# What's in Cliff's Notes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 30, 2004, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999 "2004-10-30T09:49:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/21 "2004-11-01T00:21:46Z")
I only ever used Cliffs Notes once (for _Catcher in the Rye_, and yes,I read the book too). We had to give oral reports. It was blisteringly obvious which students used Cliffs Notes and which ones didn’t. The teachers obviously knew as well. I never used them again. One thing to keep in mind about Cliffs: These are just one guy’s take on a particular book, not some kind of sumary of all academic consensus on it. The guy who wrote the one for _Catcher in the Rye_ made one glaring error, and I’d hate to think that thousands of C students out there took it to heart. A few years ago, _Esquire_ had three contemporary writers–Jeffrey Eugenides, Elie Weisel and Fank McCourt–rate the Cliffs Notes (or their modern equivalent) of books they’d written recently. All three of them hated them. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/22 "2004-11-01T00:25:51Z")
> [@Roches](#): > > Well, if you’re the type that would use Cliffs Notes, why would you voluntarily take an English Lit course? Few high school students have a choice in the matter. I never really encountered CN’s after high school. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/23 "2004-11-01T00:38:55Z")
> [@CC](#): > > In accordance with the general edict that no good deed goes unpunished, I kindly suggested that before posting a question on the SDMB, the OP might have availed him?her?self of some other resources. I did so in keeping with the general guidelines of this board, many of which are listed in the mod’s threads at the top of the page. I quote in part: > > "USEFUL REFERENCE SITES > Judicious use of the following reference sites may answer a number of questions raised _before posting to GQ:_ (emphasis mine) > > The Straight Dope > The Straight Dope Archive: The One Perfect Source of All Knowledge (searchable) > SDMB Search: Search previous Straight Dope MB threads > > Search Engines > **Google: The de facto standard in search engines** …" (emphasis mine) > > Since that elicited a sarcastic response and a refutation, I’m again only trying to say that the BBS does have a few guidelines - not rules - and that it might be good to abide by them if possible. Sheesh. you are being a jerk. and now i am being a jerk. but if i dont say it nobody will. ---
**Author:** ![critter42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ba0ec/32.png) [@critter42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/critter42)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/24 "2004-11-01T04:01:40Z")
> [@CC](#): > > Search Engines > **Google: The de facto standard in search engines** …" (emphasis mine) > > Since that elicited a sarcastic response and a refutation, I’m again only trying to say that the BBS does have a few guidelines - not rules - and that it might be good to abide by them if possible. Sheesh. This is OT, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% or better of true GQ questions could be answered by some judicious googling - if we were to follow that guideline as closely as you would like, there would be no need for this section of the board, would there? critter42 ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/25 "2004-11-01T05:24:28Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Uh, no. That would be the purpose of your technically-oriented classes. Uh, no. Not all “difficult texts” are technical in nature. Part of being a civilized human being is the ability to interpret texts beyond their literal meanings. > [@critter42](#): > > OK, raise your hand if you had the lit teacher say some time during the first day of classes “Here is your reading list. Oh, I’ve read the Cliffs Notes for them and the comprehensive exam will not contain any questions that can be answered using them” Dude, I’m an English teacher. They were bluffing. And FWIW, I used Cliffs notes type things to study for my MA exam in literature. As an occasional aid, they’re fine. ---
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/26 "2004-11-01T05:53:58Z")
CrankyAsAnOldMan: Sorry, I meant the type that would use Cliffs Notes without reading the book, to avoid doing work that the other students in the class are expected to do. If you use them to get a different perspective or a summary of the plot, that’s fine. There are some books that seem to go nowhere until you have a broad idea of the plot, and notes can legitimately help with those. Using notes to get through reading a book is fine; using notes to get out of reading it is not, at least not without extenuating circumstances (like for a final-year pre-med who happens to take an English lit course with a lot of books to read). What I had in mind was more like the people in my high school English courses who read the notes so they could spend more time getting high instead of reading some stupid book. Now that I think of it, though, there are a few books for which I would recommend any possible form of cheating. =) ---
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/27 "2004-11-01T06:05:22Z")
