Comparison

Josh Manning Reader-Response Comparison William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" can have many different reader-responses, as any story can, however it is the responsibility of reader-response critics, like Robert Crosman, to determine if they are valid and helpful in understanding the story. "How Readers Make Meaning" is a failed attempt by Crosman to show that any reader response, no matter how far fetched, can be helpful in the interpretation of a story. Reader-response critics …

…the idea that the reader can comprehend the basics of a text. In Stacy’s case she didn’t get the basics of the text, in fact she didn’t even realize that Emily had killed Homer Barron and slept with a his dead body for years. It is impossible to have a valid comparison of responses when the fundamentals of a text are not grasped and there lies the problem with Crosman’s argument.