Reading Comprehension of Literary Texts
Literary texts reward attention to character, setting, plot, conflict, point of view, tone and theme. Ask who narrates and what that narrator can and cannot know: a first-person narrator is limited and may be biased, while a third-person omniscient narrator sees into several minds. Track characterisation through speech, action, appearance and what others say. Tone is the writer's attitude (ironic, nostalgic, tense), while mood is the feeling created in the reader; questions often ask you to support either with a quoted phrase.
Theme is the underlying idea about life, stated as a full sentence ('Loyalty can demand sacrifice'), not a single word such as 'friendship'. Figurative language - simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, symbolism - should be identified and then linked to effect: what does the comparison make us feel or notice?
Traps in literary questions include mistaking a character's opinion for the author's message, choosing a theme that is too vague, and picking a quotation that illustrates a different device than the one asked about. Another frequent trap is the plausible but unsupported inference: it feels true to life but the passage never implies it.
Rule of thumb: for any interpretation, ask 'Which words in the text prove this?' If you cannot point to a line, the option is probably wrong.
Worked example: 'The house wore its shutters like tired eyelids.' A question asks which device is used and what it suggests. The answer is personification, suggesting weariness and neglect - not a simile, because no like or as compares two separate things in the expected grammatical pattern; here the house itself is given human features.