Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

–
E M O T I O N A L V E R S U S L O G I C A L A P P E A L S
–
1 3 6
■
Listen carefully to how people around you try to convince you (or others) when they want you to think
or act a certain way. For example, if a friend wants you to try a new place for lunch, how does he or
she try to convince you: with appeals to your sense of logic (“The food is great—and so are the prices!”)
or to your emotions (“What, are you afraid to try something new?”)? If your boss asks you to work over-
time, does he or she appeal to your sense of logic (“You’ll make lots of extra money”) or to your emo-
tions (“I could really, really use your help”)? See which arguments you find most convincing and why.
■
Read an editorial from the Opinion-Editorial page of your local newspaper. Look at how the writer sup-
ports his or her argument. Is the editiorial convincing? Why? What reasons or evidence does it use to
support its position?
Skill Building until Next Time

---

L
iterature (novels, poems, stories, and plays) can be quite intimidating to many readers. In literature,
meanings are often implied, and messages and themes are not conveniently housed in a topic sen-
tence. However, no matter what you are reading, you can feel confident that the author has left behind
clues that will help you to find the theme (the main idea). As an active reader, you are now well-equipped to read
between the lines to find meaning in anything you read.
Throughout these pages, you have spent a great deal of time locating the main ideas in various pieces of writ-
ing. Finding the theme of a work of literature is similar to finding the main idea in an article, passage, or memo.
Just as the main idea is more than the subject of a given article, passage, or memo, the theme of a work of litera-
ture is also more than just its subject: It is what the text says about that subject. Theme, in other words, is the over-
all message or idea that a work of literature conveys. For example, you can probably figure out from the title that
the subject of John Donne’s poem “Death Be Not Proud” is death. However, the theme is not merely “death,” but
what the poem says about death, which happens to be that death is a gift if one believes in God.