Mostly I remember a lot of my classmates identifying with Holden Caulfield, but I thought that he was a whiny bitch and that in real life, I’d probably end up punching him.
I think a lot of the problem with English class books is that you had English teachers and professors choosing them for English-related reasons. So they loved Steinbeck because of his writing skill, etc… but never really understood or cared that 16-17 year old boys could NOT care less about Adam Trask, Cal, or Aron, or any of the other goings-on in Salinas. I mean it was Boring. Same thing with Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley, except maybe that Brett Ashley sounded like she could be a lot of fun if you hadn’t lost the requisite parts.
I also think that the way English classes work wrings most all of the fun out of any book or story you may have read. Getting quizzed about meaningless and mundane details sucks, and so does trying to second-guess the author about what they’re writing about. And then you get moronic stuff that they say like “Authors can have symbolism in their work that they didn’t intentionally put there, or that they’re not conscious of.” Um… no. If the author says that he didn’t write a passage with anything symbolic in mind, there’s no damn symbolism there, regardless of what someone else says.
It always felt a little bit like an extended advertisement/training for becoming a English Literature professor in high school, and a lot less about being exposed to the foundational literature of our language and culture.
The Great Gatsby. We had ‘themed’ English classes. Since my name comes at the end of the alphabet, I did not get to choose many of my classes. The ‘Science Fiction’ English class filled up at ‘L’, so I was put into ‘The Roaring Twenties’ English class. Pretty much the opposite of my interest.
The only book that I can actually remember reading in high school is The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I remember liking it.
Now college is another story. As an English major I had to read all of the boring ones. And the one that stands heads and shoulders above them all for absolute tediousness was The Mill On the Floss by George Elliot. There were other books in college that I wasn’t necessarily crazy about (or was bored silly with), but i could still see value in their writing style, cultural significance, etc. But Mill on the Floss was absolutely worthless, imo.
I tended to enjoy most of the assigned reading, but I agree that Lord of the Flies was too much of a forced allegory to be truly enjoyable, and Catcher in the Rye just doesn’t translate to a modern teenager.
I liked most of the longer stuff we had to read, and fortunately the “heavier” authors were typically presented in shorter form (Hemingway’s short stories, One Day in the live of Ivan Denisovich for Russian lit).
Oh, I certainly don’t remember liking Henderson the Rain King very much. I would probably enjoy it more as an adult.
Not in school, but my parents had that book and reading it at about age 12 sparked my lifelong interest in and fascination with archaeology and history.
We read ‘The Odyssey’ which I enjoyed immensely. I loved mythology, I knew more about the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses lives than my own family…. I can’t remember anything else, but I DO remember ‘Heart of Darkness’ - passed out to our classs with the instructions, ‘here, read this’. Out of a class of 35, only two of us high school freshmen did so. We couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It was deadly dull and obtuse. (This was a small lower middle class village of people headed nowhere except to work at the mill or get knocked up and married right after graduation. They were not stupid, but their mindsets were not conducive to the writings of Joseph Conrad.)
And as many an English major can attest, college-level English Lit study is nothing like the “scavenger hunt for symbolism” approach that’s all too common at the high school level.
I mainly remember wondering why he didn’t just write an essay about a room or a house like Stradlater asked him. You had one job, Holden!
I literally threw it in the trash halfway through. I didn’t even donate it or anything, I hated that book so much. But I read it on my own as an adult, not as an assignment.
I never had ANY of the books listed above assigned for HS, and most of them I have never read, to this day. The only book that I remember being assigned was 1984, which I did not hate. (Then it was assigned again in college. Reruns!) We must have had some assignments, but danged if I can remember another one.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who hated The Pearl. I didn’t even finish it. I forget how I dealt with not having read it but I managed to squeak through whatever quizzes or book reports we did. Blah.
I’m sorry for those who had lousy English teachers. I like to think you might have enjoyed my assignments better. For example, here’s one of the assignment blocks for a novel they read, after the basic conversations and activities about themes, structure, relevance, etc.:
Reading: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Activity: I’ve posted the first paragraph (in one case, the first two) of every novel published by Le Guin to date. Read them, then talk at your table about the similarities and differences you see in these openings.
Assignment: In your table group, list the similarites and differences you think are most important in illustrating Le Guin’s content and style.
Activity: I’ve posted the groups’ similarities/differences lists. Look at them and talk with your table group about what the other groups included or didn’t include. Which do you agree with or disagree with?
Assignment: Write a Le Guinian opening paragraph based on the class’s observations. After your paragraph, list the factors you chose to include, then explain why you chose those aspects of her style as your model.
Follow-up: A new Le Guin novel is being published next month. When it’s available, I’ll post that first paragraph plus all of yours anonymously. You’ll each vote on which is really Le Guin’s and why you think so, then we’ll have a class discussion about this and how to identify an author’s style.
I could not make it through Heart of Darkness. They kept calling Conrad a master of the English language, but there were entire sentences that didn’t make any grammatical sense to me. And yes, so very dull.
Teacher made the mistake of letting students opt for writing a report on Apocalypse Now instead. I know I wasn’t the only one to take her up on the offer.
I was about halfway into Lord Jim when I had to flip back and confirm that Jim’s dastardly deed was only jumping off the ship and not, say, accidentally killing another crew member by kicking him in the head while jumping off the ship .