English project 3

Technology: The internet. Video games. Cell phones. Kindles/Nooks. Are they ruining literature and reading? Sven Birkets, writer of The Gutenberg Elegies, thinks so. He even labels technology as the devil. I wholeheartedly disagree. Technology is a part of society. Did fire ruin our ability to eat? No, It improved it. Wheels improved transportation. Telephones improved communication. Technology is improves things, not damages things. It’s how mankind moves forward, so how could it possibly be ruining literature?

In this argument, I am in no way saying that I hate reading. Though I may seem very into screen based things, I prefer and enjoy the feel and smell of real books. Birkets says “Next to the new technologies, the scheme of things represented by print and the snail paced linearity of the reading act stodgy and dull.” To me, what is stodgy and dull is things such as biographies and things that don’t seem to have a storyline and plot behind it. I prefer to immerse myself into a book and live in that world until some outside force makes me put it down. I will say that, yes, I have read books online, but only because I do not have the money to buy them and they were not in at the library, but I much more enjoy having the book in my hands. The reading online was not all that bad though. I was so immersed in the story, I even forgot I was looking a t a computer screen. It is just a satisfying feeling when you’re reading a physical book. I do agree with Birkets to the point of, I would be deeply upset if electronic books made print books obsolete. Now that being said, I do not agree with him to the point of saying that technology is the devil and it is destroying literature. Far from that. I think technology is helping it.

First, the internet. All the ads and sounds, pictures and hyperlinks take away from the reading experience. Or so says Birkets. It may be something that one must become accustomed to, but none of these things take away from what i’m reading. Ads are on the sides, top or bottom of the screen. If you know that, it is easy to ignore them. It’s also something you learn over time that most of them are useless. “You are the 100,000th visitor! Click now to collect a FREE iPad 2!” Anyone who has spent more than a week using the internet knows that it’s a fluke. I will admit that sometimes talking ads will pop up and it will be annoying, but if you’re on the internet for the purpose of reading, why do you have the sound on? And why are you even on a sit that has talking ads anyways? If sounds on the internet are a problem, click mute. And as for pictures, they usually add to the reading. They give you a visual for what you’re reading about, such as a newspaper article.

As for hyperlinks, I somewhat agree they can be distracting in something similar to The Museum for someone that is ADD like me. I wanted to read every single link and see what everything had to say. But I knew I could not. If I were to open every hyperlink in a new tab or window, it would most likely crash my computer. Although I did not enjoy The Museum, I disagree that all hypertexts are basically the devil. I am reading a web comic called Homestuck. It is a very interesting, complex, involved storyline. The story will jump time, place, and even universes without notice. This being the case you can’t just “zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski,” as Nicholas Carr stated in “Is Google Making Us Stupid.”

It is in a form to look appear as though it is a text based game. It has the classic symbol (==>) and color for the link from page to page. Some links also will have the “action input,” such as “Respond” or “Go through bedroom door,” while others will just have the symbol, indicating that the last action given is just continuing to happen. The way to bookmark where you are is called “Save Game” and to pick it up again you click “Load Game.” It is currently at page 4,861 and, though a lot of pages are just a picture or two, there are probably as many words as the whole Harry Potter series. Every page has a picture to show what is happening and, most of them, have text that makes it seem as though a narrator is telling you what is happening. A lot of the pictures are something known as gifs on the internet. They are a pictures that move for a few frames, basically, a little clip of video with no sound. These show, even more than just plain pictures, what is happening in the story. Such as this. If it was just a book, it would just say “Roxy jumped into the broken fenestrated plane” and you would have to imagine what the “fenestrated plane” looked like, what Roxy looks like, how she jumped into the hole, etc… Yes, it gives you more of your own creative license without the picture, but the picture helps you better imagine what the author had in mind when he was creating the story.

