Reading response to "The Owl Has Flown" -Hannah G.

Hannah Gowen

English 100a

24 January 2010

Reading Response to Birkerts

In the article, “The Owl has Flown” Sven Birkert states that there was depth, resonance, and wisdom when people were reading different kinds of books and newspapers, and magazine articles. To me, I would describe his explanation by saying he is trying to get across that people nowadays are losing their wisdom, depth, and resonance in our lives. I think what Birkert was trying to do in this essay was to get the point across that people need to do more do get in vocabulary and read more to improve on their vocabulary. As well as reading comprehension. I feel like he wants to get across that people are losing depth, wisdom and resonance as time goes on. A quote that stood out to me in his essay that kind of proves my point is, “When books are rare, hard to obtain, and expensive, the reader must compensate through intensified focus, must like Menocchio read the same passages over and over.” I would paraphrase this quote by saying he is trying to say is that it is hard to obtain books because it is so rare and difficult. This is because it is hard for a reader to compensate throughout the difficult focus of continuously reading a certain passage over and over again. This passage is found in “The Owl Has Flown” on page 30. This quote defiantly sticks to the main focus that I got out of this essay when reading it a couple times. I think it’s getting across that books are so rare to be understood by some people because of the amount of vocabulary in them. To me, he is trying to say that our reading ability and expansion has gone downhill as well as people’s comprehension. It was as well talking about depth, wisdom and resonance in things such as newspapers, books and magazines. Depth requires a lot of deep thinking about understanding what is the meaning of the item you are reading at the time. People must not lose depth because depth makes us good readers. This essay made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who sometimes has trouble reading and comprehending the deeper meaning of things. I think comparing this essay to something else we have read in needed. Overall, throughout the couple things we have read in class made me realize that life is fast pace, but sometimes we need time to settle down and think about things.