Saturday, March 31, 2018
Favorite Works Thus Far?
As we are winding down our senior year with only a handful of days left this year, I was wondering what has been everyone's favorite works to read thus far. One of my favorite novels so far this year was actually one of the first, Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez writes in such a way that seemed to always keep me interested, and the novel was so absurd that it was almost comical at many points. Candide was also one of my favorite things to read this year because much like One Hundred Years of Solitude it had its absurd moments and was pretty plot driven. I also enjoyed Oedipus, as I had roughly heard the story many times but finally got to read it in class. Also, Hamlet was enjoyable as reading Shakespeare every year is always a pleasure. Please let me know what has been your favorite works to read so far this year!
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2 comments:
I really loved Medea. The title character was crazy, witchy (in more than just the supernatural sense) and, in my opinion, tragic. Medea was different from a lot of the things we read because the protagonist wasn't just a female, but a powerful one for her time and all alone from beginning to end. Just like with One Hundred Years of Solitude's absurd moments, the title character of Medea was so vengeful and dramatic it was almost comical. I'm one of the weird people who sympathizes with her. Even though she kills her own kids.
I also really loved The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Hamlet, and No Exit.
I actually have really enjoyed all the works we've read this year. I especially loved Medea, Hamlet, and Dante.
I definitely agree with what Margot said about Medea! I think that's a pretty good summary of my opinion about the play. It's hard to not sympathize with Medea, although I still think it's horrifying that she kills her own children. I had a lot of fun with the Medea debate as well!
I also find Beloved extremely compelling, and I'm really enjoying reading it so far. In some ways it's hard to think about what Morrison is saying because she's dealing with an extremely painful and traumatizing subject (slavery), but it's important. It's not just understanding the impact slavery continues to have today (although that is also a major factor); it's also really about being forced to deal with the realities of slavery hundreds of years ago. I know I can probably never come close to actually understanding just how horrific it was, but I feel like sometimes we don't treat it with the gravity it deserves. I'm one of those people who feel like it's never okay to joke about certain subjects, and that includes slavery. It's also a reminder to me about what Ms. King and Mrs. Quinet keep emphasizing in class—the "good" slave owners, if they can even be called that. Yes, I know some people argue that "not all slave owners were cruel to their slaves! it was how they made their living in the South!" blah blah blah, it was STILL SLAVERY!!! There's no excuse! People in America were speaking out against slavery since the country was founded, too, so I really don't buy the excuse of "that's just how it was done in that time." (And some Europeans were condemning it even before then.) Not to mention, it's impossible to be a "good" slave owner. Sure, some slave owners didn't treat their slaves as horribly as others, but they still had SLAVES! AND they made it possible for things like the Middle Passage to continue existing. If not for their high demand for slavery, the supply would have stopped because there wouldn't have been any profit in the business, or in smuggling (and to slave hunters, that's exactly what Africa and its people represented: profit). Even if they didn't inflict horrible physical punishments on their slaves every day, a lot of those people experienced terrible, brutal, completely inhuman torture in the Middle Passage, as we saw in that movie, and every single person buying slaves contributed to making that torture possible, so they were responsible too. Overall, I am really glad we're reading Beloved, because not only do I like the writing style, it also has so many important messages. I've heard a lot about it, so I've been looking forward to it all year, and it definitely meets and rises above my expectations.
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