<p>Just wanted to post an update on this. I am currently in the middle of Chapter 10.</p>
<p>Very important note: Having read this far in the book, I have become convinced that my recollection of the “very, very raw” element was faulty. Stylistically, the extremely raw part is not consistent with Ellison’s writings.</p>
<p>QMP did complain about specific parts of Invisible Man, several of which I have already mentioned. </p>
<p>However, it was a real blunder on my part to think that the raw section came from this book. I have a thought on the book that it did come from (also required reading for AP English), but to avoid further errors, I will wait until I have actually located it–after finishing Invisible Man.</p>
<p>I think JHS may have already pointed out there isn’t actually any sex in “Santa Claus” sex scene. I think the narrator is more a gentleman than not in the scene. He doesn’t have sex with the woman but protects her feelings by telling her they did. Unless my reading is completely wrong?</p>
<p>I am sorry your daughter had such a difficult time with this scene and that it negatively impacted Christmas for her. I am not sure how anyone could have reasonably foreseen that response, even the most sensitive parent reading all materials in advance of an even more sensitive child.</p>
<p>A friend passing through this weekend glanced at my stack of Ellison, Baldwin, Wright and commented: “Very angry writers. Why aren’t you reading Hurston? She has a much more optimistic voice.” Hurston is the only writer in that group who survived the huge book deaccession prior to our empty nesting move and made in into the permanent collection.</p>
<p>I think that I mentioned above that QMP had a negative reaction to the fact that the protagonist wrote on the woman’s body with lipstick, combined with the “Santa Claus” commentary by the boys in the class. The first could not have been predicted. I think the second could have been predicted by anyone who spent half an hour in this particular school. </p>
<p>I agree that there was no intercourse in the scene. Was the protagonist protecting Sybil’s feelings when he wrote on her? I don’t think he had any actual interest in protecting her feelings. It’s a little out of context for me at the moment, because I haven’t reached the scene in reading the book straight through, but I don’t think the protagonist <em>should</em> have had any interest in protecting Sybil’s feelings. I think his motivation for writing on her body and then cleaning it off was fairly complex.</p>
<p>My spouse has told me more than once that, when he was in high school, if a group of young men noticed one of their number acting crudely toward women in their classes, they would tell him to stop–thinking that otherwise, the young women they wanted to spend time with would reject them. This seems to have dropped off considerably, as a social practice.</p>
<p>I have no idea what the Santa Claus writing scene is all about and will be waiting for an explanation. The narrator does change his mind and erase the writing. He looks until he finds a substance that won’t leave a smell (so she won’t know the writing and erasing have happened?) When she wakes up, he tells her what she wants to hear. He tries his best to put her in a taxi home and out of harm’s way, even spending his last $5. I certainly don’t find him blameless in the episode but I am fairly sympathetic to the situation in which he finds himself.</p>
<p>I have no sympathy whatsoever for high school students bullying and harassing other students. If they are the sort of people who do this and are allowed to do so in the classroom, I don’t see how the reading material really matters. Will they stop if all sexual references are eliminated from their reading? It seems unlikely to me.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t see why the focus isn’t on changing classroom behavior?</p>
<p>adding: I am trying not to be argumentative or hostile. I am extremely sympathetic to any parent with a child in a damaging classroom environment. Been there, done that. Wish I had done better. Lots of residual guilt feelings.</p>
<p>I think it gives students the opportunity to say borderline or even across-the-borderline things in class, in the guise of class “discussion.” If the reading did not have sexual references, their opportunities to harass would be reduced–appreciably, I think.</p>
<p>I appreciate the fact that you think of positive motives for the characters in the book, when they are in somewhat ambiguous situations, alh. I would not want to downplay the positive elements.</p>
<p>“I think it gives students the opportunity to say borderline or even across-the-borderline things in class, in the guise of class “discussion.” If the reading did not have sexual references, their opportunities to harass would be reduced–appreciably, I think.”</p>
<p>And again, you seem to be advocating for the removal of all sexual references in high school reading material JUST IN CASE some immature students MIGHT say something objectionable. But there are many other possible references that MIGHT offend any number of readers and/or lead to “opportunities to harass”. References to drug use might lead to immature jokes about addicts-what it a student has an addict in her family? References to gay or lesbian characters might lead to gay jokes-what if a student has a gay family member? References to domestic violence could lead to jokes about sending Alice to the moon-what if a student is from a violent family? Or the book in question-what if you have a black student and there are racial jokes? </p>
<p>The problem is that you cannot anticipate mature scenes becoming the subject of immature students’ joking around, and if you’re going to remove ONE mature topic, how does one decide WHICH one and why not others? It’s a dangerous rabbit hole the Ray Bradbury takes on in Fahrenheit 451. So many topics are possible offenders, that society just chose to ban them all. Eventually you’re left with reading only pap, because it won’t offend ANYONE.</p>
<p>I’m also shaking my head over pages and pages of discussion that was based on a misconception in the first place. Lots of book bannings start that way, “I haven’t read it but I’ve heard it’s offensive so let’s take it away.”</p>
<p>QM has repeatedly argued against book banning. The discussion (as I understand it) has been what books are appropriate to teach in a high school classroom. I think that is an excellent discussion because there are too many books to be taught and it makes sense to try and teach some great ones. I am still struggling with the idea of too grim literature and think it is also a subject worth discussing. If constant exposure to media and/or literary violence makes violent acts more likely, does exposure to grim literature also impact us in a negative way?</p>
<p>I think coming of age stories are excellent reading for high school students. I think Invisible Man is a pretty good example of the genre. </p>
