Writing · Writing: Essays and Literary Analysis

Literary Analysis IV: Lenses in Conversation, Responding to Critics and Indigenous-Centred Reading

2.1 2.5 1.5About 75 minutes

Learning goals

I can combine two lenses in one essay and explain what their combination reveals.
I can represent a critic's argument fairly and respond by agreeing and extending, disagreeing and correcting, or complicating.
I can explain key principles of Indigenous-centred reading and apply them respectfully in my writing.
I can check that the voices and sources in my essay are varied and that my own perspective is visible and accountable.

Words to know

synthesis
Combining ideas from different lenses or sources into a new, connected understanding, rather than listing them.

secondary source
Writing about a literary text, such as a critic's article or book, as opposed to the text itself (the primary source).

charitable reading
Representing someone else's argument in its strongest, fairest form before responding to it.

Indigenous-centred reading
Reading Indigenous texts in relation to the specific nations, lands, languages, kinship and story traditions they come from, often guided by Indigenous scholars.

pan-Indigenous
Treating all Indigenous peoples as if they shared one culture; a generalization to avoid, since First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, and the many nations within them, are distinct.

positionality
Where a writer stands (their background, experiences and relationships) in relation to a topic, and how that shapes what they see.

From one lens to a conversation

In university English, essays rarely use a lens in isolation. They put lenses in conversation with each other and critics in conversation with the writer. This lesson teaches both moves, then turns to a lens that matters especially in Canada: Indigenous-centred reading.

Combining lenses: synthesis, not a list

An essay with a feminist section and then a Marxist section is a list. An essay that asks How do gender and class work together in this story? is a synthesis. Three ways lenses can meet:

They agree: both point to the same evidence, which strengthens the claim.
One complicates the other: a second lens reveals something the first missed or simplified.
They conflict: the lenses lead to incompatible readings, and you argue which the evidence better supports.

Each lens sees some evidence the other misses. The overlap is where a synthesis claim lives: the narrator's enforced idleness is a gender issue and a class privilege.

Joining the critical conversation

At Grade 12 you may be asked to use secondary sources: critics' books and articles about the text. (Finding and evaluating them is taught in the sibling unit Writing: Research, Forms and Conventions.) Using a critic well takes three steps:

Represent the critic charitably. Summarise the argument fairly in a sentence or two, with a short quotation of their key phrase if possible, and cite it.
Respond. Agree and extend, disagree and correct, or complicate.
Return to the text. Your response must rest on evidence from the primary text, not on the critic's authority or on your own.

For example, feminist critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), read the narrator's struggle with the wallpaper as a powerful image of the confinement of women writers in the nineteenth century. A Grade 12 essay could agree and extend that reading (the narrator is a writer whose journal is forbidden), or complicate it: later critics, such as Susan Lanser in a 1989 essay, have pointed out that Gilman's other writings include racist, nativist and eugenicist views, which should make readers cautious about treating the story's author as a straightforward hero and ask whose freedom the story imagines.

Each move begins by stating the critic's view fairly. Never use a critic only as an authority (Gilbert and Gubar say so, therefore it is true); use them as a voice to think with.

Phrases for responding to critics

As X argues, ... ; this reading can be extended to ...
X's claim that ... is persuasive for the first half of the story, but it does not explain ...
Although X reads ... as ..., the passage in which ... suggests ...
Building on X's observation that ..., I would argue that ...

The first person (I would argue) is accepted in many university essays when it marks your contribution against a critic's. Ask your teacher about their expectations.

Indigenous-centred reading

First Nations, Métis and Inuit writers are among the most important voices in Canadian literature today, and many Grade 12 courses study works such as Richard Wagamese's novel Medicine Walk (2014). Wagamese (1955-2017) was an Ojibwe writer from Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in northwestern Ontario. Indigenous scholars, such as Cherokee Nation citizen Daniel Heath Justice in Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (2018), have argued that Indigenous literatures should be read on their own terms. In essay-writing terms, that means:

Be specific. Name the author's nation or community where it is known. Avoid pan-Indigenous generalizations (Indigenous people believe...).
Read relationships. Many Indigenous texts centre relationships: to family and kinship, community, ancestors, language and land. Land is often not a backdrop or a "wilderness" but a teacher, a relative or a source of identity.
Read story as knowledge. In many Indigenous traditions, stories carry history, law and teaching, so a story can be read as a source of knowledge and not only as entertainment.
Avoid the victim-only frame. Texts may address colonial harms such as residential schools and the Sixties Scoop; read them also for resilience, humour, continuity and resurgence, as the texts themselves present them.
Do not force a Eurocentric lens. Calling a journey a "universal hero's quest" may erase what is specific to the culture it comes from.
Seek Indigenous critics. When you use secondary sources, include Indigenous scholars and reviewers.
Respect protocols. Some stories and ceremonies are not meant to be retold or analysed by outsiders; follow the text's lead and your teacher's guidance.

These principles also apply when you read non-Indigenous texts: whose land is a setting on? Who is absent from a supposedly empty landscape?

