As a freshman, I wondered who picked these books we read. As a sophomore, I was curious why we had to analyze books with such depth. As a junior, I questioned why we had to learn about so many literary devices. Now, as a senior, I have learned that the literary devices create depth in a book that impact the reader and add to the book's literary merit, making it a good book to study in school. After four years in high school, I'm beginning to grasp how the analysis of a book shows what exactly the author did to create the work of literary merit and write something with more depth than a book for pure entertainment. Also, this research project where we need to pick a novel and decide ourselves if it's of literary merit or not, will help me better understand how a novel becomes of literary merit. It shows the process all the novels read in school had to go through to be considered good to read and taught in school. When a work of literary merit is fully understood, it leaves a larger and longer lasting impact on the reader and gives the reader something to think about society or leaves a moral about mankind.
Zach Y.
I am slightly frustrated at how we weren't informed of this earlier. I would have enjoyed other English classes much more if I had known how all of the pieces fit together. In a way, it's like math; what we learn is pretty pointless, some might find fun. But it doesn't all tie together until much, much later in the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteDavid Mao
I am really glad that I spent our years doing this. After learning the different ways of analyzing books, ive actually began to like and understand books better. Like you said, its not only for entertainment, but for a purpose. Before reading a poem would be a waste of time for me becuase I could never actually understand what the real meaning of the poem was. Surprisingly, the research project for me is turnin out to be easy, eventhough I have never done one.
ReplyDelete-Zaid H.
I completely agree with you! I mean sophomore year we had to identify ethos, logos, and pathos, and goodness gracious I still do not understand it to this day! I mean why did we have to point out with sentences made us feel pity, and which lines were based on logic. I mean couldn't we just tell? Last year all i learned was parallelism, since we only had to memorize the definition of anaphora and dogmatism, not ever put it to use. However this year I truly began to see all that I have learned, and put it to use every writing wednesday.
ReplyDeleteSo from freshman year to Junior year I thought literature was a gamble, we were always told to analyse a text then compare two texts together and I thought "Nonsense!!!". As Senior year hit I began to realize (thanks to all the literature we had read) that a book or poem is constructed specifically and directly how the writer wants it to be. Its not a gamble, in a poem a writer does not put in what necessarily sounds good, though he/she includes that which contains the deepest possible meaning.
ReplyDelete--Josiah Keagy
I realized how books were chosen for english classes. I wish we learned about the process because then i would have taken the novels more seriously. I thought everything was all random, but now i realize the importance of each novel.
ReplyDeleteAlireza Behbahani