Grim literature in the high schools?

Parents Forum
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<p>It started in elementary school with Charlotte’s Web, The Cay, *The Bridge to Teribithia *and Pearl Buck’s The Wave. Maybe more.</p>

<p>I’d like to put in a plug for Thing’s Fall Apart, which I missed in high school, but just finished because the CC reading group is discussing it in June and I have felt guilty for years that I’ve never read it. Definitely part of the misery and death curriculum, but an awfully good book nonetheless. I’d say it definitely goes on the cultural literacy list. </p>

<p>I was so clueless the first time I read Little Women I didn’t actually understand that Beth was dead. I think the line is they “thanked God that Beth was well at last,” which I interpreted as some miraculous recovery and then was puzzled why she dropped out of the narrative!</p>

<p>I loathed Vanity Fair, (freshman year of high school), what really does me in is not to have any sympathetic characters. I loved Wuthering Heights because it was romantic even if there was no happy ending. OTOH, I’ve never been able to read Anna Karenina even though I loved War and Peace, because I know how it’s going to end up, and who needs that?</p>

<p>So books/plays I remember loving in high school:
Antigone
Wuthering Heights
Age of Innocence
Moby Dick
Heart of Darkness
The Odyssey
The Illiad
all that Jacobean drama (terrific teacher senior year)
Shakespeare (Twelfth Night was my favorite thanks to a brilliant production at the Folger theater)
Thomas Hardy (Return of the Native was my favorite, but also read Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd )
Selections from the King James Bible
All Quiet on the Western Front
Dante’s Inferno
The Crucible</p>

<p>The things I remember hating:
Vanity Fair
Glass Menagerie
Death of a Salesman
Paradise Lost (I really wanted to like it though!)</p>

<p>What puzzles me most about my high school curriculum is that while we read lots of American poetry, we read remarkably few American novels. I read Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises), Faulkner (well hardly any just The Bear I think, I’ve gotten bogged down by every other one I attempted), Fitzgerald (Gatsby, This Side of Paradise), The Scarlet Letter much later. In fact I got my best instruction by reading two volumes of the Norton Anthology of American Literature during the year after college while driving across the country photographing fire stations. Henry James I read in Germany, along with Dickens, Trollope and Neville Chute (not that he’s in the same class - but I associate those four with nursing babies.)</p>

<p>I’ve never understood the problem with Huck Finn. Half the point of the book is Huck learning to see Jim as a human.</p>

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<p>True. I don’t think you can teach Huck Finn, these days, without the Odyssey and The Color Purple, or Beloved or the poetry of Ai. But I do also think you CAN do without Huck Finn and not without either Beloved or The Color Purple. Those books are important for young women, regardless of color, imho. Also “The House on Mango Street”</p>

<p>ETA: Great Post Mathmom!</p>

<p>I forgot how much I loved Hardy in high school. Just the right tone for the kind of kid I was. I forgot to even give that to my girls. Damn.</p>

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<h1>40 - How about reading this group together?</h1>

<p>Huck Finn
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Go Tell It On The Mountain
To Kill a Mockingbird
Color Purple
Beloved</p>

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<p>I would take that class in a second, alh. Great group.</p>

45

<p>At this point, QM jumps up and down, due to hating The Glass Menagerie! I should not let the jumping distract me from the other interesting aspects of mathmom’s post.</p>

<p>There is a lot of literature that I feel I am supposed to like (or at least profit from, in some sense), but can’t. The Glass Menagerie is high on this list.</p>

46

<p>I recently reread East of Eden. I’m not sure what makes this a grim novel apart from the fact that it rambles for far too many pages. Grapes of Wrath was much more tightly written and conveyed the misery of those whose lives were devastated by the Dust Bowl. It’s mighty grim but it’s also mighty powerful. By the way, if anyone hasn’t seen it and has the opportunity to see the Ken Burns miniseries The Dust Bowl, I highly recommend it. </p>

