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My Personal Literary Theory Of Literature

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It is amazing how the same piece of literature can offer different insight, interpretation, and understanding to a person at different stages of their life. I’ve been able to see this throughout my own life as increased knowledge and experience has led to the evolution of my approach to literature. As of late, I tend to apply the following personal literary theory when presented with a literary work. First, I try to search for morals and lessons that I can draw from the text. I enjoy doing this because I can learn new things and gain new insights. Second, I try to make connections to the text by comparing characters, descriptions, or situations to either myself, the world around me, or other works of literature that I have encountered. Third, I pay attention to the literary devices employed by the author, such as similes, metaphors, repetition, and personification. Lastly, I look for symbols. I will now proceed to introduce the novel that I have chosen and use it to demonstrate my personal literary theory.
The literary work I have decided to analyze throughout the semester is Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli. It is a teen fiction novel set at Mica Area High School in Arizona. The basic plotline is as follows: a new girl named Stargirl arrives at school who is very different than the students there. Besides her unusual name, she also dresses strangely, has a pet rat, and does sporadic, off-the-wall things. The students don’t know what to make of her at first, but

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