There are also flash videos every once in awhile with music. These are used to show important parts of the story that would take pages upon pages in an actual book to describe. There is book of the first act of the story. It says on the inside front cover that it is better to read it online. Here is a prime example about how it is better to read online. PICTURE VS FLASH. Also, if the flash video were to be souly in writing, they would be ridiculously long. If, say,the whole video of CASCADE were to be described in a book without pictures or anything, it would take probably a whole entire book. It also wouldn’t have the desired effect if it was a book. It was created to make the viewers ask themselves questions and discuss it among themselves and try to speculate what it really meant. If it was in a book, what had happened would be spelled out for the readers, leaving no where near as many questions. There are many other examples aside from this one that show that hypertexts are definitely a good form of literature.

Sven Birkets says that literature is coming to a tragic end at the hands of technology, but is it really? Maybe he is just not used to the technology and it seems that way. But the way I see it, technology is moving literature forward. Its helping things spread and giving us more ways to share our own stories along with giving us new ways to receive them. How is that a bad thing?

How is that a bad thing?

(IGNORE ANYTHING THAT IS BOLD, ITALICIZED, UNDERLIND, AND CAPITALIZED. I WILL BE INSTERING PICTURES AND/OR LINKS HERE.)

Technology:The internet. Video games. Cell phones. Kindles/Nooks. Are they ruining literature and reading? Sven Birkets, writer of The Gutenberg Elegies, thinks so. I wholeheartedly disagree. Technology is a part of society. Did fire ruin our ability to eat? No, It improved it. Wheels improved transportation. Telephones improved communication. Technology is improves things, not damages things. It’s how mankind moves forward, so how could it possibly be ruining literature?

In this argument, I am in no way saying that I hate reading. Though I may seem very into screen based things, I prefer and enjoy the feel and smell of real books. Birkets says “Next to the new technologies, the scheme of things represented by print and the snail paced linearity of the reading act stodgy and dull.” To me, what is stodgy and dull is things like biographies and things that don’t seem to have a storyline and plot behind it. I prefer to immerse myself into a book and live in that world until some outside force makes me put it down. I will say that I have read books online because I do not have the money to buy them and they were not in at the library, but I much more enjoy having the book in my hands. It is just a satisfying feeling when you’re reading a book. I do agree with Birkets to the point of, I would be deeply upset if electronic books made print books obsolete. Now that being said, I do not agree with him to the point of saying that technology is the devil and it is destroying literature. Far from that. I think technology is helping it.

First, the internet. All the ads and sounds, pictures and hyperlinks take away from the reading experience. Or so says Birkets. It may be something that one must become accustomed to, but none of these things take away from what i’m reading. Ads are on the sides, top or bottom of the screen. If you know that, it is easy to ignore them. It’s also something you learn over time that most of them are useless. “You are the 100,000^th visitor! Click now to collect a FREE iPad 2!” Anyone who has spent more than a week using the internet knows that it’s a fluke. I will admit that sometimes talking ads will pop up and it will be annoying, but if you’re on the internet for the purpose of reading, why do you have the sound on? And why are you even on a sit that has talking ads anyways? If sounds on the internet are a problem, click mute. And as for pictures, they usually add to the reading. They give you a visual for what you’re reading about, like a newspaper article. As for hyperlinks, I somewhat agree they can be distracting in something like The Museum for someone that is ADD like me. But I disagree that all hypertexts are basically the devil. I am reading a web comic called Homestuck. It is a very interesting story that I could not even begin to explain the story line of. It is in a form to look like a test based game. It has the classic symbol (==>) and color for the link from page to page. Some links also will have the “action input,” such as “Respond” or “Go through bedroom door,” while others will just have the symbol, indicating that the last action given is just continuing to happen. The way to bookmark where you are is called “Save Game” and to pick it up again you click “Load Game.” It is currently at page 4,861 and, though a lot of pages are just a picture or two, there are probably as many words as the whole Harry Potter series. Every page has a picture to show what is happening and, most of them, have text that is something like a narrator telling you what is happening. A lot of the pictures are something known as gifs on the internet. They are a pictures that move for a few frames, basically, a little clip of video with no sound. These show, even more than just plain pictures, what is happening in the story. Such as GIF. If it was just a book, it would just say “Roxy jumped into the broken fenestrated plane” and you would have to imagine what the “fenestrated plane” looked like, what Roxy looks like, how she jumped into the hole, etc… Yes, it gives you more of your own creative license without the picture, but the picture helps you better imagine what the author had in mind when he was creating the story.