<p>I’d also like to understand what makes Crime and Punishment grim. Tragic, I understand; tragic is an understatement. But there is clearly a moral code that Dostoyevsky is trying to convey and the novel ends with repentance and redemption if I recall correctly. (It’s been awhile.) What I took from that novel was its drama and internal focus. It was different from anything I’d experienced and I loved it.</p>

47

<p>I think the suggestion by alh in post #43 with a grouping of books is a really good idea. I have to admit that I have never been able to cope emotionally with the rawness of Beloved long enough to read it, though.</p>

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<p>My problem with Dostoyevsky is more one of the way he wrote than anything else. he was paid by the word and I think it shows. Sometimes I complain about this with Dickens, too. But that’s more of an artistic quibble.</p>

<p>Still, I notice it in the story, too.</p>

<p>(But, I know he was great for many.)</p>

49

<p>Re #46, oh oops! (/looks embarrassed) I have been ranting about East of Eden when I meant to rant about Of Mice and Men.</p>

<p>You know how in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Captain Jack Sparrow acts dastardly and then announces “Pirate!” as a quasi-excuse? In a similar vein, I have to announce “Scientist!” here.</p>

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<p>We definitely read a lot of grim books but one of the best books I’ve ever read is The Kite Runner and its devastating but amazingly well written. I just didn’t like in I think fifth grade and sixth grade where one of the main characters died in every singe book (Bridge to Terabithia, Old Yeller, A Taste of Blackberries…)</p>

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<p>So, some of my lack of knowledge having been exposed, I will come in with a bit more of “Scientist!”</p>

<p>What was going on with Raskolnikov’s mother in Crime and Punishment. I did not understand that character at all.</p>

<p>Also, I could not actually tell whether Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya had been having an affair with Svidrigailov before she killed him, or not. And I couldn’t tell whether there was a deliberate contrast set up between Raskolnikov and his sister, or not.</p>

<p>There was some beautiful symbolism of water in Crime and Punishment. At least I think so. (Scientist!) But I believe that I fell victim to consumption along the way, unless it was jaundice due to liver failure, and the “redemption” just didn’t grab me.</p>

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<p>I am so glad you posted this. I had just posted a similar thought in the IB forum earlier today. High school is a tough time, and most of our kids are in high level courses, which brings with it quite a bit of stress. I think that the curriculum should be sensitive to this and to the age and sensitivity of the kids. Being immersed in grim/ depressing stories all year is not appropriate.
I can’t recall offhand all the books my daughter has had to read this year (10th grade) but they included “The Jungle”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, “The Great Gatsby”, and “The Hot Zone”, along with essays and poetry, that have ALL seemed to have dark and depressing themes. My daughter said recently in class, while reading (and of course having to discuss) that day’s depressing selection, she looked ahead, hopeful that there might be something lighter coming and the next selection was a pages long suicide note. She and her friends dread the class.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your comment, Charlie87star–it’s as if fifth and sixth graders would think everyone was immortal, if it were not for the death of a main character in “every single book.” Too true!</p>

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<p>Yep, The Hot Zone–another commonly assigned book, in seventh grade, in QMP’s case. Shortly after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Great choice! There’s nothing to be said about “literary merit” in that case. I have to go now, but I really appreciate the responses on this thread–including the ones from posters who do not agree with me, and especially including mythmom’s posts, which I need to re-read and ponder.</p>

<p>For the lucky people who have not encountered The Hot Zone, it’s about an Ebola outbreak (fatal hemorrhagic fever).</p>

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<p>Yes, and then, at least for my oldest, the Junior high “misery and death” curriculum continued on, in spite of the fact that 9/11 was that year. It was really a bit much, which brings me back to your OP, about the fact that the curriculum might not take into account the realities of the lives of today’s kids as well as it could.</p>

56

<p>Favorites and disliked books are very personal and certainly very subjective.</p>

<p>I don’t think the point of dark books is that the world is awful. I think it’s that we are tender.</p>

