The school of affective stylistics that Stanley Fish champions posits that readers belong to
multiple interpretive communities and that readers switch between these interpretive
communities constantly while reading a text. For example, a mature reader examining a moment
in a story about a father who punishes a child for feeding leftovers to the family dog may read
that moment as a parent (or any authority figure), as a son or a daughter, or as a dog-lover (or a
dog-hater). The meaning that the reader takes from the moment depends upon the interpretive
community to which the reader decides to belong when reading the description. To which
interpretive communities did you choose to belong when reading the fifth through eighth
chapters of The House with a Clock in Its Walls? To which other interpretive communities might
you have chosen to belong when reading these chapters? How would those choices have affected your understanding of these chapters? Why did you make your original choices?
Which choices do you feel align best with these chapters? Defend your answers