International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

Level 3:

analogising and searching for self-identity

At the level of analogising, readers’ satisfactions include not only an interest in
characters like themselves, but a consideration of the implications of characters’
behaviour for their own lives, and so conscious connections are made between what
happens in fiction and personal experience. For example, here a 13-year-old boy
explains how he learned about himself through his feelings of empathy with a character,
Prince Arren, in Ursula le Guin’s The Farthest Shore:

I felt closer to Arren than to Sparrowhawk because I felt I was like him. It made it

easier to imagine what it would be like in his position. He’s like me because he’s a

boy, and he’s with a powerful wizard, which is sort of like being with a teacher you

like and trust. You’re young and inexperienced like him, and you can learn about

yourself from his mistakes just like you can learn from your own mistakes in life if

there’s a kind and experienced person to help you.

Level 4:

reflecting on the significance of events and behaviour

By the stage of reflection the process of decentring (from ‘me’ to ‘outside me’) is well
under way, and the growing capacity for detachment leads to deeper understanding of
other people, their motives and aspirations, and of the human condition. The strategies
associated with evaluating characters and interpreting themes include reconciling
increasingly complex textual viewpoints, filling in larger textual gaps, and entertaining a
range of alternative possible long-term outcomes.
Readers at this level are able to make generalisations about the themes of fiction they
have read and these generalisations show an awareness of the significance and
implications of action and behaviour. Such readers see literature as making complex
statements about the human condition, and they recognise that these statements can
only be understood by considering literary works as wholes. This kind of understanding
is exemplified on the following comments of students, the first a 15-year-old boy and the
second a 16-year-old girl:

To Kill a Mockingbird had a strong effect on me. It showed what the truth was at the

time it was set. It shows the prejudice white people felt about black, and the way

truth and justice are distorted where there is hatred between people. I relate to To

Kill a Mockingbird and its truth about the treatment of black people in the southern

states of America with the treatment of aborigines in Queensland and the Northern

Territory which are our versions of the American deep south.

The main character in The Collector (by John Fowles) is representative of a range

of people in our society, people without much individuality or strength of character

who are always wanting to be accepted and who treat other people as objects because

of their own inadequacies.

APPLICATIONS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 581