Synthesis: The Believing and Doubting Game




Peter Elbow, a scholar of rhetoric and writing, invented a close reading strategy called the "Believing and Doubting Game" that will help you analyze a text from different points of view. Here's how to "play".

  • The Believing Game – Imagine you are someone who believes (1) what the author says is completely sound, interesting, and important, and (2) how the author has expressed these ideas is amazing or brilliant. You want to play the role of someone who is completely taken in by the argument in the text, whether you personally agree with it or not.

  • The Doubting Game: Now pretend you are a harsh critic, someone who is deeply skeptical or even negative about the author's main points and methods for expressing them. Search out and highlight the argument's factual shortcomings and logical flaws. Look for ideas and assumptions that a skeptical reader would reject. Repeatedly ask, "So what?" or "Who cares?" or "Why would the author do that?" as you read and re-read.



Once you have studied the text from the perspectives of a "believer" and a "doubter", you can then create a synthesis of both perspectives that will help you develop your own personal response to the text (as in the image above). More than likely, you won't absolutely believe or absolutely reject the author's argument. Instead, your synthesis will be somewhere between these two extremes.

Playing the Believing and Doubting Game allows you to see a text from completely opposite perspectives. Then, you can come up with a synthesis that combines the best aspects of each point of view.

You are role-playing with the argument, first analyzing it in a sympathetic way and then scrutinizing it in a skeptical way. This two-sided approach will help you not only better understand the text but also figure out what you believe and why you believe it.