There are also flash videos every once in awhile with music. These are used to show important parts of the story that would take pages upon pages in an actual book to describe. There is book of the first act of the story. It says on the inside front cover that it is better to read it online PICTURE. Here is a prime example about how it is better to read online. PICTURE: ENTER VS FLASH. If, say, CASCADE whole thing were to be described in a book without pictures or anything, it would take probably a whole entire book. It also wouldn’t have the desired effect if it was a book. It was created like that to make the viewers ask themselves questions and discuss it among themselves and try to speculate what it really meant. If it was in a book, what had happened would be spelled out for the readers, leaving no where near as many questions. There are many other examples aside from this one that show that hypertexts are definitely a good form of literature.

There is also the fact of blogs and online reading. Blogs are a wonderful way to get your work to the public without having to go and get it published and shipped and everything. Just write the story you wish to tell and send the link to the people you want to see it. Post it on a forum and it can even make it all the way around the world.

The next point I have is video games. “With video games, the audience takes the teller’s baton and continues to tell the story,” says Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers Conference. “This way, the game player enjoys the storyteller’s thrill, adapting the narrative to his or her satisfaction, while also being the audience for the narrative elements that the game developer provides.” Why should video games be considered much different than movies? I can see why games like The Sims would not since there is no storyline, but what of the role-playing games (RPGs) like Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy? Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has a wonderful storyline that I could see being written as a book. Some of the RPG story lines seem a little far fetched. There are moments when you ask yourself something like “But why did he go off to save the world in the first place?” But the story line of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has none of those moments. There’s also the fact of the different types of games. The RPGs have storyline that you play through and, I think, are more adding to the world, not damaging it. But what about shooters, such as Call of Duty and Halo, or MMOPRGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), such as World Of Warcraft? In an article I read online, ARTICLE it is asked “Can shooters be as emotionally gripping as a role-playing game?” I know of a game called Bioshock that I have played, but before I played it, I watched my brother play for hours on end, so yes, I would say that shooters can be emotionally gripping. Halo can also do this. It may not be so frequent, but there is definitely an emotionally gripping storyline behind the game. And for MMORPGs, I believe it is just giving the pen over to the “reader” to write their own story. They create the characters and make their own friends and build their own story around the characters they make. Decide whether they will be a magician or an archer, a thief or a knight.

Sven Birkets says that literature is coming to a tragic end at the hands of technology, but is it really? Maybe he is just not used to the technology and it seems that way. But the way I see it, technology is moving literature forward. Its helping things spread and giving us more ways to share our own stories along with giving us new ways to receive them. How is that a bad thing?

The past week has been spent on expanding our experiences with hypertexts. We started with The Museum. I did not enjoy this text at all. I got nothing of story from it and had no idea what the purpose of it was. I could not handle the amount of links and just got sidetracked and didn’t know what to do. If I had patience, I think I may have been able to get through it. The way that I wanted to read it, opening every link in a new tab or window, would have completely crashed my computer. After I realized that, I more or less gave up trying to read the entire thing. The next thing we read was the chapter Hypertext: Of Mouse and Man in which Birkets’ argument just continued, though getting very relevant to countering the argument of my paper. The last thing was to read 4 hypertexts from a large list. The one enjoyed the most was Faith. It was a poem that showed up in parts, stopping after each part. The interesting thing was that, whenever it stops, the parts that were there made sense, even though more then half of the words weren’t there.

The hypertexts are helping me are helping with my progress on my paper very much and some will probably talked about in it. I’ve seen a few things that definitely apply to one of my main examples, the web comic Homestuck. This is also a Hypertext too, but with only one pathway to follow and a very constructed and interesting plot, unlike The Museum.

Plans for Project 3

Over the past week, we have read “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” chapter 3 of Rewriting, Countering, and the Introduction to “Hamlet on the Holodeck.” The fist article we read focused on how the presence of technology and the internet is changing the way we think. The Chapter in Rewriting gave us suggestions on how to improve our argument in writing by using another point of view other then the one being argued. The introduction discusses the argument between literature and technology, like Birkets, but, unlike Birkets, doesn’t close off to either side of the argument.