furt: Maybe bluffing about actually reading the notes, but I’m sure you’d notice if a student did better than they should. If a C student in a HS English course turned in a paper with college-level insight, you’d know they got it from somewhere other than their brain. Now, about the interpreting texts beyond their literal meanings; after having written fiction for some time it occurred to me that writers may not know all the potential meanings and literary details of their own works. I probably don’t think ‘hey, it’s time for a metaphor’ every time I write one, and I doubt I ever think ‘this scene needs some of the fragility of human life motif’. Is this an established idea, or is it generally thought that deliberate inclusion of theme and figurative meanings is part of the writing process? ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/28 "2004-11-01T11:44:02Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Uh, no. Not all “difficult texts” are technical in nature. Then there’s no point in educating someone to understand difficult texts, is there? Well, yeah, the “well roundedness” aspect. > [@](#): > > Part of being a civilized human being is the ability to interpret texts beyond their literal meanings. So we agree. There’s no real technical point to it. It’s to make a human being more civilized. FWIW, I appreciate, love, and honor literature of all types (except most poetry [snore] \<–yes, expression of ignorance). It’s good. It’s important in its own regard. But there’s nothing technically relevant about it. Yeah, there are a lot of non-technical careers, so I guess “technically” as it applies to non-technical careers may tend to change what you should infer. Obviously for an English teacher knowledge of English literature is technically important. On the other hand, many of the engineers I know are atrocious in their written communications. So now I ask myself if it’s the lack of emphasis on technical writing or grammar, or if maybe your 100% correct – they’d be better written communicators if they’d seen many examples of how, exactly, one should write. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/29 "2004-11-01T11:51:09Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > The guy who wrote the [Cliffs Notes] for _Catcher in the Rye_ made one glaring error, and I’d hate to think that thousands of C students out there took it to heart. As someone who read and reread the book out of sheer enjoyment, I’d be interested to know what error the Cliffs Notes writer made. > [@furt](#): > > Uh, no. Not all “difficult texts” are technical in nature. Technical as in the technical aspects of writing and logic, as opposed to the more artistic and literary aspects that would be pursued in a literature course. That is, you don’t go to a literature class to learn how to tear apart an argument made by a political campaign. > [@Roches](#): > > Now, about the interpreting texts beyond their literal meanings; after having written fiction for some time it occurred to me that writers may not know all the potential meanings and literary details of their own works. Of course they don’t. That’s what critics are for. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/30 "2004-11-01T12:31:20Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > As someone who read and reread the book out of sheer enjoyment, I’d be interested to know what error the Cliffs Notes writer made. There was a conversation between Holden and a cabbie about fish in frozen rivers during winter. Holden asks what happens to the fish when the Hudson River freezes. The cabbie says, I dunno, I guess the fish just freeze in place along with the ice and when it thaws, they swim away. According to Cliffs Notes, this is a mind-blowing revelation for Holden, with the frozen river as a metaphor for nature’s protective powers as well as her destructive ones. According to me, the Hudson doesn’t freeze solid, just the surface for an inch or so (Three in the worst winter ever). The fish aren’t particularly affected by it. The scene is Salinger’s way of telling us that Holden has very little practical experience with nature. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/31 "2004-11-01T12:56:13Z")
I’d like to counter the “well-roundedness” argument for a moment. When I teach literature, as I’ve done on the college level for twenty-odd years, I’m not presuming that my students will remember very much about the particular texts I have them read. The idea that they will remember details from books and be able to spout them at future cocktail parties, and thus seem to be well-rounded, is very far down on my list of goals. What I’m teaching is the process of interpreting texts. I’m teaching them to read Salinger, to use the current example, and to be able figure out on their own what Holden’s relationship to Phoebe signifies, why Salinger shows Holden relating so well to younger kids and so poorly with adults, and maybe I’ll supply some context for things that may be outside of my students’ experience. If they can figure out some of this stuff, then they can probably figure out similar issues in the reading they do outside of class, or after they graduate. That’s my goal in teaching literature. But I’m not demanding that they be able to spout the name of Holden’s roommate, or to know what Holden’s father does for a living, or tell me who the Lunts were. I may ask them questions about these things on quizzes, because they should pick up this kind of detail if they’re reading Catcher in the Rye carefully, and it’s an easy way for me to judge their immersion in the text, but it’s absurd to think they’ll remember this stuff a month after the class ends. As a matter of fact, I haven’t read or taught Catcher for a decade or more, and if someone at a cocktail party asked me what Holden’s father did for a living, I couldn’t say. I could say, though, that knowing technical details about literature is not the point of reading it closely and thinking about its significance or lack thereof. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/32 "2004-11-01T13:22:42Z")
