Week 2 - The Interlude

Introduction:

I’m glad everything is going well so far, especially with the amount of work we need to do for this course. We’ve managed to form a nice group of like-minded individuals who will work together to achieve our end-goal. Our group consists of 2 men (myself and Markus) and 3 women (Jamie, Randa and Gwen). It’s nice to have a group with a lot of diversity as it provides different perspectives for all the books we have to read as some of us might pick up on things that the others might have missed. 

First thoughts/impressions:

Having said that, we must get on with the 2^nd book in this course, which I’ve chosen to be The Hunger Games. An interesting choice as there is also a movie adaptation of this book which is absolutely fantastic.

The Hunger Games takes place in the nation of Panem, which is divided into 12 districts and the capitol. Every year, 2 members of each district are hand-picked in a lottery to participate in the Hunger Games. These Hunger Games are broadcasted throughout the entire nation on national television and people are forced to watch. The contestants are forced to fight until the last man (or woman) is standing. This particular Hunger Game, we follow the protagonist Katniss Everdeen, a 16 year old woman who volunteered to take her younger sister’s place when she was picked at the lottery. Her story is also heavily intertwined with Peeta, the male leading role in this book. Both of these characters have to undergo extensive training before they are unleashed in the Hunger Games to fight for their lives. 

I found that the emotional struggles, death, and romance made for a nice mixture that blends together very well in this book. The excitement that rushes through you as you read about the chaos at the start of this particular Hunger Game involving grabbing a weapon/supplies and dodging fireballs is amazing, especially because the excitement the protagonist feels projects very well onto the reader.

Age suitability/Theory:

I don’t think I even need to recommend this book to my students as they are already hysterically enthusiastic whenever the Hunger Games are brought up as a topic of conversation. I teach HAVO 3 and they all seem to deal well with the death and search for identity. In fact, there was an author for the telegraph wrote this in his article in response to a woman who was outraged by the fact that her child reacted so distraught at the death in the book/movie that she had to leave the cinema. "Isn't that exactly the right response to the material – to find death sad, and shocking, and aaargh-worthy? The fact that children have been traumatised by it is something to celebrate"(Collin, 2012). Frankly, I agree.  This also connects well to Erikson's theory of development stages where the age group I'm teaching is slowly entering the 5th stage (identity vs confusion) where they are exploring their independence (Erikson, 1968). As the protagonist is also exploring her identity and what she can mean to the world around her they can definitely relate to her struggles and her wanting to "rise up against the system". I'd recommend being at least 13 before you read this book. The language used in this book is very easy to read, but to really understand the story you'd have to be at least that age.

In class discussion:

This week, most of the discussion revolved around finding common denominators between the books that we had the option to read for the "imperfect world" theme. First, we had to split into groups to make mind-maps about the books we had read. This was a great exercise to put everything that we could think of onto one big piece of paper and compare it to the rest. As we passed all mind-maps the class started to discuss about the common themes that seemed to occur in all of these books and we all agreed that life/death and growing up were the two biggest ones. I gained the most from the discussion surrounding the Erikson stages and their eight stages of development (Erikson, 1994). Figuring out what stages the children in these books are in creates a deeper understanding for their motivations and the actions they take throughout the book. The stages that were most common for the books today were 3 (Initiative vs. Guilt), 4 (Industry vs. Inferiority) and 5 (Identity vs. Role confusion). Most of the books that we discussed today are in stage 3, where they require a strong and safe parental environment to evole into competent human beings. As some of the books (Peter Pan for example) don't have any parental presence it explains the behaviour and actions of the children in these books quite well.

I personally feel the connection between Lord of the Flies and the Hunger Games due to the "survival of the fittest" theme should be mentioned as well though. Tuck Everlasting, Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games are all around the same subject but the 4th book (as pointed out by Annabel herself) was a mistake and shouldn't have been in this week's line up. 

Interesting theories/information:

There isn't a whole lot of theory aside from this one very interesting thing which is called Game Theory. There are several people who have dedicated their time to explore all the mathematical possibilities that come with the Hunger Games. It is hard to explain game theory in very few words because there’s a bunch of math and science that goes along with it. Game theory is basically the science of predicting how people will act. We can use game theory to predict the most likely outcome. People have started using game theory to predict the outcome for the hunger games taking into account whenever people are drawn from the lottery, the amount of children in a family, and the decisions people can make in regards to teaming up or taking the 'lone wolf' approach. The easiest explanation is one I found on this website: http://faculty.lebow.drexel.edu/McCainR//top/eco/game/intro.html

It goes into a step by step explanation of what Game Theory actually is. It's incredibly fascinating. If I were to explain it in the most basic way possible I'd still need about 5-6 pages.  

