Prompt 1-Literacy

       Being literate does not simply mean possessing the powers to read and write. Literacy is the ability to see beyond the words and connect the ideas from those words to one’s life. A story is simply a story if it does not impact a reader. A literate person can see the story as just as story, but can also connect the work to other literature and their life experiences. However, literacy does not develop in one day. Even with years of reading and writing, like Thomas Foster, a literate person must practice. For example, after the test case in Chapter 27 Foster asked his readers to answer a range of questions about "The Garden Party". These questions ranged from author’s purpose and reader interpretation. Foster also told readers to “read carefully, give careful thought” and write down observations. Thomas Foster did not simply write these rules because he is a controlling, crazed professor; he knows if readers pay close attention to a work and use interpretative strategies it will enhance a reader’s experience.
        Although a person may pay close attention to a story, look at its themes and motifs, and intertextuality, a literate person is constantly second guessing their observations. However, this is not necessarily a disadvantage of literacy; it is actually the beauty of it. Foster once received a question from Steven that Foster himself had been wrestling with throughout his literature career: “How do I know I’m right.” The answer is a reader is never going to know if he/she is “right” because a reader’s only obligation is to the text. The reader does not know the author’s motivation behind the story. Therefore literacy’s gift is reader interpretation. No, the reader is never going to know if the sky is green and black because the author was writing during a tornado or if the dog ran away because the author hated dogs. A literate person simply has the obligation of reading a story and thinking about it in their own terms.