The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The first book was "The Great Gatsby." The whole class read the book section by section at home, and then discussed it in class. Special attention was paid to the use of symbolism throughout the novel. At the end, we broke up into groups and acted out scenes from the book. I was in the scene where Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Myrtle's friends visit her apartment in the city. I played Myrtle and Mrs. McKee. At the beginning of the scene, Myrtle buys a puppy. Luckily enough, one of our group members had recently gotten a puppy himself. We were able to use a live dog in the scene, and it was a lot of fun. Daniel Chapa, who played Tom, fake-punched me in the face so convincingly that the poor puppy thought we were really fighting and became afraid. We eventually were able to reassure her. We also tried to paint a backdrop that looked like a train platform, but nobody could tell what it was. It just looked like a bunch of awkwardly placed blobs that were different shades of grey. The whole thing was fantastic.
Personally, I really enjoyed "The Great Gatsby." The characters' downward spiral of self-destruction was absolutely enthralling, even if the characters themselves were note particularly likable. It is written like a piece of art. For out final Literature exam, I wrote an essay on Fitzgerald's use of color symbolism to subtly critique the idea of the "American dream." The whole class went with Pam to see the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby.
Personally, I really enjoyed "The Great Gatsby." The characters' downward spiral of self-destruction was absolutely enthralling, even if the characters themselves were note particularly likable. It is written like a piece of art. For out final Literature exam, I wrote an essay on Fitzgerald's use of color symbolism to subtly critique the idea of the "American dream." The whole class went with Pam to see the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby.
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Durring the second half of the semester, we split into book club groups that focused on a specific genre of literature. I was in the group that looked at coming-of-age stories. The first book that we read was "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. Right at the beginning of the year, when we were getting a basic familiarity with the big-name writers of America's history and the literary movements that they were a part of, I was assigned to report on J.D. Salinger. In the course of my research, I read about the controversy that this book still inspires to this day. It also seems that teenagers either love it immensely or hate it with a passion. I essentially decided to read it in the book club to see what all the fuss was about (I have since learned that this is a pretty terrible reason to read a book).
I think I need to preface this by saying that I am the type of teenager who liked the book. There are certain feelings and elements of reality that this book describes that I've never seen in any other piece of writing. Yes, Holden Caulfield spends much of the book whining, and yes, I can see how that would be annoying to some people. But while it can be grating at times, I did really enjoy getting to read his inner monologue, getting to see how he looks at other people and at the world. On the other hand, I still do not understand "all the fuss," even after reading it. It's an exceptional book, but I don't feel that it merits the level of controversy that it is subjected to.
Our midterm exam durring the book club period was, hands down, the best exam in the history of exams. We sat down, picked a scenario, and wrote for an entire class period (which is the kind of thing that I do for fun, anyways). My scenario was something along these lines: "The author and the main character of your book have a conversations in which they disagree about how the book should have ended." I wrote a really tense conversation between Salinger and Holden over the dinner table. Salinger smoked his way through several cigarettes by the time class, and thus the story, ended. I have never had so much fun on a test.
I think I need to preface this by saying that I am the type of teenager who liked the book. There are certain feelings and elements of reality that this book describes that I've never seen in any other piece of writing. Yes, Holden Caulfield spends much of the book whining, and yes, I can see how that would be annoying to some people. But while it can be grating at times, I did really enjoy getting to read his inner monologue, getting to see how he looks at other people and at the world. On the other hand, I still do not understand "all the fuss," even after reading it. It's an exceptional book, but I don't feel that it merits the level of controversy that it is subjected to.
Our midterm exam durring the book club period was, hands down, the best exam in the history of exams. We sat down, picked a scenario, and wrote for an entire class period (which is the kind of thing that I do for fun, anyways). My scenario was something along these lines: "The author and the main character of your book have a conversations in which they disagree about how the book should have ended." I wrote a really tense conversation between Salinger and Holden over the dinner table. Salinger smoked his way through several cigarettes by the time class, and thus the story, ended. I have never had so much fun on a test.