I have already started planning for my third paper. I am going to argue that technology is not destroying literature as Birkets seems to believe. I will be using examples of 1 or 2 video games along with an article. The article points out many views of the video games and their impact on literature and discusses whether video games should be considered a form of literature. One of the arguments it makes, the difference between different types games, I may be addressing in my paper as well. I will also be using a web comic that I read that has also been printed as a book. This web comic, “Homestuck,” is currently on it’s 4817th page so I may also argue with the point of view in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that the internet is making us unable to sit and read lengthy literature. It is also a very intense story that you can’t just “skim the surface” of. I have begun to find links and pictures to also include in this paper.

I know that I have many things I want to include in this paper and that it won’t all fit, but I would rather have too much and shorten the length then have too little and try and come up with something new the night before it’s due. This is a topic that is very relevant to me and that may be the reason I can’t yet choose between topics. I love reading, but i also love watching TV and movies and playing video games. I knew as soon as I read the topic for the third paper that I would mainly be arguing Birkets, and that is still what I think will be my main argument.

The Medium is the Massage

I had written a blog, but decided to change the topic of it after class this afternoon. So I deleted the previous entry and am writing this one.

The book “The Media is the Massage” is a book that discussed the changes of technology, but does not seem to take sides. Very much unlike Birkets who barely looks at the fact that mankind has always been advancing technologically and believes that technology is absolutely destroying literature.

I have to say, though I did not particularly enjoy the hypertextuality of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” I very much enjoyed this one. The pictures really brought along the book. The difference in types, placements, size, colors of the text really kept my interest. Especially the page we looked at in class that had the text on the page mirrored. All of the different pictures helped with his explaining. I could really see how this book would be unlined by some people, with its unclear argument and crazy ways of writing the text, but I think that it is appealing. I enjoy it. It is possible that it is because I am online reading often, play lots of games, watched tons of TV when I was a kid. So it is possible that it is just a background of the reader.

Hugo Cabret

Hugo Cabret. A twelve year old boy that lives in a Paris train station. His father dies in an unexplained museum fire and after his uncle mysteriously disappears, he is now on his own. Both his father and he had a fascination with an automaton his father found hidden away in the attic of the museum. Hugo takes the automaton into his own possession to fix it. To get the gears and such, he thieves from a toy seller. He gets caught and must work off his debt to the toy seller. He befriends his god daughter, Isabelle, and eventually does complete the automaton. Once they find the key, Isabelle’s necklace, and wind it up, it draws something that had the signature of the toymaker, Georges. Hugo finds out that Georges was a movie maker who is thought to have died after the Great War. Hugo grows up to become a magician and makes his own automaton that can produce “one hundred and fifty-eight different pictures, and it can write, letter by letter, an entire book, twenty-six thousand one hundred and fifty-nine words.” Those things are the book itself.

The pictures of this are supposed to make this book Hyper-mediated, movie like. The pictures did not have this effect for me. The pictures helped the mental movie that plays in my head whenever i read. It did not make much of a difference for me at all. I have read many graphic novels and i an used to having pictures tell the story. The absence or presence of pictures makes not too much of a difference for me whatsoever. If anything, the pictures may distract me somewhat. Not help. 

 

Greek Mythology in Frankenstein

By: Laurelyn Auer

The gods assigned the twin brothers Epimetheus and Prometheus to the task of populating the world. Prometheus, who’s name means “fore thought” in ancient Greek, made all of beasts and animals, birds and reptiles, and his most proud creation, man. Epimetheus, “after thought”, gave all the creatures his brother created their strengths and qualities. He gave the lion his courage, gave the birds the ability to fly, fish the ability to breath under water, turtles their hard protective shell. But, as his name’s meaning may imply, he does not think of the future nor consequences of his actions. Due to this, he accidentally used all of the qualities in making the other creatures of the world and left nothing left to give man. Man was left with no way to protect himself. As man was his most proud creation, Prometheus gave man his free will, fire, and the language of the gods. Fire was supposed to be a sacred thing of the gods, so Zeus, the king of the gods gave Prometheus the punishment to be, for all eternity, chained to a mountain and day and night an eagle would torture him by picking out his liver. And for man, Zeus gave the punishment of woman.

