Hi everyone,
I hope you are having a restful and enjoyable break. If you have been reading an AP quality book over the break, please post a response to the question below. Your response needs to be thoughtful and well-written to earn 10 extra credit points, to be used towards your second semester grade. This must be posted by midnight on Monday night.
Please tell us the name of the book and the author, and very briefly summarize the plot. Then, answer this: Why would you consider this to be a book of "literary merit"? In case you are unclear about how the College Board defines literary merit, here is some language from the AP English Lit Course Description:
The course should include intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit. The works chosen should invite and gratify rereading.
Reading in an AP course should be both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds upon the reading done in previous English courses. These courses should include the in-depth reading of texts drawn from multiple genres, periods, and cultures. In their AP course, students should also read works from several genres and periods -- from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century -- but, more importantly, they should get to know a few works well. They should read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work's complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. In addition to considering a work's literary artistry, students should consider the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context should provide a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear on the literary works studied.
Over the break, I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The plot is basically about the friends of Dr. Henry Jekyll finding out about Edward Hyde, Jekyll’s heir as stated in his will. This will confuses his old friends because Hyde is a contemptible man with a bad temper, certainly not someone a respectable doctor would commonly associate himself with.
ReplyDeleteI consider this book to be of literary merit, first of all, because it is known to be a classic, of course. More than that, however, the book explores themes such as knowing one’s own identity, understanding emotions, and what makes a person human. It compels the reader to think about choices, honesty, knowledge, consequences, and reputations. It asks the questions that we only consider on the surface and rarely contemplate entirely, such as “Is ignorance truly bliss?” and “What causes people to do good or bad?”
Despite the short length of the book, Stevenson manages to portray a society using a limited number of characters. The narrator views things differently than most narrators of today. He values self-control and civility over indulgence and personal achievement. As one of Dr. Jekyll’s friends, he knows better than most what Jekyll’s nature is like. For Jekyll, an esteemed member of society, discovering his own inner hedonism and cruelty is a horror incomprehensible to his friends. This begs the question of whether or not it would have been better for the rest of society to remain ignorant of the true origin of Mr. Hyde.
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ReplyDeleteIn the 1990s the world is about to experience the Apocalypse, the final battle between Heaven and Hell. It starts in England with the birth of the Antichrist, Adam Young. However, someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist, and a demon and an angel who have both been stationed on Earth for perhaps too long are not actually looking forward to the upcoming Divine War. This is the basis for the dramatic-yet-comedic book Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
ReplyDeleteGood Omens is of literary merit because the novel explores many profound questions in life. The novel centers on the dichotomy of fate versus free will in a battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell (who are more than ready for the fated Apocalypse) against the protagonists - a ragtag group of anti-Apocalypse humans including the eleven-year-old Antichrist plus Crowley and Aziraphale (the aforementioned demon and angel stationed on Earth) who fight for free will. The novel also investigates the true nature of humankind, which can be concisely summed up with a quote: “It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
Most of the humor present in Good Omens is entertaining because it pokes fun at modern-day society. For example, Crowley sends a standard computer warranty down to the Immortal Soul contracts section of Hell with a Post-it just saying “Learn, guys.” And as a side note, Good Omens taught me a new AP-worthy vocabulary word: ineffable. It means “unable to be explained” and is what Aziraphale uses to explain God’s ultimate plan for humanity throughout the book, much to Crowley’s chagrin.
In conclusion, Good Omens is an amazing book and I recommend it to everyone. Seriously. I leave you with perhaps my favorite quote from the book - “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles. All the time.”
(*sorry about the re-post, had some formatting issues)
Ian Glazman
ReplyDeleteOver the break I decided to read Terry Pratchet's new novel Snuff. The setting is in a fantastical world of dragons and pixies and trolls. This novel follows protagonist and ever-vigilant City Watchman, His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes. Vies is heading off to the country with his wife, Lady Sybil and their young son. While on the country, Sam Vimes comes across the mutilated corpse of a little Goblin girl. What ensues is a mind bending plot and "who done it," ultimately ending in the conviction of an ex-nobleman seeking to destroy Vimes' career.