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Our second coming-of-age novel was "The Namesake," by Jhumpa Lahiri. It follows the life of Gogol Ganguli, beginning before he is born and ending after his marriage dissolves. Gogol, the son of Bengali Indian immigrants, is born and raised in America. He is named for Nikolai Gogol, a long-dead Russian writer who once, in a roundabout sort of way, saved Gogol's father's life. As he grows, he wrestles with his name (a conflict which is, to an extent, a proxy for his wrestling with his heritage). He tries to reject his history, tries to reject the name his father gave him and all that it entails, but in the end finds that it makes whole. "The Namesake" is a very powerful story of one person's attempts to reconcile his past, present and future in the broader quest to determine who he is.
"The Namesake" was moving in a way that the other books that I read this semester were not. It really touches the reader, and makes the reader understand the way the characters think and feel. The characters felt very real. I read the whole book in two days, and by the end I felt like I'd know the Ganguli family for decades. I've seldom encountered other books that can make characters come across as people in such a realistic way. In "The Great Gatsby," for instance, the characters are devices that Fitzgerald uses to further the plot, and thus communicate the larger messages that he's trying to get across. Lahiri is remarkable in that her characters manage to eloquently convey the broader things while still being real and individual. It's really an amazing book.
"The Namesake" was moving in a way that the other books that I read this semester were not. It really touches the reader, and makes the reader understand the way the characters think and feel. The characters felt very real. I read the whole book in two days, and by the end I felt like I'd know the Ganguli family for decades. I've seldom encountered other books that can make characters come across as people in such a realistic way. In "The Great Gatsby," for instance, the characters are devices that Fitzgerald uses to further the plot, and thus communicate the larger messages that he's trying to get across. Lahiri is remarkable in that her characters manage to eloquently convey the broader things while still being real and individual. It's really an amazing book.
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
As a member of the Honors program, I also read and reported on two additional books. The first of those books was "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. At first, I had some trouble figuring out what was going on, since the novel takes place in an alternate future and the chapters are definitely not in chronological order, but I was very drawn in by the time I reached the middle of the book. The ending is absolutely agonizing.
The best thing about this book is, in my opinion, the craft of the writing. "Beautiful" is a strange adjective to use for a book, especially a book that is so tragic, but it definitely applies to "The Handmaid's Tale." The writing often takes on a dream-like quality, and is extremely evocative. I almost never stop in the middle of reading and think "That was a really good sentence," but "The Handmaid's Tale" is full of really, really good sentences.
In the book report, I answered six questions. The following is a selection from my response to the question "What does the book tell us about America and/or the character of Americans?" It encompasses one of (in my opinion) the best sections of the book:
When Offred talks about the events leading up to her failed attempt to escape over the border into Canada, she mentions one specific incident between her husband, Luke, and the family cat that speaks volumes about humanity. The couple has realized that they cannot bring the cat with them as they try to cross, and so a short discussion ensues about what is to happen to the cat:
“We could give her away, I said. One of the neighbors. Even as I said this, I saw how foolish that would be. I’ll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before…That’s one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself” (192-193).
The clarity, directness, and pain of this observation is shattering. It explains so much about the largely unfathomable atrocities that have beset humanity. Once there is an it, anything is possible, including murder. Also, systems that are very practiced in it creation, such as the government of Gilead, manipulate others into killing off the empathetic part of themselves that would object to such violations of others. They create scenarios where the humanity and personhood of others dies within oneself. This is incredibly damaging and dangerous, to all parties involved. This killing within oneself is a prerequisite to accepting and perpetrating horrors.
As morbid as this section is, it really resonated with me. "The Handmaid's Tale" is very good at taking very complex, dark things, and laying them out plainly. There is a starkness to this that grabbed at me throughout the book. This book and "The Namesake" are tied for my favorite book of the semester.