That is the the Greek myth of the creation of man, or, the story of Prometheus. It is one of the Greek myths that is not known as well as it used to be. This and other instances of Greek mythology show themselves in the novel of Frankenstein. Starting with the cover, the first instance of it is Prometheus and in the title itself. The novel’s proper, full name is Frankenstein; or, A Modern Prometheus and very few people actually know that. Even people who have read it don’t know this fact. After this, the hints of Greek mythology continue showing themselves through out the book.

As I stated before, the first instance of Greek mythology is Prometheus in the title. This would have been useful when the book was published. When the novel was first published, the story of Prometheus was more known than it is today. This would give people more of a sense of the basic story line in advance. In 1818 when the book was first published, they did not have book descriptions on the back or inside front cover of the book. When choosing a book, they only had the title, author’s name, and length of the book to decide if it was a book worth getting or not. This second title A Modern Prometheus would tell a potential reader that the story was a version of the myth of Prometheus, but with a modern twist. The second part of the title does not, now, have the same use as when it was first published. Today the story of Prometheus is not known and the story of Frankenstein is.

This is the way that the Greek mythology continues to be hinted at in the novel, the storyline of Frankenstein being very close to the same story of Prometheus. It is about the creation of man and the punishment of the creator. Victor Frankenstein assembles and creates “man,” if the creature can be called that, but that happens only in the 5^th chapter of the novel and there are many chapters, 19 to be precise, after the creature’s creation. The other 19 chapters, aside from the chapters that are dedicated to the creature telling his story, are a story of Victor’s punishment. And though his punishment is not from giving the creature fire, it is from another thing he gave the creature. Victor gave him free will and no guidance. He gave the creature the ability to learn and speak, but did not teach him himself.

Tragic flaw is a concept that also comes from ancient Greece. A tragic flaw is “the character defect that causes the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy.” It shows up in most of the Greek myths and almost all of the ancient Greek plays. Victor has two tragic flaws, the one most prominent is that of greed. Victor knows that the creature is the one who murdered William and that Justine is innocent, but refuses to tell the court, or anyone. He knows that he is actually the one responsible for he created the creature that committed the act. Victor does not tell this to a single person though. He bears it himself. He knows that if he confesses it all, he would be considered a madman. He may have been considered a madman, but, an innocent life would have been saved. Victor is too greedy and self centered to do this.

The next Greek mythological association is that of hubris, or hybris as it’s written in the Greek myths. Hubris is one of the first tragic flaws to be seen in myths. Hubris is extreme arrogance, believing oneself to be, as good as or even better than a god. It is something that was punished with either death or some other, often more horrible, fate that was given by, usually, the god they insulted by believing themselves better. Victor has hubris in the fact that he makes man and believes that he is destined to do so.In most, if not every religion, man is created by a god; thus, creation of man is a god’s job. Doing a god’s job is a very high level of hubris, in my opinion. Victor believes that he “alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.”(498) The vocabulary of this sentence alone shows his amount of arrogance and hubris. Using the words “alone” and “reserved” he makes it sound like he believes he is better than everyone else. He thinks himself the best at this subject. Thinks himself a god. With the knowledge I have of the mythological history of hubris, his punishment was to be expected.

There are traces of Greek mythology in so many details in our lives and we hardly even notice them. The symbol for doctors and medicine, the Olympics, Achilles’s tendon, the river and website named Amazon, and cupid are some very well known things that all have origins in Greek mythology. The ideas, names, personalities, and icons show up everywhere in a persons daily life. One only has to look to see it.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or A Modern Prometheus. Electronic (Kindle).

I knew very early on that I was going to write about the mythological references for this project. I decided to do it because I have knowledge in Greek mythology and stories from classes I have previously taken. Since I decided that early, I was able to keep my eyes open for any references about mythology that I could use for this paper. I found many subtle hints and references that may not have even been intended. I did not however come across direct passages I could use well for the paper. Even without them, I took the main things I saw and built upon them. I originally, for the firsts draft, had only 4 paragraphs and that has been expanding since Mondays class.

