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This is all absolutely correct, but what I feel it misses is that the mythic power of the story lies in our enjoying it, reading it naively. In other words we d
by scandox 9y ago
This is all absolutely correct, but what I feel it misses is that the mythic power of the story lies in our enjoying it, reading it naively. In other words we deliberately read it ourselves in repressed mode. If we read it the first time with the kind of clarity suggested here then we don't actually feel its power: we are merely interested - rather than complicit.
- jacobush 9y agoDeep, and good!
- dTal 9y agoAstute observation, succinctly put. I would additionally add that it also works the other way; if a story's themes and metaphors are too clear before the story is over, it can damage suspension of disbelief and hurt enjoyment. This is one reason why the typical teaching methodology of a US high school English class typically has the effect of blunting the enjoyment of classic literature - students are not usually given the chance to read the story in its entirety before it is dissected to death, chapter by chapter.
- lostboys67 9y agoWhy would you not read the book in it entirety first as home work or in the holiday before you are due to cover the book in class? I certainly read all of my assigned texts an din the case of classical studies several other books and plays in the cannon.
- dagw 9y agoWhy would you not read the book in it entirety first as home work or in the holiday before you are due to cover the book in class? Because they're teenagers with better things to do with their time than reading old 'boring' books by a bunch of pointless dead people.
- emodendroket 9y agoWell, the irony is they really don't have better things to do and someday they'll regret not putting the time into such things when it was available to them. But you know the old saw -- youth is wasted on the young.
- khedoros1 9y agoThere were some required reading books that I enjoyed and learned from, and some that I still don't see the point of. On the other hand, some things that I did in my own time in high school laid the foundations for my career and current interests. I can't see that as completely wasted time.
- emodendroket 9y agoWell, I had more free time than I'll probably ever have again and I frittered away a lot of it on bad TV, lame forums, etc.
- KGIII 9y agoThis may sound strange, but I'm sometimes grateful that, when I was a wee lad, Internet wasn't invented and computers took up whole rooms. I think I'd have wasted even more time than I did. It means I read a lot of great books, for example. I used to read them and then write about them. I'd spend almost as much time writing and thinking as I did reading the books. I'd make notes, quotes, and tie things in with other literary works. If I'd had computers and the Internet, I'd have spent that time watching porn and posting fart jokes.
- emodendroket 9y agoIt doesn't sound strange. Even as an adult I feel like it's a mixed bag sometimes.
- 9y ago
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoWhy would you not read the book in it entirety first as home work or in the holiday before you are due to cover the book in class? Because not everyone has that sort of luxury. Pre-college, I never had an actual syllubus detailing such things. Sometimes we'd get told we'd start a book every x weeks or something, but we never actually knew. Most common method of introducing books was to hand them out in class, giving a reading assignment for that night with discussion beginning the next day.
- lostboys67 9y agoStrange in the UK you knew up front what books where to be covered even more so now
- setr 9y agoFrom my own experience, I didn't have the slightest bit of trust for any book recommended by the school, mostly due to the generally horrible treatment they give in class discussion. I didn't even realize the picked books might have any value until I accidentally read 1984 on a friend's recommendation, not realizing I'd have it for class the following semester. And I still couldn't stand the class discussion of it. So if I was going to do any reading, I had more incentive than not to avoid anything the school recommended: they'd kill anything I liked about the book anyways. I think my worst experience was being assigned voltaire (candide iirc), and realizing no else one was laughing, not even the teacher
- Tenhundfeld 9y agoFYI, I think you mean canon, not cannon. I'm not trying to be an OT pedant; given your comment, I thought you might appreciate the feedback.
- bzbarsky 9y agoBecause the teachers explicitly tell you not to. And then they have assignments that assume that you have not read the book and that you will fail if you have, unless you carefully disguise this fact.
- tjalfi 9y agoLiterary augury[0] is my term for that kind of literature discussion. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury
- emodendroket 9y agoI feel like people get way too carried away with this criticism. I remember a comic circulating making fun of overactive seeking of symbolism, and the example they chose was Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." I mean, really, could someone have possibly chosen a worse example to argue for the primacy of surface meaning?
- golangnews 9y agoWhen you take something apart to understand it, of course you can never quite put it back together again the same way and see it holistically. But there's no other way to gain a good understanding of the component parts, so this is a worthwhile exercise, even if they don't enjoy it in the same way as other reading. I'd contend very few teenagers are really ready to enjoy Sense and Sensibility or similar texts anyway because of their different and short experience of life, but they are in a position to learn some of the techniques and vocabulary used.
- emodendroket 9y ago> This is one reason why the typical teaching methodology of a US high school English class typically has the effect of blunting the enjoyment of classic literature - students are not usually given the chance to read the story in its entirety before it is dissected to death, chapter by chapter. Maybe, but I think the bigger reason is just that teenagers have generally not developed the kind of maturity where reading a classic work of literature is very enjoyable.
- taneq 9y agoI haven't read the original story, but in all the film adaptations I've seen, I've always interpreted Hyde as the violent, visceral side which Jekyll would express more often if he weren't so restrained by his veneer of civility.