Independent Reading Blog #2

1/16/2019

"Literature’s Emotional Lessons:
Grappling with the way books make students feel—not just analytical skills—should be part of the high-school English curriculum." - Andrew Simmons

ERIC AUDRAS / PHOTOALTO / CORBIS

Now that you have experienced a significant chunk of your Independent Reading Book, please read this article (linked through the image on the left) and use it as a lens to say something about your chosen novel. This is the basis of a critical lens paper (where you use a nonfiction article to comment upon an artifact that you have read closely) and is a cornerstone of college-level analysis. We are just barely brushing upon this type of writing here, but you should consider this article carefully as you continue to expose yourself to good books.

Please note: I realize that you have just started reading your IR Books, but you can still apply the concepts from this article to your reading so far.

Requirements:
Plan and compose a short essay (250-300 words - 100 points) that addresses the points from the nonfiction article as it applies to the book you are reading. I understand that you have just begun your book, but you should still be able to touch upon some of the finer points of your reading in order for the nonfiction article to apply. To do this short essay well, you will need to be very clear about what the author's argument is in the nonfiction article. Focus on this task as you read Simmon's work and then apply his argument to your novel. How does your novel address his point/s?

Due Sunday night (1/20) by 11:59 pm!

Shammeerkhan sardar

1/20/2019 08:43:04 pm

Andrew simmon's article is one of those novels which addresses the problems today our education system is facing. If one were to interpret the article in their own words, our education system is becoming "corrupt" day by day and it's not just in United States but it's all around the world. Andrew Simmon's argues that our schools should be like an industry which produces talented and creative men and women who can solve the solve the problems of earth which our previous generation has failed to do. But that is not the reality it's way worse than that, the truth is our students are being held hostages they are forced to that same stuff everyday and they are told to just stick up with the facts and what has happened before we were born, why not fiction or those stories which boost our creativity and knowledge is this how we are all going to live for the rest of our lives or we will see a change the way we teach our kids and allow them experience the world of 'fiction'. THE HATE YOU GIVE talks about racism and it's corrosive effects on the society. This novel may differ from each other but they still are talking about the issues we face. In her novel Angie.Thomas argues that rasicm is destroying our society, we are still following that old path the one previous generations followed and to this day it is haunting us. We have acomplished so much but the issue of race is still alive, just like simmon said we may have progressed but the education system is still in rags. Both the authors are looking for hope and thinking that when will this change or will it ever change

Alyssa John

1/20/2019 09:07:33 pm

One of Andrew Simmons' many points in the article is that novels, fiction or nonfiction, should evoke emotion in students. Literature can teach students many things and can not only make them complex readers but also make them emotionally intelligent. Simmons makes the point that “the fact that my other students appear perfectly comfortable not acknowledging and discussing emotional responses to literature may be as revelatory as this one student’s teary dash from class...Characters are fictitious abstractions, and, without actors to bring them to life and makeup and digital tricks to make the drama feel real, students may strictly do the analytical work teachers expect without the interference of a significant emotional response” and that this shouldn’t be the case. Assignments along with novels disconnect the student from the plot and leave them only focusing on the task given to them. Students will read the book simply to answer a question. The author of this article knows that teachers want to “help students cope with real life—even when portions of that reality are unpleasant and disturbing” but this doesn’t really work if students don’t have any emotional reaction to what they read. In Markus Zusak’s novel, I Am The Messenger, within the first few chapters the audience learns many grim things about the character, Ed Kennedy, and his environment. For example, there is a rape scene in chapter 5. While it is an unmistakenly terrible thing, it didn’t necessarily evoke a big emotion. Or at least not one big enough for me to discuss. This is what Simmons was talking about in his article. Because I read the scene as opposed to seeing it, like on television, it didn’t “feel real” and so there wasn’t a significant emotional response. While the character in the novel had a strong, emotional response, the audience may not have, especially if they were a high school student.

Adesola Bamigbaiye

1/20/2019 10:18:14 pm

Andrew Simmons’ article repeatedly makes the point that literature should be “felt” and not just read. He explains that a book or any work of art hasn’t been truly experienced if the reader and/or observer did not have some sort of emotional reaction. It’s crucial to our cognitive development that we feel complex emotions, but those emotions are taken out of literature because students mostly read them for assignments. They read the book and answer the question without ever getting to feel or hear what the book is all about. Part of the responsibility is also on the author to invoke feeling in the reader, which Ruth Emmie Lang does in Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. The main character, Weylyn, talks to a girl named Mary who delivers food to him. Though she’s a stranger to him, he tells her about how he lives with wolves because both his parents died in a car accident. He spoke about it like it was just a random and unimportant occurrence. Not that he didn’t understand the weight of the situation, but that he wasn’t bothered by it and this made Mary uncomfortable, since she and her father never spoke about her own mother’s death. Students are used to reading about how horrible and extreme people become when their lives are struck with tragedy, which may have desensitized us from sympathizing with the characters. But, when we come across a character who doesn’t seem to care, it throws us off course and it’s like we are overcome with the need to make up for the lack of feeling in the scene. While Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is not the only one, it is a great example of literature that can be felt and not just read.