 The gods assigned the twin brothers Epimetheus and Prometheus to the task of populating the world. Prometheus, who’s name means fore thought in ancient Greek, made all of beasts and animals, birds and reptiles, and his most proud creation, man. Epimetheus, after thought, gave all the creatures his brother created their strengths and qualities. He gave the lion his courage, gave the birds the ability to fly, fish the ability to breath under water, turtles their hard protective shell. But, as his name’s meaning may imply, he does not think of the future nor consequences of his actions. Due to this, he accidentally used all of the qualities in making the other creatures of the world and left nothing left to give man. Man was left with no way to protect itself. As man was his most proud creation, Prometheus gave man his free will and fire. But fire was supposed to be a sacred thing of the gods, so Zeus, the king of the gods gave Prometheus the punishment to be, for all eternity, chained to a mountain and day and night an eagle would torture him by picking out his liver. And for man, Zeus gave the punishment of woman.

That is the the Greek myth of the creation of man, or, the story of Prometheus. (It is a well known story. Another very well known story is the story of Frankenstein, though there are many misconceptions about it.) The first misconception, starting with the cover, is the title. Its proper name is Frankenstein; or, A Modern Prometheus and very few people actually know that. Even people who have read it don’t know this fact. Just as this is the first misconception of Frankenstein, this is also the first instance of Greek mythological ideas showing themselves through out the novel.

This first instance of Prometheus in the title would ave been useful when the book was published. This is because of the fact that when it was first published, the story of Prometheus was, obviously, more known the the story of Frankenstein, unlike today. This would give people a sense of the basic story line in advance. In 1818 when the book was first published, they did not have book descriptions on the back or inside front cover of the book. They had only the title, author name, and length to use to choose a book to get. This second title A Modern Prometheus would tell a potential reader that the story was a version of the myth of Prometheus, but with a modern twist. It would be about the creation of man and the punishment of the creator. And that is precisely what the book is about. Victor Frankenstein assembles and creates “man,” if the creature can be called that, but that happens only in the 5^th chapter of the novel and there are many chapters, 19 to be precise, after the creature’s creation. The other 19 chapters, aside from the chapters that are the creature’s story, are the story of Victor’s punishment.

The next Greek mythological association is that of hubris, or hybris. Hubris is one of the first tragic flaws, an idea which also comes from Greece, to be seen. Hubris is excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.” by dictionary definition. By its use in Greek mythology, it is when a person is so arrogant, they think themselves better than the gods. It is something that was punished with either death or some other, sometimes more horrible, fate that was given by, usually, the god they insulted by believing themselves better than. Victor has Hubris in the fact that he makes man. The creation of man is a god’s job and doing a god’s job is a very high level of hubris in my opinion. Through my knowledge of Greek myths, his punishment that came after the creation of the creature was to be expected.

(Enter conclusion here)

Monster?

Frankenstein has finally met with his creation, or the monster as he calls him. We are finally told his story. Looking at the story, I must ask myself, is he truly a monster? He is a monster on the outside, but, originally, was kind-hearted and caring. Originally, and i believe still, he was human inside.

The creature, as I will call him, was a baby, in a psychological sense. He may have been larger, stronger, and more agile than any man, but he was a baby. He knew nothing of the world and, at first, could not even differentiate his senses. What did his creator, or we could even call him “father,” do? Left him. The creature may be repulsive in sight, but he was still “human.” He has a human heart and a human brain. He thinks and feels as we do. I can think of many cases of babies being deprived of human contact and proper affection. None of them and too well. And that that is what Frankenstein did. He left a baby, essentially, by himself. The creature is left to figure out the world for himself. That alone, I believe is enough to make him bitter and hateful towards Frankenstein. But it is not until he finds he is hideous and that no one will ever accept him and that makes him hateful. He was made hideous. Frankenstein knew this. He even took note of it in his journals. The last straw is that he is been shunned by the only people he loved, and he finally decides to seek his creator; thus, he heads for Geneva. He stumbles upon a boy, William, Frankenstein’s youngest brother, and murders him. But it is not just for the sake of killing that he does this. It is an act of revenge, a human concept, and an attempt to get Frankenstein. He may be a “monster” for killing a small, precious boy, but really, is it because he’s a monster? I am to believe it is because he is human. 