<p>For history records the patterns of men’s lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterwards. All things, it is said, are duly recorded–all things of importance, that is. But not quite,…We who write no novels, histories or other books. What about us, I thought, seeing Clifton again in my mind and going to sit upon a bench as a cool gust of air rolled up the tunnel pg. 439 Invisible Man</p>
<p>We have to select some books that tell this history. I haven’t made up my mind if Ellison would be one of my picks. In North Carolina, today, I can’t support removing any book that tells this history from the reading lists. I support adding more.</p>
<p>“QM has repeatedly argued against book banning. The discussion (as I understand it) has been what books are appropriate to teach in a high school classroom.”</p>
<p>Yes, and removing them from the classroom in many cases, maybe MOST, will remove them from the students’ reading them at all. The very kids who NEED to read AND DISCUSS such topics aren’t likely to go looking for them. You cannot sanitize all classroom reading from any potential disturbance in class. You just can’t. And I feel singling out sex scenes is missing the larger point. </p>
<p>FWIW, I completely agree with you about NC.</p>
<p>Well, my comment about the “very, very raw” section of the book was wrong, as I have mentioned. I confused another book with Invisible Man because both were required reading at about the same time in the same course, and Invisible Man does have quite a few upsetting elements (so I was hearing quite a lot about it).</p>
<p>It is an embarrassing blunder, I admit.</p>
<p>So far, I think Invisible Man is an valuable book for students to read. I just don’t think it is a valuable book for high school students to read. What advantage do you see in having students read it in high school, instead of later, when they are more mature?</p>
<p>"What advantage do you see in having students read it in high school, instead of later, when they are more mature? "</p>
<p>First of all, I don’t think that there’s a huge difference between some high school students and some college students. So I’m not sure why a hard line between the two is valid. I knew kids in college that were less mature that my middle school siblings (the one that ate a goldfish and chugged a bottle of mustard on a dare comes to mind). </p>
<p>There also differences between high-level classes and generic classes-I read books in my middle school classes some less achieving peers didn’t read until late in high school. So again, it would really depend on the audience and the ability to delve into a book rather than an arbitrary age.</p>
<p>That said, I think that while kids are still maturing is the exact time they need to challenged and opened to knew thoughts than after they’re deemed “mature”. It’s clear from my D’s experiences as far back as 3rd grade that kids from certain communities are simply not exposed-at all-to the issues faced by minorities. I think most high school kids SHOULD be forced to face the fact that their modern experiences are vastly different from that of others, including blacks in the 1950’s and before. As has been mentioned several times here, sex was an intricately woven part of that experience.</p>
<p>I would hope that facing the stark history of minorities (or any other real-world difficult subject) would help make a young adult view things through a more compassionate and a more realistic lens. I lost a friend not long ago who insisted that blacks are no longer marginalized and that their struggle was “ancient history”. I have to wonder how extensive HER reading background is?</p>
<p>My kids went to colleges where there seemed to be courses with the sole purpose of teaching students, who hadn’t yet learned the lesson, that it was unacceptable to discriminate (or bully) because of race, gender, sexual orientation. I don’t think we need to wait till college to teach that lesson. If the DEKEs at Yale had learned that lesson in HS…
better world imho.</p>
<p>I agree that there are historical events that high school students should be taught (or even before high school); this includes the shameful oppression of African Americans that continues to the present day, in a slightly different form. I think there is an excellent argument for teaching those events in history classes. I think the argument for teaching them in literature is somewhat weaker.</p>
<p>With regard to the DEKEs at Yale, I don’t think that their view of women would have been enlightened in any way by reading Invisible Man–at least the parts that I have read so far.</p>
<p>I think that a strict teacher could probably impose outward order on a class, but I am not so sure that a teacher can cause the students to develop a mature understanding of a work of literature for which they are not ready.</p>
<p>To give a few personal examples outside of the direct context of this thread: I read William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life at 15, as outside reading. I did not understand it at that time, and did not like it. Later, in college, I read it as assigned reading. I found it hilarious–and beyond that, wonderful. If it had not been assigned reading in college (on the grounds that everyone had read it in high school), I would never have returned to it. </p>
<p>As another example, when I saw the televised version of Anne of Green Gables, I thought that Colleen Dewhurst had done a near-miraculous job of reinterpreting the character of Marilla with an empathetic understanding, departing from the book and showing depth in Marilla that I had never suspected she could be portrayed to have. I had read Anne of Green Gables when I was 9 or so. When I went back to the book later on, reading it to QMP in the evenings, I suddenly discovered that quite a lot of the depth in Marilla’s character was right there in the book–to my great surprise.</p>
<p>With regard to Invisible Man, I think that some prior historical knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance is very valuable for anyone reading the book; prior knowledge of the Harlem riots of the 1930’s and 1940’s, and not just those of the 1960’s is also valuable. From my observations, the local high school students tended to have a comparatively weak grasp of the historical events of the 20th century and their sequencing.</p>
<p>QM,
Your comment about changed perceptions made me consider my recent rereading of Brave New World. It was one of the books from high school required reading that stood out the most to me and I suggested it to my son when he was looking for something to read. I decided to read it with him and came away with 2 impressions. First, it wasn’t nearly as impactful as I had remembered it, and I was quite disappointed. Secondly, I kept wondering where all of the sex was coming from? I swear I don’t recall the sexual content-so strange. Is it possible we had an edited high school version?