<p>And kids can be taught to be empathic, to think in metaphor and to hear music in words just as they can be taught algebra and then calculus. Of course some are more naturally gifted than others.</p>

<p>I don’t think I ever read anything in school I didn’t live.</p>

<p>I have no argument with dispensing with Bridge to Tarabithia, whatever is most “grim.” These aren’t favorites of mine.</p>

<p>But I do think kids are naturally attracted to darkness, just as fairy tales were dark pre-Disney. Maurice Sendak had a funny piece about children endeavoring to protect their parents from the darkness of the world.</p>

<p>Likely, we will not all agree about our likes and dislikes. I find Lird of the Rings sentimental and a bit dull.</p>

<p>Teachers reach those books that most easily enable students to write essays because we live in an age of assessment. Such is life.</p>

<p>Neither if mine ever complained about the darkness of their readings.</p>

<p>If your students feel that way there is certainly nothing wrong with requesting some variety from whoever develops curricula at your school.</p>

<p>However, I don’t think books are essential bromides; texts celebrate our humanity through language and each component is important.</p>

<p>One of my two has read the Aeneid in Latin three times, something I could never do. He can speak at great length about Virgil’s use of conduire – to found a city and to bury a sword in flesh. He has also written on Joyce’s Ulysses.</p>

<p>My other is an expert on Emily Dickinson, a poet she read on her own. She is an historian specializing in American history and lives Robert Lowell.</p>

<p>Neither were English majors in college, nor did I read to them. I think their interests grew from middle school and high school.</p>

<p>My S’s and I just finished watching this week’s Dr. Who.</p>

57

<p>sandra cisneros, amy tan, sherman alexie and junot diaz are also authors that 21st century high schoolers should be exposed to (poetgrl mentioned mango street). expanding the definition of ‘good, must-read literature’ can only be beneficial to all of our children in the long run.</p>

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<p>poetgrl, lol about Dostoyevsky being paid by the word! It definitely shows in his writing. I didn’t know this about him or about Dickens until much later. It’s probably a good thing because my high school self would have been righteously indignant at this. Even so, I loved everything Dostoyevsky.</p>

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<p>was toni morrison paid by the word too? i love her and she is a national treasure, but i find that i appreciate her more when she’s speaking on a panel rather than trying to read one of her books! too dense, too heavy for me!!</p>

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<p>Dostovetsky was brilliant. The Brothers Karamazov is so hard to describe because it appears grim on the outside, questions morality and God ( the Grand Inquisitor) and still ends for Alyosha, at least, okay. There is so much going on there. I personally dislike Dickens - granted, I have only read two of his so-so books; everyone is telling me to read a tale of Two Cities. </p>

<p>Khalid Hossini is a good writer, certainly, and I think the Kite Runner shows his strengths well. However, his second book. A Thousand Splendid Suns, is perhaps the most painful book I have ever read. The character suffers so much, I cannot even describe it. Miriam’s life is misery and hopelessness personified, until maybe two pages before <em>spoilers</em> she gets executed. </p>

<p>To be frank, I think this exposure to dark literature has forever made me cynical. I consider myself empathetic, maybe overly so and the message of LoF, at least the one taught by my teacher, that humans are fundamentally evil and that civilization is a mere illusion has forever stuck with me. This may have to do wih my internalized self contempt, but I do not think people are good, not naturally. There is too much pain, and going off what Ivan says - even if there is a world where all wrongs are made up for, where there is ultimate harmony, that harmony cannot be allowd, if it occurs on the basis of innocent people suffering. </p>

<p>Do I feel hopeless or fearless? I think maybe neither. I am resigned, resigned to the fact that we are imperfect but also determined that if we are all flawed, I become as close to the ideal as possible. This inspires me, I guess. </p>

<p>But I am quite confident that I am an anomaly - my classmates either laugh them off or take it seriously for a bit and forget it.</p>