Sources: 

R. Collin (2012) The Hunger Games: Violence children should see. Retrieved on the 19th of September from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9173190/The-Hunger-Games-violence-children-should-see.html

Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton.

Erikson, E.H. (1994). Identity and the Life Cycle. 

Week 1 - So it begins.

Introduction: 

I love literature. I always have and always will. I would be lying if I said I spend the majority of my spare time reading, but I do a fair bit of it. Last year's literature course was right up my alley and I managed to ace the entire course. I couldn't wait to start the next literature course as I am planning to do as much with literature as I can. I read that for the coursework, I need to read a book a week (not a problem) and I need to maintain a blog with a post every week showcasing my understanding of the book I've read.

First thoughts/impressions:

For this week, I picked Alice in Wonderland as it was the only one I hadn't read yet. It's always quite exciting to see if a new book can pull you into the story, especially one that has such a big fan base. I had seen the movie adaptation of the book called "Alice" (starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton) so I was quite excited to see if the movie actually holds up to the book. My initial impression was very positive. It doesn't pull any punches and drops you straight into the story instead of dragging on explaining the characters and their significance. I love stories that do that because they force you to use your brain and figure out the characters and their motivations by yourself instead of holding you by the hand. I also love the puzzles and little brain teasers that Alice is presented with, like the mathematical puzzles. As I point out in the interesting theory section, the writer didn't start out as a writer but as a mathematician, which is fantastic and really shows throughout the book.

The book starts off  with Alice and her sister being introduced as characters (her sister being a very minor one). It suddenly starts to pick up when she spots the rabbit with the pocketwatch and tries to catch up with him causing her to fall into a massive rabbithole. This is where all the crazy things start happening. There are all kinds of weird things about the world she ends up in and she goes on both a mental and physical journey to try and find a way out of this world. She meets all kinds of characters including the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, The Caterpillar and many many more. It is a fantastic journey which ends with her waking up questioning whether everything she experienced was just a dream.

Age suitability/Theory:

"Young adult literature should have an intriguing character, a meaningful plot, a captivating setting, an appropriate theme and an accessible style". (complete reader, 2013, p. 21).

If we go by these requirements Donald Maas provided us with I would definitely recommend this book to my students (HAVO 3) and children that are even younger. It is a great book and would provide the students with a more complex vocabulary as Carroll tends to write in a different style from most writers including poems in his stories that would probably confuse the students with lower English understanding capability. The nclusion of pictures to accompany the story should even the playing field a bit. Furthermore, surreal books like this challenge us and the children to do the work of creating meaning in ways that “realistic” narratives do not (Tatar, 2009). The book isn't written in old English (at least not the version I read) and I feel children aged 10+ should be able to read this depending on their level of English. They can definitely relate to the emotional journey she takes through Wonderland and all the different creatures she meets. The Hatter and the Cheshire Cat are usually favourites, as they are very dynamic and interesting characters that have multiple layers to them. The world of wonderland can provide many of aspects a children's book should have as we discussed in class. It has an intriguing protagonist, a captivating setting (let's be honest, Wonderland is incredible) and the theme is very relatable.

 
In class discussion:
 
The class discussion was quite interesting. We were discussing about what draws children to read books and we also talked about every book that was available to read this week. We were discussing the common links between all the books that were on the list for this week and one of the main thing was the absent parents.Yet as soon as Disney was introduced as a topic of conversation it all exploded into chaos. Several people argued that there are no parents in any of the Disney movies, some said that there were, but they were dead.  Another interwoven theme was the concept of growing up. All the books we discussed (Alice, Peter Pan, etc) had the concept of growing up or the resistance to growing up. Overall the class was great, as I was quite interested in hearing what other people thought of this book and to see if there were overarching themes about these 4 books that were on the list. Let's see what next week brings us.

Interesting theories/information:

This is one of those books where there is an endless source of speculation and theorization about the symbolism and secrets that this book could have. For instance, did you know what the author, Lewis Carroll, wasn't a professional writer but a mathematician? This could explain the abundance of puzzles involving maths in this book. Another interesting thing in this book is the use of riddles. ‘Lewis Carroll’ is a pen-name and a riddle in itself. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took his first and middle names, translated them into their Latin form ‘Carolus Lodovicus’ reversed the words and then translated them back into English(QI website).

Sources: 

M. Tatar (2009) Why children should read Alice in Wonderland Retrieved 6th of September 2013 from https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tatar/2009/09/19/why-children-should-read-alice-in-wonderland/

Complete reader (2013, p21), Youth Literature

QI.com (2013)  Retrieved 18th of September from http://qi.com/infocloud/alice-in-wonderland