Motifs. If you look at the full version of Gin Lane (p. 548), you will see that the two images in this detail are part of larger motifs, or patterns of images that mirror and comment on each other. The "neglected child" motif is refigured in children and infants throughout the picture, including one who is being given a glass of gin instead of a milk bottle, one who is fighting with a dog for a bone, and one who is being carried through the street impaled on a skewer.
Composition. Any visual text includes compositional elements—line, perspective, color, use of space, and so on—that contribute to the work's meaning. In Gin Lane, for example, the mother and her infant are foregrounded and brightly lit so that the eye is immediately drawn to them, emphasizing their importance in Hogarth's argument. The dominant lines in the complete engraving—the top of the brick wall, the rooftop pole at the top right, the signpost on the building on the left, and the staircase and its railings—are at random angles to each other to illustrate the unpredictable, disordered world of Gin Lane.
All of these elements combine to form an overall impression. If the artist has arranged the elements well, the viewer will gain an overall sense of the text that can itself become a powerful persuasive element. Visual images can create impressions of, among other things, reverence, power, wonder, despair, peace, awe, and patriotism.
SUMMARIZING
As part of active reading, summarizing helps you solidify your own understanding of a text and identify what you need to think about or analyze more closely. The objective of a summary is to boil a large text down to its essential points. Often, teachers will assign essays that consist entirely or partially of summary as a way to evaluate your understanding of difficult material. In other kinds of essays, brief summaries of difficult information can give you a starting point for more sophisticated kinds of writing, such as analysis, synthesis, research, or critique. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind as you create a summary:
Identify the main point
Even if the author does not come to the main point until the middle or the end of an essay, you should identify the main point immediately and put it at the beginning of your summary. Doing so will make clear early on what the text is about, and it will help you focus and organize the rest of your summary.
Identify support for the main point(s)
A summary does not always have to explain every specific bit of evidence that an author uses to support an argument (especially in very short summaries of very long works). It is important, however, for the summary to explain the kinds of evidence (analytical, experimental, statistical, deductive, etc.) that a text employs (see p. 650).
Quote from the text when appropriate
Good summaries often quote from the texts that they summarize, but they do so selectively. Similarly, quotations in a summary should include only a few words here or there to get the point across, rather than large blocks of text that give complete arguments. Quote only when the author has stated something so eloquently that you cannot restate it, or when you want to emphasize the author's own words. Be sure to mark the quotation clearly, in quotation marks, and to cite the page number where the quotation is found.
Use your own words
When you summarize someone else's writing, make sure that you use your own structure as well as your own wording. A summary does not need to move chronologically through the text, relating points in the order that the author presents them. You should employ organizational strategies that fit your own needs, which may or may not mirror those of the author whose text you are summarizing.
READING WITH A CRITICAL EYE
To understand a text, beyond what is being said on the surface, you will need to read the text with a critical eye; that is, you will often need to analyze its assumptions, discover its deeper arguments, and respond to those arguments with ones of your own.
Critical reading is difficult to define, as people in different disciplines use the term differently. In a literature class, "critical reading" may mean examining a literary work to find symbols and motifs, while in a history class it might mean evaluating the reliability of different sources used to reconstruct a historical event.
Perhaps the best way to define "critical reading" is through its opposite: uncritical reading. Those who read uncritically are likely to be persuaded by the loudest voices rather than the soundest arguments. Such readers tend to gravitate toward arguments that confirm their preconceived ideas, accepting such arguments without serious examination, and they usually reject opinions—and even well- documented facts—that challenge their beliefs. Uncritical readers can be very "critical" in the ordinary sense of the word, but they base their criticisms on how closely authors mirror their own points of view rather than on the texts' merits.
Critical readers, by contrast, approach all texts with a certain amount of skepticism, but they do not reject any argument without a fair hearing. They try to set aside their personal biases long enough to understand what they read. They seek to understand both texts and the contexts in which they are written, including, when appropriate, an author's use of symbolism, imagery, metaphor, and other figurative or rhetorical devices. Once they understand an argument on its own terms, critical readers evaluate its claims, its evidence, and its underlying assumptions both fairly and rigorously. They do not change their minds every time they read something new, but neither do they refuse to consider a new idea because it disagrees with an opinion that they already hold. Reading critically allows us to think critically—learning these skills is a lifelong process, but there are concrete steps you can take to start it:
Think about your own perspective
The process of reading and thinking critically begins with the realization that you have your own perspective. Some aspects of your perspective come from your culture and the time in which you live; others may come from your family, your friends, and your experience of the world. You cannot avoid this situation, nor should you try—it is part of being human. You cannot eliminate your own beliefs, but you can be aware of them, understand where they come from, and take them into consideration when you read something with a perspective different from your own. You need not accept everything that you read—but you should realize when your own perspective might be getting in the way of understanding what a text is saying.
Understand the author's perspective
Just as readers have their own perspectives, so do authors. As a reader, approach a text with a balance of respect and skepticism, being open to an unfamiliar perspective while examining it with the same critical analysis that you apply to your own beliefs. You should approach every text that you read as having been shaped by cultural and individual perspectives, and realize that all such perspectives—your own and everybody else's—come with both insights and stumbling blocks of their own.
Determine how the argument works
All texts make arguments in the sense that they assert at least one point and support that point. These questions can be helpful in determining how an argument works: What is the main point? What are the supporting points? How are different kinds of evidence invoked to back up major and supporting points?