With students now depending more on condensed reading for time management, we are left to question whether reading text summaries will be as conducive to literary understanding as reading whole texts. To respond to this, the research thus compared how summary reading and full-text reading exerted influence on students’ literal, inferential, and critical comprehension with a convergent parallel mixed-methods design. Fifty sophomore English majors read either a researcher-made summary or the full-text of Lafcadio Hearn’s “The Soul of the Great Bell,” followed by comprehension tests, a perception survey, and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative results found no significant differences between the two groups in literal and inferential comprehension, implying that these summaries could be an effective means to assist basic recall and interpretation at a surface level. However, full-text reading produced significantly higher critical comprehension scores (p = .002), indicating the critical nature of literary analysis as a means of developing deeper analytic skills, understanding symbolism, and appreciating literary craft. This distinction received further qualitative support: although students found them practical, time-saving and more engaging than reading the full text, summaries were still perceived as not as rich and supportive for nuanced academic work. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that although summaries are effective for rapid comprehension, they do not replace the necessary information gained by reading the full text. The study recommends integrating both approaches strategically, using summaries to establish an initial schema of the literature and full-text reading to cultivate critical thinking and deeper literary insight.