> [@Roches](#): > > There are some books that seem to go nowhere until you have a broad idea of the plot, and notes can legitimately help with those. Absolutely. I’ve always loved to read, but the first 50 pages of _A Tale of Two Cities_ was absolute torture to me as a high school junior. How much more excruciating detail could Dickens have possibly used to describe an unpleasant journey on a muddy road, fer chrissake? For me, the Monarch Notes (similar to Cliff Notes) were a godsend, in that I was able to see where the book was going to go. With that, I was able to grit my teeth and make it through the rest of the introductory chapters to discover a wonderful story. It’s still probably my favorite “classic.” > [@pseudotriton ruber ruber](#): > > What I’m teaching is the process of interpreting texts. I’m teaching them to read Salinger, to use the current example, and **to be able figure out on their own** what Holden’s relationship to Phoebe signifies, why Salinger shows Holden relating so well to younger kids and so poorly with adults, and maybe I’ll supply some context for things that may be outside of my students’ experience. If they can figure out some of this stuff, then they can probably figure out similar issues in the reading they do outside of class, or after they graduate. That’s my goal in teaching literature. That is a worthy goal, but in my experience some lit teachers have essentially tossed the reading list to the class (even at the high school level) and provided no guidance whatsoever on what do to beyond reading the words, and then expected a pithy analysis of the deeper meaning of the book. At least at the high school level, teachers should be willing to take the students by the hand and lead them through the process once or twice before turning them loose. Absent that, Cliff Notes are the most accessible way of getting a grasp on a book’s possible interpretations, but it unfortunately leaves the door open for unmotivated students to slack off. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/33 "2004-11-01T18:34:04Z")
I have no problem with high school teachers teaching basic reading comprehension skills. It’s still cheating, even if you don’t have a teacher working closely on advanced analysis. (“It” refers to relying on CN, not to supplementing your reading with them, which some people do.) But if you want to challenge yourself, and learn, not just pass the stupid high school class which a monkey could pass with the CN, tough it out and struggle with the damned book. It won’t kill you, honestly. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/34 "2004-11-01T19:51:25Z")
I’m not sure if your last comment was directed at me in particular, **pseudotriton** , but if it was, please note that I didn’t advocate “cheating” with Cliff Notes anywhere in my post. In fact, I pointed out how (for me) the equivalent was invaluable for coming to appreciate a book that initially struck me as deadly dull and uninspiring. That goes beyond basic reading comprehension into exploring interpretations, which is not something everyone is born knowing how to do, last I heard. For the record, I “toughed it out” with pretty much every other reading assignment I ever had, but I can tell you I have no love for a lot of that material as a result. Is that really a desirable outcome? I also said that sometimes, students come to rely on them more than they should because the teacher is not doing their job. If you’re doing your job and your students are sufficiently excited by the subject matter to plunge ahead on their own without much help from you, that’s great. Has it ever occurred to you, though, that some students resort to CN because they are _trying_ to accomplish the assignments given them? Comparisons to monkeys are not helpful in such situations. :rolleyes: Note that none of the above applies to people who are just plain lazy. They reap what they sow. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/35 "2004-11-01T20:27:56Z")
Sorry if I seemed hostile, to you or to anyone here, Sunfish. I’ve used CN myself in high school and I was eager for all the help I could get, but now upon reflection, I wished I’d actually struggled through Faulkner and Joyce rather than “helping” myself with the Cliff Notes, because when I later had to read the books for real, I had to acquire the reading skills I could have had available in high school but which I blew off. School isn’t about grades, or bad teachers or good teachers or what people think of you or any of that stuff–it’s about making yourself into a person who can think for himself or herself. If I read Faulkner and it confuses me, that’s actually valuable to know, much more valuable than I could have thought at the time. Maybe it’s really awful stuff, in whcih case I understand that I’m a person who prefers straightforward prose to murky, difficult prose–though I couldn’t have known that without really trying to read Faulkner. Maybe I’m totally offended by his ideas–but to reach that conclusion, I’d have to actually try to decipher his ideas, and not someone else’s filtering and simplifying his ideas for me. Maybe it would grow on me after 50 or 100 pages–but if I head for the Cliff Notes after three difficult pages, I’ll never find that out, either. Maybe I’m not cut out for reading literature at all, but it seems to me that I can reach that conclusion more soundly after battering my brains out reading tough books than just giving up. Graduating high school just isn’t that damned tough. I’m not absolutely sure that a higher primate couldn’t get himself a diploma, if he caught a couple of breaks along the way. Don’t make getting a high school diploma out to be so tough that people need to find shortcuts to fulfilling the requirements, which in some school districts are a pulse, the ability to grunt, and a little luck. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999/36 "2004-11-01T21:13:57Z")
No worries, **pseudotriton**. I do understand your perspective, too, which in a lot of ways mirrors how I feel about the sciences and how they are taught. I think anything further I might add to this discussion would head off into GD territory, though, so I’ll just leave it at that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-in-cliffs-notes/271999.md?page=1)