Julia Andrews

1/20/2019 11:03:13 pm

Andrew Simmon’s article, “Literature’s Emotional Lessons”, stresses the idea that in schools, students tend to only read literature for analytical rather than personal purposes. The author feels that novels should be felt, or connected with emotionally, and not just studied. He discusses a student of his who had a very strong emotional reaction to a scene in a book that his class was reading. While this one student fled the classroom with tears and upset, the rest of the students remained unbothered by the scene, calm in their seats. This led Simmons to understand that “characters are fictitious abstractions, and, without actors to bring them to life and makeup and digital tricks to make the drama feel real, students may strictly do the analytical work teachers expect without the interference of a significant emotional response.” By coming across as many dark, depressing themes in English class as high school teenagers do and being exposed to similarly dark things in our everyday lives, it is not abnormal for us to grow desensitized to things of that nature. The author of this nonfiction article is explaining that as students, we have built a barrier between our emotions and getting our assignments done.
This idea remains relevant in Jesmyn Ward’s novel “Sing, Unburied, Sing” during an animal slaughter. On a young boy, Joseph’s, thirteenth birthday, he went out to the shed with his grandfather, Pop, to kill one of their goats for food. The entire process was explained in depth, from when they took the goat from its area with the others, to when they brought the meat it harbored inside their house. While the author was very graphic in her description, no severe emotional reaction was created. Yes, I displayed some disgust while reading it, however it’s not something I’ll dwell on. Like other books I’ve read for school, there is a wall between my emotions and my assignments.

Micelda Lott

1/20/2019 11:13:07 pm

“Academic goals aside, fellow teachers told me they want to help students cope with real life—even when portions of that reality are unpleasant and disturbing”(Simmons). Although fictional and very unlikely, Dracula makes people aware of each others’ differences and varying thought processes. The current main character, Johnathan Harker, is currently traveling to meet Count Dracula. As Harker travels, many people that interact with him give some sort of cross whether it was the crucifix given to him by the innkeeper’s wife or the many two-finger crosses pointed his way while getting a ride to the next coach. Harker does not understand this gesture. He finds it very odd. Although this gesture is very ominous, it is actually a sign of concern from the other people. People from different areas are to act differently, that is to be expected. It takes time to acknowledge that other people’s traditions are normal especially when it is not a tradition of your own. There are things that are going to be foreign to some people, and they should be more accepting of those things and traditions. If they don’t, fear can consume them. Harker shows no major fear towards the crucifix gesture after figuring out why the people are doing this and even takes it into consideration. He becomes mildly worried because of the concern people have for his wellbeing. Although he shows fear still, Harker accepted the differences of the natives he was around.The lack of suspicion on the citizens helped him broaden his view. He feels more secure, yet still tense for a different reason, around the natives.

Ivor Valdivia

1/21/2019 12:00:48 am

The story of Silence by Shusaku Endo tells the tale of Father Rodrigues and Father Garrpe who have to maintain religion alive when their former teacher decides to leave Christianity after he's captured by the Japanese Government. One of the main themes of the story is religion and the emotional connection that captures people to maintain their Faith. These Fathers have to deal with stubborn people who do not see the deeper meanings or emotional connection to people. Andrew Simmons also talks about the emotional connection that student readers can have with literature, and how that should be preserved. Students can analyze a work for assignments but never identify with characters like the girl in the article did with piggy in Lord of The Flies. Silence relates to this article because the characters try to maintain emotional connections to religion in a society where religion is basically frowned upon by the upper government. Their struggles mirror the struggles of teachers trying to stray away from the curriculum the college board presses and rather connect with their students about how the works make them feel.

Liv Lam

1/21/2019 10:22:54 pm

Andrew Simmons argues that literature should not only be read for academic purposes, but should evoke an emotional response from the reader, and that response should be discussed. Simmons claims that because students are assigned the novels, they do not respond emotionally to the events unfolding in the novel as opposed to if it wasn’t an assignment. Emotional health is just as valuable as any other education and should be treated as so in educators’ curriculum. In the novel, “In the Woods” by Tana French, the narrator describes an incident that occurs in the 1980s; three children, Jaime Rowan, Adam Ryan, and Peter Savage, enter the woods to play their usual games and go missing. Adam is the only child who is found alive, but his shoes are soaked with blood and he has minor injuries. Although they classify the type of blood found in his shoes and how it occured, authorities simply move on with their other cases; the two other children are never found, and Adam has no memory of what happened to them. Readers may not only be emotionally disturbed by the gruesome events that these children had to witness and go through, but be outraged by the fact that authorities did little to nothing to search for the missing children. Where I am in the novel, the cause of these disappearances and eerie events still are not explained or addressed, until another death occurs in the very woods where Jaime and Peter went missing. Because of the quick glimpse or the original incident, and the recurrence of a new one, the author is able to evoke emotion from the reader.

Comments are closed.

AP Literature and Composition Blog