a moral to the story; what’s the text’s?
e.g. Macbeth = Ambition will be your downfall, 1984 = Unchecked government surveillance and control destroy freedom, Fahrenheit 451 = Censorship and anti-intellectualism lead to ignorance and oppression, The Handmaid’s Tale = Patriarchy and the loss of women’s rights enable tyranny.
Once you have this moral, every take/thesis/argument you have about the text can and should be informed by it, because in every choice the author makes, they are pointing the audience towards that moral.
4. Know your characters
The characters in the story are vessels for the moral, without them we as the audience would never know it. You should quickly identify how each of the characters feel about the moral of the story and the related key themes; if you posited the moral to them, would they agree with it/think it’s good, or think it’s terrible/wrong?
In knowing your characters, keep an eye on key relationships also. Humans are influenced by nothing more than they are by each other. The most important relationships are those that influence one or more characters to shift/change their values in a certain direction.
Happy studying!!
