The Waxwork by Alfred Burrage: Sample Essay | New Forward
The words "retelling" and "summary" cause deadly anguish in most schoolchildren, and they are remembered as a nightmare by many adults when they are asked why literature lessons discouraged them from reading fiction.
Who is interested in retellings? Who are those grateful listeners? If you say “teachers”, believe me, you are deeply mistaken.
Retelling is only the first step of text analysis. By selecting what seems to you the most important thing, you are moving towards understanding – not only the text itself, but the laws according to which the world, created by the author, is built – in general, out of nothing. You ought to become a co-creator of the text in order to comprehend it. It's a difficult task, but it's truly rewarding. And on the whole, I must confess, reading good literary criticism is sometimes much more fascinating than the works of art themselves.
In the in-depth study course, this is exactly what we learn – to analyze texts (any texts, not only artistic ones) and create our own little masterpieces – call them summaries, reviews, essays. or scientific synopses.