One last bit on "The Handmaid's Tale": The following excerpt is my response in the report to the prompt "Evaluate the author's writing style."
The author’s writing style is reminiscent of poetry. Sometimes it flows; sometimes it turns jagged and jerks the reader back and forth. Very often, it slows down to describe a moment in time in impeccable detail. The use of imagery and detail creates a surreal, dreamlike world. Offred, the narrator, moves through her life like a sleepwalker. The last paragraph on page 276, describing the end of the Salvaging, is a key example of this. Offred goes through the motions: she watches the murders, her hands move to touch the rope and then her heart, giving a consent to the death that she doesn’t feel. She touches the rope, she looks at the grass, and she is detached. Another example occurs very early in the book, when she is explaining the layout of her room. “A chair, a table, a lamp…A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion…Sunlight comes in through the window, too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished” (7). Her preoccupation with the physical detail of the world serves three primary purposes: firstly, it slowly fills in the world around her, much in the way a dream does. Secondly, it adds to the narrator’s characterization by showing that she does not want to focus on herself and her life and instead directs her energy and description to the world around her. This gives the narrator’s emotional, inwardly focused moments more value, and a sense of rarity. In general, Offred is exactly as her name describes her: the Handmaids are supposed to wear red, symbolizing their fertility, but Offred is not “of Fred”, but “off red”. She does not fit with Gilead’s mold. She is not the red Handmaid, the empty vessel. What she is, however, is something she alone defines.
The best thing about this book is, in my opinion, the craft of the writing. "Beautiful" is a strange adjective to use for a book, especially a book that is so tragic, but it definitely applies to "The Handmaid's Tale." The writing often takes on a dream-like quality, and is extremely evocative. I almost never stop in the middle of reading and think "That was a really good sentence," but "The Handmaid's Tale" is full of really, really good sentences.
In the book report, I answered six questions. The following is a selection from my response to the question "What does the book tell us about America and/or the character of Americans?" It encompasses one of (in my opinion) the best sections of the book:
When Offred talks about the events leading up to her failed attempt to escape over the border into Canada, she mentions one specific incident between her husband, Luke, and the family cat that speaks volumes about humanity. The couple has realized that they cannot bring the cat with them as they try to cross, and so a short discussion ensues about what is to happen to the cat:
“We could give her away, I said. One of the neighbors. Even as I said this, I saw how foolish that would be. I’ll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before…That’s one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself” (192-193).
The clarity, directness, and pain of this observation is shattering. It explains so much about the largely unfathomable atrocities that have beset humanity. Once there is an it, anything is possible, including murder. Also, systems that are very practiced in it creation, such as the government of Gilead, manipulate others into killing off the empathetic part of themselves that would object to such violations of others. They create scenarios where the humanity and personhood of others dies within oneself. This is incredibly damaging and dangerous, to all parties involved. This killing within oneself is a prerequisite to accepting and perpetrating horrors.
As morbid as this section is, it really resonated with me. "The Handmaid's Tale" is very good at taking very complex, dark things, and laying them out plainly. There is a starkness to this that grabbed at me throughout the book. This book and "The Namesake" are tied for my favorite book of the semester.
One last bit on "The Handmaid's Tale": The following excerpt is my response in the report to the prompt "Evaluate the author's writing style."