Worked example

Let's revise a thesis using an Indigenous-centred approach

A student planning an essay on Richard Wagamese's Medicine Walk, in which a sixteen-year-old named Franklin Starlight takes his dying father on a journey into the backcountry, writes this working thesis: Medicine Walk is a universal hero's journey in which a boy becomes a man. Revise it.

Diagnose: the thesis applies an archetypal frame (the hero's journey) that makes the story "universal" and may erase what is specific to an Ojibwe author's novel. It is also hard to argue: most readers would agree a boy grows up.
Ask Indigenous-centred questions: What relationships does the journey repair or reveal (father and son, family history, land)? What role does the land play? What do the stories the father tells give the son? What does the novel say about inheritance after colonial harm?
Check positionality: the student is not Indigenous. They decide to rely on evidence from the novel, cite at least one Indigenous critic or reviewer, avoid claims about Ojibwe ceremony that the novel does not explain, and name Wagamese's nation correctly.
Revised thesis: In Medicine Walk, Franklin's journey is less a solitary quest for manhood than a return to relationship: by carrying his father through the land and listening to the stories his father finally tells, Franklin inherits not only a painful family history but also the means to live with it.
Why it is stronger: it is arguable (it disputes the hero's-journey reading), specific (stories, land, inheritance), significant (it explains how the novel imagines healing), and respectful (it reads the novel through its own emphasis on relationship).

A thesis that replaces a generic, possibly erasing frame with one drawn from the novel's own concerns, supported by a plan to include Indigenous critical voices.

Hands-on activity

Map the conversation

You need: a text you are studying, two or three short reviews or critical articles about it (from a library database, your school library, or links your teacher provides), paper and a pen.

For each source, write a one-sentence charitable summary of its main claim, with author and title.
Draw the conversation: put the text in the centre and each critic around it, with arrows showing where they agree or disagree.
Choose one critic and write a response paragraph using one of the three moves (agree and extend, disagree and correct, complicate), returning to at least one quotation from the primary text.
Check variety: whose perspectives are in your map? If you are writing about an Indigenous text, is at least one Indigenous critic or reviewer included? If not, look for one.
Write two sentences on your own positionality: how might your background shape how you read this text?

What to look for: fair summaries; a response anchored in the primary text; varied voices; honest reflection.

Just for fun

Philosopher Kenneth Burke compared scholarly writing to a parlour conversation: you arrive late, others have been arguing long before you, you listen until you catch the drift, then you put in your oar. Eventually you leave, and the discussion carries on without you. Essentially, academic writing is a party where nobody ever goes home.

Your turn

What is the difference between listing lenses and synthesising them?

Name the three moves for responding to a critic.

What must you do before responding to a critic?

What is a pan-Indigenous generalization? Give an example to avoid.

Why might calling Medicine Walk a universal hero's journey be a weak thesis?

Why should a writer be cautious about treating Gilman simply as a feminist hero?

More practice: warm-up

What is a secondary source?

Who wrote The Truth About Stories (2003)?

What was Richard Wagamese's nation?

What is positionality?

Name the three distinct groups of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

More practice: on your own

Write a complicate sentence responding to a critic who says the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" finally achieves freedom.

Explain why the return to the text step matters when responding to critics.

Write a synthesis claim combining an ecocritical lens and an Indigenous-centred lens for a novel in which land is central.

A student writes about an Indigenous novel and cites only non-Indigenous reviewers. What should they do, and why?

Rewrite to avoid a victim-only frame: The novel is about how Indigenous people suffered.

Challenge

Write a paragraph (6 to 8 sentences) that represents Gilbert and Gubar's reading of "The Yellow Wallpaper" fairly, then extends it using evidence from the story.

Explain how a writer's positionality might shape an essay on an Indigenous novel, and two concrete practices that make the essay more accountable.

Two lenses conflict: a psychoanalytic reading says the woman in the wallpaper is the narrator's projection; a feminist reading says she is an image of all confined women. Argue which the evidence better supports, or propose a synthesis.

Check your understanding

Quiz

A synthesis of two lenses:

Before disagreeing with a critic, you should:

Which sentence avoids a pan-Indigenous generalization?

Thomas King's sentence The truth about stories is that that's all we are comes from:

Which is the complicate move?

Which practice makes an essay on an Indigenous novel more accountable?

For parents and teachers

Big idea: This lesson extends expectation 2.1 (literary essays) with two university-level moves (combining lenses, responding to critics) and connects to 2.5 (how the writer's own perspective shapes their writing) and 1.5 (checking that sources and voices are varied and appropriate). It also introduces principles of Indigenous-centred reading, which many Ontario Grade 12 courses now use with works by First Nations, Métis and Inuit authors.

How to help: ask your teen to summarise a critic's view before saying whether they agree. If they are writing about an Indigenous text, ask Which nation is the author from? and Did you find any Indigenous reviewers?

Common difficulties: lists of lenses with no synthesis; using critics as authorities; misrepresenting a critic to make disagreement easier; generalizing about Indigenous peoples. Facts about authors and critics here (dates, nations, titles) are well documented; details of Ojibwe or other cultural practices should come from the text itself or from Indigenous sources, not from guesswork.