Clue 1

Beauty & Reader Response
1. What is beauty?
- When people hear the word "beauty", majority of the people think of how "pretty" the physical appearance of an object looks. However, I feel different about beauty. When I think of the word beauty, I think of beauty in the inside. For example, the very basic ones are human. When people judge each other on beauty, they mostly judge the outside on how they look. So of course many people think professional models could be an example of beauty. However a person who spends her Sunday praising God and who is kind to their neighbors are the true beauty which can never be achieved by just being fashionable. This could also apply for literature. Most people might think a book with the best cover or the best artwork will be the most beautiful literature, but I feel that a literature with a moral that connects to God's law will be 10 times more beautiful than a book with colorful artworks.
2 Bible Verse
1 Peter 3:3-4 (NIV)
³Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV)
The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

1. What is a Reader Response analysis, and what steps are involved?
A Reader Response analysis is the ability to recognize a portion of literature and connect it to a real life experience. Some of different types to connection are: Text to Self, where you connect a specific text of literature to you own life experience; Text to World, where you connect a specific text to an world wide issue or experience; and Text to Text, where you connect a specific text to another novel or story. Steps for Reader Response analysis is reading the text, analyzing what the text means, realizing a connection to any of the three types of connection (mentioned above), and writing them down.
2. How can Reader Response open our eyes to more truth as we read?
As you read along a literature, you will come to parts where you think "Oh, I've had that experience before!" These are the Reader Response, where we make connection to a literature. These 'connections' will improve our understanding on the literature. This is because when we make a connection, we know how the character is feeling at that moment. For example, lets say I have read a part of a story where the protagonist feels left out. I could connect this to my previous experience when I felt left out by my friends too. This will open our eyes to a whole new meaning of the story, because rather than just understanding what it's literally saying, we are taking it a whole new level by understanding the mood, emotion, and other major details that aren't written on the text but can be found by Reader Response.
3. Why is it important for you to interact/connect with literature?
While reading a literature, it is important that you interact/connect with literature. There are many answers to why this is, but the main answer is because connecting with the literature makes the reader re-feel the emotions and understand how the character is feeling at that moment, and by understanding how they feel, you have better understanding of whats going on, making the story more enjoyable and making it more real.
4. Reflect on recent book or story and tell what new truth about the world I learned from.
I have recently read a book called Homeland, which is a story about a dark elf. Now, the setting of this story is the underworld, where the society is corrupted by evil and malice laws. It is ruled by one god, the spider queen. In this world, all the dark elf's can perform murder, trickery, lies, betrayal, and all the other sins without being felt guilty for it. Except one. His name is Drizzt Do' Urden, and as the protagonist of the story, he has an conflict with his community because he thinks that the underworld is not making the right choices. Later he makes contact with the surface world (our world) and decide to leave the underworld despite the threat from the Spider Queen that he will be killed. As he gets used to the surface world, he finds himself enjoying his life, which he would have never experienced in the underworld. After I was finished reading this book, I realized a startling truth. I felt that the underworld was based on our world. Now, I wouldn't say our world, Earth, is not as bad as the underworld, but it's not perfect either. We still have conflicts with each other outside the community and inside the community. murders, steeling, raping, and other sins are still happening in this world. I felt that the surface world was based on the PERFECT WORLD, which in my view was the heaven. Then I realized that even though we might think our world is the perfect world and our laws are the perfect laws, but its not. We are just thinking like those Dark elf's in the underworld who we're corrupted by the Spider Queen. I feel that there is a bigger world, Heaven, waiting for those who try hard to find it, and we would be able to feel the experience that Drizzt Do'urden experienced when he lived in the surface world.