The author’s writing style is reminiscent of poetry. Sometimes it flows; sometimes it turns jagged and jerks the reader back and forth. Very often, it slows down to describe a moment in time in impeccable detail. The use of imagery and detail creates a surreal, dreamlike world. Offred, the narrator, moves through her life like a sleepwalker. The last paragraph on page 276, describing the end of the Salvaging, is a key example of this. Offred goes through the motions: she watches the murders, her hands move to touch the rope and then her heart, giving a consent to the death that she doesn’t feel. She touches the rope, she looks at the grass, and she is detached. Another example occurs very early in the book, when she is explaining the layout of her room. “A chair, a table, a lamp…A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion…Sunlight comes in through the window, too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished” (7). Her preoccupation with the physical detail of the world serves three primary purposes: firstly, it slowly fills in the world around her, much in the way a dream does. Secondly, it adds to the narrator’s characterization by showing that she does not want to focus on herself and her life and instead directs her energy and description to the world around her. This gives the narrator’s emotional, inwardly focused moments more value, and a sense of rarity. In general, Offred is exactly as her name describes her: the Handmaids are supposed to wear red, symbolizing their fertility, but Offred is not “of Fred”, but “off red”. She does not fit with Gilead’s mold. She is not the red Handmaid, the empty vessel. What she is, however, is something she alone defines.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Stephen Hopp, Camille and Barbara Kingsolver
My second Honors book was "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by renown author Barbara Kingsolver and her family. The family had lived in Tucson, Arizona for many years, but had become fed up (no pun intended) with the unsustainable agricultural practices that were employed to keep them alive in the middle of the desert. They moved to West Virginia and undertook a daring experiment. For one year, they ate only what they grew or raised themselves on their farm, or what they bought locally from their neighbors. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is part memoir, part agricultural guidebook, and all wake-up call. Out of all the books that I read this semester, this is far-and-away the one that has had the largest impact on my life.
The following paragraphs are from the book report that I wrote on "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." This particular selection is in response to the question, "What does the book tell us about America and/or the character of Americans?"
Before reading this book, I didn’t really have any concept of what Barbara Kingsolver calls “food culture”. During my time in China, I made a few jokes about the Chinese ordering American food when they don’t want to cook, but I’d never thought of food being a defining point of a cultural identity. However, as Kingsolver eloquently explains, food and everything associated with it (particularly traditions) truly are formative factors to any culture or people. America, as a “nation of immigrants”, is thusly in a bit of a conundrum.
Americans don’t really have a collective, shared ancestral home, old local plant strains, traditional dishes and recipes, or an ancient, binding way of eating that has kept us healthy for generations. We lost much of that in the “melting pot” process, and, over the last hundred years especially, we have had to create our own patchwork version. In a developed nation, in an age of rising consumerism and during the advent of technologies heretofore unimaginable, our developing food culture has been somewhat hijacked by corporate America. Corn syrup (especially the “partially hydrogenated” variety), “pink slime”, and dozens of other unnatural substances pass for food, massive farms growing genetically modified monocultures cover our rolling hills, traditional small-time family farms are twisting themselves into pretzels to make ends meet, and the majority of Americans are perpetually “overfed, undernourished” (Kingsolver 54). Our lack of a food culture has been detrimental to everything but the economy, though the health issues it generates have started to change that.
This next selection is a portion of my response to the question "What connections can you draw between this book and the other works you have read for class?"
The connections between the woman’s rights movement and the modern state of the American food system was completely new to me, though, and made me think of the women’s lit that I read, particularly my other Honors book, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, where there are women whose lives are specifically dedicated to cleaning the houses and preparing the food of the rich. In our world, instead of a campaign to get men into the kitchen, the feminist movement (intentionally or unintentionally) created a campaign to get women out of the kitchen. Like the “melting pot” bit above, the disconnect between Americans and food is, Kingsolver argues, partially a side affect of the fact that, now, due to the reaction against the debilitating, immovable roles that society had for so long, it’s socially difficult in many parts of American society for anyone to be “in the kitchen.” Manly men and empowered women alike are supposed to reject such things, in a new, strange kind of gender-based role system. Offred’s society in “The Handmaid’s Tale” certainly needs a great deal of enlightenment of the she’s-not-so-different-from-he variety, but our culture could do with a look back to what, in my opinion, is the primary tenant of feminism: people should be able to do whatever they want without restrictions based on gender. This was originally applied on one direction, with one gender: women should be able to be the pilots, not just the flight attendants, the CEOs, not just the secretaries. They shouldn’t be required to raise children, cook dinner, and have the husband’s martini ready for him when he gets home. But, back to the principle: no restrictions based on gender. If a husband wants to cook, then he should be able to without societal reproach. If a woman wants to cook, maybe it doesn’t mean she’s beholden to the patriarchal society of past decades, maybe it means she likes cooking. As the fabulous Laura Webb often told her classes, “It’s just chemistry!”