What’s The Point Of English Class?

 When I was a young, I despised reading, writing and everything to do with it and it was not until 7^th grade that I finally fell in love with it. I believe that it is the fact that English class in school made these too much of forced tasks for an elementary schooler to appreciate. It did not stop at elementary school either.The school systems force us to read, view and write without our input from preschool until we graduate High School.

They force us to read books that do not apply to our interests at all and then force us to read them on a time schedule that may not work for people. I have had only two or three instances in my school career when I have been allowed to make my own decision on which book I wish to read. Those books are really the only ones I enjoyed reading. When given a choice of a few books to read, I enjoyed reading. The book I read that made me love reading, East by Edith Pattou, was a book that I choose myself, was allowed to read on my own time and for my own recreation. The ones we were forced to read, I did not like at all. I had no interest in reading The Scarlet Letter. Reading Shakespeare just makes my head hurt. I barely read Frankenstein. Forcing students to read books they do not enjoy just makes them hate reading even more. Forced reading is what made me hate it so much. It was a duty and a chore, not a recreational thing as it should be. The schools argue that children need to be exposed to “the classics.” Being exposed to the classics has no impact on how intelligent a person is or how successful they will be in life. I do not need to have knowledge of Hamlet to start a bakery.

The schools do not stop at just forcing us to read these books. They also force us to interpret the books we read and tell us what interpretations to have about them. Why does everything in every book have to stand for something? What use does knowing color symbolism have in my life? Like that the green light on the pier in The Great Gatsby stands for jealousy. They tell us what each little thing stands for in stories. What if it really does not mean that? And not just stories, novels, and books. The teachers tell us how we should interpret poems, as well. An interpretation is something that a person needs to make for themselves. Telling someone what to think before they get a chance to decide themselves is like telling someone “You like this steak.” before you even have time to taste it. Yes, interpretations should be a shared thing, but people should not be told what their interpretation should, or have to, be. People have their own view on things. If students do not get to make their own opinions on what they read, it will make them detest the act of reading even more.

Students are then forced to write on these forced veiws. “Write an essay about why this is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.” When they have already told you which it should be in their view. One of my good friends got a low grade on a paper that was written excellently, but it did not agree with the teachers point-of-view and the type of writing she preferred. Children and teens have different views of things then the adult teachers. Their expression of these different views are going to be even more different. They should not be jugded because of this difference. There is also the point of how hard it is to write about something in which you have no interest. It does not take much searching to find out how those students who get D’s in school really write if you look at a piece of writing which the topic is something they are very passionate about. If I had to write one paper on Romeo and Juliet and one on Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, one of my favorite books, the paper on Leviathan would be much better written and have much more content then the one on Romeo and Juliet. One of the reasons for this is because of the fact that most essays have a very small selection of things to write that are given. If students are given more general subjects to write on, they can pick something more atuned to their interests; thus, they would write a paper of much better quality

I have to say that, deducing from the short amount of time I have been in college, colleges seem much better at not forcing people to do these things. They allow you to choose an english class that reads books that apply to your interests. The classes also seem geared towards discussing these books and the teachers play more of a “devil’s advocate” then a source of opinion. There is also paper and essay writing, but it’s more “free” than the papers of high school. The assignments give much more general subjects and the student can pick their own topic under this general subject on which to write. Everything to do with literature in general seems much better in college classes than it was in my previous school experiences.

The education system needs to be changed to make students enjoy literature, not dread it. The students need to be allowed to have their own choice, opinions and voice. This would help schools very much. When the students enjoy the reading they are doing, the teachers can do more teaching and less telling. English class should be dedicated to getting students to enjoy reading and writing more and make them better at these things as well. In my eyes, why is English class the way it is if it does not do what it is supposed to? If the school systems were to give students free choice of books more often, even if its a majority vote of the class, they would have a much more positive view on reading. Let them develop their own opinions of books, the will be more willing to discuss and learn from the books. Give them a choice for what to write about as well, then they will be more willing to write as well. It shouldn’t wait until college to finally be given these rights. It should be from when a student first sets foot in the preschool room until when they are handed their last diploma of their school career.