Response as a reader

Reader-response criticism allows the reader to approach literary works on a different level. We are to look deeper into what the author is saying on the page and view their work as “an incomplete work of sculpture: to see it fully, we must complete it imaginatively [taking] into account what [already] exists” (Reader-Response Criticism, 115) on the page. As readers, we are entitled to respond to what we have read, in many ways and it’s our “struggle to make sense of a…work (Reader-Response Criticism, 118). We are allowed to become detectives and decipher the writer’s work and voice our opinions because “a work can have as many meanings as we have responses to it” (Reader-Response Criticism, 115). Reader-response allows us each reader to have different a reaction and opinion about the text they have read. For example, one reaction I have to Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is that as a writer he seems to be a sexist, who tries to live his life through his main character- James Bond.