Gaining a different perspective through writing

With this assignment, it's really stood out to me how much writing a paper changes your perspective on a piece of literature. When I first read The Blithedale Romance, I did it primarily as pleasure reading, and just enjoyed the story. Then, when I had to go back an write a draft, I was having to revisit the book from an entirely different perspective. In a way, the difference is akin to the difference in looking at a house from the outside, as opposed to the inside. From the inside, you can get an idea of what it feels like to be inside the house, but it's only from an outside perspective that you can really view it as a whole and understand how each part is connected to each other. Writing a paper has given me this change in perspective in the past, but it's only now that I've really taken notice of it.

In particular, taking an "outside" perspective enabled me to see just how well-crafted TBR is. I noticed that pretty much the entire book is contained in the first chapter--you get a strong emphasis on deception as a major theme, and unanswered questions which provide suspense to move the entire plot forward through the entire novel, your attention is secured on the main characters before they even enter the story, and you even get a bit of foreshadowing hinting that the ending will be tragic.

In viewing a book from the "inside," I don't even think it is possible to make analytical judgments about a book, since it requires making broad connections across an entire novel, a sort of timelessness outside the universe in the novel. The "inside" perspective gives you a linear, moment-to-moment, experience of the novel--it's in the now.