Week 2: Many Perspectives

Many pieces of writing can be interpreted in different ways. That is what we had talked about as a class during this week. We read a poem called "The Eagle", by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In that poem, we discovered many different perspectives as we shared what we thought the poem was about.

Some of us thought it could be about  a higher power, looking down and watching the world. Some thought it could be about someone who was holding on to something and then falling. Others thought it might just be about an actual eagle. We learned that when it comes to determining what a certain writing is about, there is no right answer.

​There are clues in all texts that hint towards different meanings, and we interpret them in different ways. For example, in "The Eagle" the author wrote "And like a thunderbolt he falls". Most of us would think that by saying this, the author means that the bird is diving downward. That is because he uses the phrase "like a thunderbolt". By using "like a thunderbolt" to describe the fall, the author is showing that the fall was very powerful, and therefor it would make sense for it to be a dive.

However, some people in our class took that sentence differently. They thought the author was saying that the eagle just fell without meaning to. Maybe he lost his grip or something.

By the end of the week we had all learned just how different our minds see things when we read, and we began to open up our minds to new interpretations. Here's a link that leads to more details about interpreting things differently. 

---