A summer reading novel serves a vital role to stimulate a student's mind over the break. Therefore, an assignment of such importance should include a book that not only captivates the reader but also forces them to think. Although Fahrenheit 451 and Cannery Row both have advantages, Mrs. Fleek Airne should not change the summer reading assignment to Cannery Row. The connection to the modern world, challenging writing style of Ray Bradbury, and relatable characters far surpass the positive aspects of its counterpart.…
In Flannery O’Connor’s short essay, Total Effect and the Eighth Grade, she proposes that “…fiction, if it is going to be taught in high schools, should be taught as a subject and a subject with history.” (p. 137) In other words, fiction should be taught as a true subject rather than just a genre of writing. O’Connor supports the idea by explaining that “There is much to be enjoyed in the great British novels of the nineteenth century” (p. 138), and there is no valid that teachers could not teach students using this material. She then goes on to point out that to the less sophisticated or less motivated readers, these books can provide simple enjoyment.…
Throughout the essay, Prose argues that literatures in high schools are dumbing down the English curriculum. She says books that are “chosen for students to read are for ‘obvious lessons.’” However, Prose does not mention “great” books that students should read and that will help them to understand what the characters are feeling. “…The weaker novels of John Steinbeck, the fantasies of Ray Bradbury,” (424). Prose explains how her sons never read the better of Steinbeck’s novels in high school and she makes the assumption that all high school students read the so-called weaker Steinbeck novels. She also makes an argument that the English curriculum is an important issue both culturally and politically. If both the teachers and books are not challenging the young students minds, then how can we expect them to understand challenging books. “We hear the more books are being bought and sold than ever before, yet no one, as far as I know, is arguing that we are producing and becoming a nation of avid readers of serious literature” (423). Again, Prose brings up her own personal experience and what she has heard. From what she has heard, people today are not reading “serious” literature. She does not even go to defend her argument and further explain what she means by “serious literature” and “avid readers.”…
The novel, Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, conveys how significant books are to society. The novel portrays a society that has clueless citizens because they lack literature. The government is able to control and manipulate their population because they do not have any access to books. The citizens believe the information the government has gave them without questioning it. Some societies today still cannot have access to books because of their gender, do not have proper education, or other situations. Bradbury reveals how essential books are to developing individual’s mindset and how books can help enlighten society.…
Books can cast a strange spell over you. It’s the intimacy of being let into such details of a character’s feelings and being that draws you to read The fluency of the writing and the drama, heroism, and intrigue exhibited by the characters can almost be too much for a person. The pure power of literature sometimes wont allow you to set the book aside and leave the characters life. The attraction and attachment of humans to fictional characters through reading is seen in the poem “The Reader” by Richard Wilbur and an excerpt from the short story “A General in the Library” by Italo Calvino.…
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde explores the relationship between literature and society. Through his depiction of fanatics, Fforde shows that art matters in their society, however in a different way than it does in ours. In Fforde’s world, literature seems to be universal and carefully maintained in its original form, whereas in our world, literature is enjoyed more on an individual basis, with room for creativity. In our world Literature is often regarded more casually than it is within The Eyre Affair.…
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster has shown me how to reach true understanding in my future reading of literature and has helped me to reach a new depth in works of literature I have already analyzed. Swimming, seasons, weather and diseases have all taken on more than simply a set scene. Abuse of power over youth or the uneducated is more noticeable. The use of irony is more noticeable. This book has armed me with the ability to recognize political meaning within literary works. Armed newly with this knowledge I reanalyze several novels from my high school career and I learn more about the author as well as the characters who the authors present me with.…
Home AS and A Level English English Literature Criticism & Comparison Other Criticism & Comparison Utopia vs Dystopia…
Richard, Allen. Approaching literature- The Realist Novel. Routledge, London. Great Britain: The Open University, 1995.…
George, Diana and Trimbur, John. Reading Culture: Contexts for critical reading and writing. New York: Longman, 2007. Print.…
This course focuses on World Literature to expand high school students’ literary landscape. Students will read about, write about, and research different cultures based on the theme of coming of age. This will allow us to emphasize the human experience as seen on a global scale. We will examine literary works with a global perspective focusing on cultural influences such as language, art, music, media, and pop culture. Our class will look at all of these and more in order to better understand both commonalities and differences in other countries and our own.…
book, magazine, newspaper or online. If you carry a poem in your wallet and you look at it once a year, we count you. If you have just finished Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks in German for the third time, or you’ve read one page of a Harlequin Romance and given up because it’s too hard, we count you as equals. We are very egalitarian! What you see for the first time in American history is that less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature. I’m going to talk about what the causes of the problem are, and then I’ll talk about the consequences and the solutions. To go into the data a little big further, we see that we’re producing the first generation of educated people, in some cases college graduates, who no longer become lifelong readers. This is disturbing for reasons above and…
social climate we live in? These questions shed an interesting light on the history of literature…
For the first time Cope is beginning to ask himself the right questions that will lead to sobriety. For example, he asked, “What did I mean by God? Where would I find this faith? Why was I the only one in our family who became addicted? And most importantly, why do I keep relapsing?” Cope realizes everything he has in his whole life depends on his sobriety. I think this is the first step for anyone recovering. Admitting you are powerless over drugs and alcohol goes hand in hand with realizing your whole life depends on your sobriety. Cope was no longer in a hurry to leave treatment. In fact the excuses he was using to leave treatment were the same excuses he used to stay in treatment. Cope finally admits to himself that pleasing people had always been his main ambition and the greatest affirmation of his worth. All he wanted was for people to know that he really was a good guy, a generous, kind, thoughtful person deep down. He wanted them to know so they would like him and approve of what he did. I think with Cope and probably with most addicts and alcoholics telling their story is also a big part of recovery. If people with substance abuse issues know that society won’t judge them because of their addiction and that people will like them even though they know about their past I think sobriety would be easier. I think a lot of people carry around feelings of guilt and shame regarding their addictions. They feel like failures, especially after relapsing. Who wants to admit to being a failure? Even worse, admitting you failed at your sobriety and having society judge you for failing. If more people look at addiction as a progressive disease maybe there would be less judgment passed upon people with substance abuse…
In eighteenth-century England, the concept ofliterature was not confined as it sometimes is today to 'creative' or 'imaginative' writing. It meant the whole body of valued writing in society: philosophy, history, essays and letters as well as poems. What made a text 'literary' was not whether it was fictional- the eighteenth century was in grave doubt about whether the new upstart form of the novel was literature at all- but whether it conformed to certain standards of 'polite letters'. The criteria of what counted as literature, in other words, were frankly ideological: writing which embodied the values and 'tastes' of a particular social class qualified as literature, whereas a street ballad, a popular romance and perhaps even the drama did not. At this historical point, then, the 'value-Iadenness' of the concept of literature was reasonably self-evident. In the eighteenth century, however, literature did more than 'embody' certain social values: it was a vital instrument for their deeper entrenchment and wider dissemination.…