While this individual novel presents Pratchet's wonderful sense of satire excellently, what must be taken into consideration are the entire series of Diskworld novels. This set of novels is deserving of literary merit because of how complete Pratchet makes his world seem. Even more evidence of this literary merit is how, even in a series of 20+ novels, all pertaining to different characters, one can simply pick up a novel and not be confused or lost and be engaged and want to read the other books in the series.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut tells the tale of Billy Pilgrim, POW in World War II who becomes unstuck in time and lives his life jumping to different times of his life in no chronological order. As a soldier Billy is awkward, under-trained and inadequately supplied. After the Battle of Bulge, he becomes unstuck in time for the first time. Chronologically he goes on to be captured as a POW and is sent to POW camp and then Dresden. On the night of the Bombing of Dresden, Billy along with other POWs survive in an airtight meatlocker and emerge the next morning to find a charred Dresden. Billy goes on to live, although sequentially, a good life marked by rare breakdowns and getting kidnapped by aliens who teach him that there is no such thing as free will. Billy is consoled by this notion, that things happen because they are suppose to.
ReplyDeleteI think the literary merit of Slaughterhouse-Five lies in Vonnegut's incredible ability to project feelings of horror, anger, frustration, and trauma through an infuriatingly simple style of writing. Vonnegut uses adjectives sparingly, especially emotional adjectives. He describes a trip to the pool, an alien kidnap, a game of golf or the deaths in Dresden with nearly equal amounts of emotion; that is very little. He narrates things simply as they are; no two cents added or emotions directly expressed. Yet it is through this simple language that Vonnegut is able to drive home deep, horrific emotions. The overall impact is bigger because the book doesn't tell the reader how and what to feel; rather it is ourselves that determine our emotions towards the events, making the emotions all the more personal and meaningful.
During the break, I reread All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. A basic overview of this novel is that it follows one Paul Bäumer, a teenager that enlists in the German army of World War One with his classmates. The novel is written from Bäumer’s point of view of his experiences in battle with the death of his friends and the grim truths of the war from its start until its end, at the conclusion of the book.
ReplyDeleteI consider Remarque’s novel to be of literary merit for many reasons, including the powerful themes it contains. The most important theme, I think, is that war does more that kill the soldiers in it. War can destroy more lives than a body count contains. What puts this theme above many other notable characteristics of this book is that it is touched upon by Remarque in not only the actually content of the story, but in his introduction: “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Throughout the novel, this theme is brought up in many ways. To begin, almost all of the main characters are in fact below the age of twenty, all having enlisted right out of school. Later on, when at home on leave, Bäumer finds himself unable to live in normal society anymore, and unable to feel like himself at home. This is how Remarque proves his point stated in the introduction. Paul was not even an adult by our standards, and yet he has seen all of his friends die in horrible ways and is no longer “at home” anywhere but the battlefield.
In addition to the theme, one identifying point of this novel is that it is written from the point of view of a German soldier. In most cases, we see a vast number of novels written about the two world wars being from the eyes of English or American soldiers. By showing how the war affected what a majority of readers assume to be the “enemy”, Remarque is able to solidify the point that war destroys people. The uniforms on their backs are what separate man from man, leaving the soldiers to “know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow”. In the end, it is clear that the uniforms may fight in battle, but only the people die.
The Stranger by Albert Camus is a fantastic thought provoking philosophical novel that makes one think about the physical world and the weight of one’s own actions. From the outset, we learn that the protagonist of the story, Meursault, is an extremely indifferent man who is emotionally detached from the world. At his mother’s funeral he exhibits no signs of grief and is more focused on the actions of the people who attend the funeral. Despite his mother just passing away, the next day he begins a relationship with a woman by the name of Marie Cardona. Even when she asks to marry him, he agrees only because it would pleasure her and not because he loved her or thought the matter was of any importance. Meursault meets his neighbor, Raymond Sintes, who is having trouble with a group of Arabs after he beat one of their sisters for her infidelity. After a physical confrontation with the group, Meursault returns to the area where he seemingly randomly kills one of the men with a gun. At his trial, the prosecuting attorney assumes by Meursault’s passivity that he feels no remorse from his crime and starts to bring in matters which have nothing to do with the murder, particularly the death of Meursault’s mother to reveal his apathetic nature, which leads to the his execution.
ReplyDeleteThis is a book of literary merit because it is extremely thought provoking. The philosophies of existentialism and absurdism are prominent in the novel and through them Camus’ explores themes dealing with the universe, the world, and the place humans have in it. Camus, through Meursault’s murder of the Arab, reveals the irrationality of the universe. Even though Meursault says that he only murdered the man because he was bothered by the bright sunlight and hot weather, an irrational response, the prosecuting lawyer and tries to come up with a rational explanation for his action. Society fears irrationality and attempts to create ideas to explain what is not logical. This idea is later brought back with the appearance of a religious man who attempts to “cure” Meursault of his atheism because religion is a response to the irrationalities in the universe.