The following paragraphs are from the book report that I wrote on "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." This particular selection is in response to the question, "What does the book tell us about America and/or the character of Americans?"
Before reading this book, I didn’t really have any concept of what Barbara Kingsolver calls “food culture”. During my time in China, I made a few jokes about the Chinese ordering American food when they don’t want to cook, but I’d never thought of food being a defining point of a cultural identity. However, as Kingsolver eloquently explains, food and everything associated with it (particularly traditions) truly are formative factors to any culture or people. America, as a “nation of immigrants”, is thusly in a bit of a conundrum.
Americans don’t really have a collective, shared ancestral home, old local plant strains, traditional dishes and recipes, or an ancient, binding way of eating that has kept us healthy for generations. We lost much of that in the “melting pot” process, and, over the last hundred years especially, we have had to create our own patchwork version. In a developed nation, in an age of rising consumerism and during the advent of technologies heretofore unimaginable, our developing food culture has been somewhat hijacked by corporate America. Corn syrup (especially the “partially hydrogenated” variety), “pink slime”, and dozens of other unnatural substances pass for food, massive farms growing genetically modified monocultures cover our rolling hills, traditional small-time family farms are twisting themselves into pretzels to make ends meet, and the majority of Americans are perpetually “overfed, undernourished” (Kingsolver 54). Our lack of a food culture has been detrimental to everything but the economy, though the health issues it generates have started to change that.
This next selection is a portion of my response to the question "What connections can you draw between this book and the other works you have read for class?"
The connections between the woman’s rights movement and the modern state of the American food system was completely new to me, though, and made me think of the women’s lit that I read, particularly my other Honors book, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, where there are women whose lives are specifically dedicated to cleaning the houses and preparing the food of the rich. In our world, instead of a campaign to get men into the kitchen, the feminist movement (intentionally or unintentionally) created a campaign to get women out of the kitchen. Like the “melting pot” bit above, the disconnect between Americans and food is, Kingsolver argues, partially a side affect of the fact that, now, due to the reaction against the debilitating, immovable roles that society had for so long, it’s socially difficult in many parts of American society for anyone to be “in the kitchen.” Manly men and empowered women alike are supposed to reject such things, in a new, strange kind of gender-based role system. Offred’s society in “The Handmaid’s Tale” certainly needs a great deal of enlightenment of the she’s-not-so-different-from-he variety, but our culture could do with a look back to what, in my opinion, is the primary tenant of feminism: people should be able to do whatever they want without restrictions based on gender. This was originally applied on one direction, with one gender: women should be able to be the pilots, not just the flight attendants, the CEOs, not just the secretaries. They shouldn’t be required to raise children, cook dinner, and have the husband’s martini ready for him when he gets home. But, back to the principle: no restrictions based on gender. If a husband wants to cook, then he should be able to without societal reproach. If a woman wants to cook, maybe it doesn’t mean she’s beholden to the patriarchal society of past decades, maybe it means she likes cooking. As the fabulous Laura Webb often told her classes, “It’s just chemistry!”
Other Things
I also read "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Earnest Hemingway, "The Kite Runner" by Khalid Hosseini, and "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut. I found "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to be incredibly uninteresting. I had to stop in the middle of "The Kite Runner" (at that point, yes), and it took me a week to come back to it. Kurt Vonnegut is very reliably weird, and "Cat's Cradle" did not disappoint.