The number 1 most impactful book from high school however was Native Son. I recall being horribly disturbed. My son will be reading it in school this year and I will reread it at that time. I am very curious to see how I feel about it now.</p>
<p>alh, the DEKES at UC Berkeley were notorious for NOT discriminating… so much so, that they voted in women. It was a coed frat! Had a vending machine with doobies in it. Half the male and female DEKES belonged to the Sierra Club. </p>
<p>Ah, Berkeley in the mid-late-70s… :)))</p>
<p>The nirvana didn’t last long… the national DEKEs eventually shut down the coed frat, everyone got kicked out. A couple of years later they reopened, this time with the proper aryan types who never met a republican they didn’t looove. But for a while there… the DEKES of Berkeley were the coolest cats on frat row…</p>
<p>Back on topic - Sue22,so cool your daughter is reading ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’ I remember when Zora Neale Hurston was re-discovered in the early 80s, thanks in part to Alice Walker, who championed her work. Walker herself deserves a lot of credit for bringing to light a literature that was almost forgotten. Her collection of essays, “In Search of My Mother’s Garden” introduced me to this whole other world of writing which certainly wasn’t taught at the progressive (if not, by reputation at least, radical) university I went to…</p>
<p>For everything there is a time and a season. </p>
<p>It has seemed to me that sometimes schools, or perhaps particular teachers, are overeager to expose kids to seeing the worst sides of life without worrying about if students are emotionally ready to handle the information …</p>
<p>One of our children had to give an in-depth report on a Holocaust extermination camp (complete with PowerPoint presentation) in sixth grade. I talked with a Jewish friend about this who felt that the assignment was too intense for that age… </p>
<p>Same child went to high school and routinely had to watch violent movies such as “Gladiator” during world history. </p>
<p>Couldn’t intense info about the Holocaust wait until the ninth grade? Couldn’t world history be taught without exposure to graphic violence?</p>
<p>^^I am sympathetic to the “too grim” point of view, but if a book is too grim then I am probably going to find it too grim for all age groups. My recent experience is that books which seem too grim to me now, were not too grim when I was decades younger. Some of that has to do with having more understanding of what I’m reading.</p>
<p>I have a problem with waiting to read books till the reader is intellectually ready. I am 57 and not properly intellectually prepared to understand Invisible Man. It still seemed to me a very useful exercise. I am somewhat comforted by those who seem to believe what the reader extracts from the book is perhaps more important than what the writer intended.</p>
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<p>It seems to me there are almost unlimited ways to approach a text. For this book JHS suggest one approach in post 105. Poetgrl suggests another in post 196. If I were reading this book with my own sons, I would definitely be pointing out (as far as I can tell) that the female characters are mainly whores or mothers (Mary is a mother figure, right?) one wife off stage, and a few nameless young political workers. A lot of the book is about this organization, The Brotherhood. Is one of the questions raised in the book what brotherhood really is? Wait. What about the sisters?</p>
<p>I think this book could be used to teach feminism to HS classroom bullies. I am wondering if poetgrl might agree?</p>
<p>While I let my children read anything and never have asked that they be excused from reading any book, I have frequently requested that they be excused from certain movies. There is a huge difference between reading about something and seeing it on screen. We never have exposed them to any videos or movies with gory violence or horror-type suspense. Black and white pictures of Holocaust victims with written descriptions of the horrendous things they endured – yes, absolutely. A film showing those things on screen – no.</p>
<p>One of my children, when in elementary school, was frightened to the point of nightmares after seeing a tame movie (one that I had pre-approved, no less) at a friend’s house. Another sobbed so much during a sad part in a Disney movie in first grade (yes, it was relevant to the class discussion) that she had to be taken out of the room and comforted. What bothered me most about those situations was thinking about the many children who are exposed to horrible, graphic videos and do not have people who recognize their fears, comfort them, and ensure that they aren’t forced to view those types of abusive images again.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone could ever justify showing Gladiator to a high school class. Are we so desensitized to violence as a society that we accept viewing such graphic violence as normal? What’s next – the return of public hangings?</p>
Hurston is the only writer in that group who survived the huge book deaccession prior to our empty nesting move and made in into the permanent collection.</p>