[QUOTE=Auntbeast]
7th Grade??? I read that book in the 3rd grade. I polished off Roots in the 6th grade. I really can’t fathom not getting the gist of the book by the 7th grade.
I know I was a pretty advanced reader, but I’m quite shocked that this seems out of reach at that age.
Sure, it’s a soft spot, that particular book…can you tell I like it? 
(You mean the theme wasn’t hang out with wierd old women in your neighborhood and travel to exotic places and meet interesting brains?) I still have a very, very strong aversion to cookie cutter neighborhoods and overly conforming folks. Camazotz scared me more than It did.
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I subbed for a class of HS frosh who were reading excerpts from The Illiad, and I was giving them a little background about the Greek drama festivals. I told them that playwrights would present 3 tragedies (and then maybe some comedies, and satyr plays or something… it’s been awhile since that college course), but they would never do The Illiad, because it’s much too long. Instead, they’d present something like Oedipus. I was about to go on, but I then realized I was confronted with a sea of blank faces. I said, you guys know Oedipus, right? Met with some more blank stares, and some head shaking from the bolder ones. I proceeded, you know, the guy who killed his father, slept with his mother? This produced a chorus of “ewww.” I had one last tack to employ, and asked if anyone had heard about Freud. A couple kids raised their hands, but even they didn’t know about the Oedipus complex.
I can understand not having read the plays Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus (?), and that other one-- hell, I didn’t get to those until college. But never having heard of the guy? At all? By the time you hit high school? I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that some people just don’t really read much.
Just wanted to chime in on the whole cold war thing. Not having been politically aware through it, I guess I can’t speak to the facility that I would have had of picking up on anti-conformity messages if I had been. However, I think that it’s even obvious to kids who are currently experiencing it that conformity is something they are confronted with every day. I’m not going to argue that the responsibility a parent has toward his child isn’t addressed in the book at all, though I don’t think it’s anything close to the central theme (and I agree with Ruby that “all fighting is bad” is wrong and completely misses some important points). However, I don’t know how anyone can read about balls bouncing in unison and children being “reprocessed” for doing things out of the ordinary without getting some small inkling of the anti-conformity message. There’s even the part where Meg (or CW?) begins reciting the times tables, and she realizes that they are too regular to fight the crushing pulse of the control of the brain.
Students who miss this entirely either didn’t read the book or are unclear on the fact that books can have more than one message. In fact, I do seem to recall thinking that in my early stages of discussing themes something about a book having just one thing to say. Maybe the family thing was the first theme she picked up on, and tried to make evidence fit the one theme she thought the book was allowed? Probably not, but I just wanted to mention that I think I remember having some strange notions about what constituted a book’s message and theme, even while being reasonably bright and interested in literature.
(You mean the theme wasn’t hang out with wierd old women in your neighborhood and travel to exotic places and meet interesting brains?) I still have a very, very strong aversion to cookie cutter neighborhoods and overly conforming folks. Camazotz scared me more than It did.