AP Literature Summer Project - Bradshaw Christian School
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AP Literature Summer Project
Bradshaw Christian High School
Mrs. Grove
Summer 2021
Part 1: Frankenstein
The first text we will be discussing this year is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. You will need to purchase an
unabridged copy of this text, read it, and complete the following assignment. To aid our discussion and
practice active reading skills, you will be required to annotate and mark your text. Instructions are listed
below. Once you have finished reading the text, you will complete the “Who is the Villain?” assignment.
It is imperative that you read and engage with this text over the summer because we will be using it to
discuss major concepts you will need to know for the AP exam. Please note that reading Sparknotes is
not a valid substitute for reading the original text. This assignment is REQUIRED for AP Literature. If
you do not complete this assignment over the summer, you will be required to complete it at the start of
the school year for partial credit if you wish to remain in AP Literature.
A quick note on reading: Different versions of Frankenstein format the text differently, and it can be tricky
to tell where the book actually starts. The beginning of the book starts with “Letter 1.” You should read
four letters written by a man named Walton. After this you’ll find chapter 1. If you start at chapter 1,
you’ve missed the beginning of the book. Make sure you read the letters!
Be sure to bring your copy of Frankenstein on the first day of class. You need to have a hard
copy of this text, not a digital copy.
1. Annotations and Marked Passages
Part of the preparation for both the AP exam and college-level work is engaging with difficult texts. One
of the most helpful strategies for reading literature (and other texts) is annotating and marking up the
text. While you are reading, you will need to complete the following tasks:
• Mark 20 significant passages with a post-it in the text and write on the post-it why you marked
it. With each of these passages you might also underline/highlight and comment in the margins
as you read.
• You should mark the text based on the following categories. For each post-it, 1) write what
category it falls under and 2) explain why you marked it. Write a few sentences or bullet points
indicating how this passage fits with the topic you identified.
o Exploration/Knowledge
o Prejudice
o Revenge
o Good vs. Evil
o Isolation vs. Community
• As you read you should also use other forms of annotating such as underlining, highlighting, or
commenting in the margins to keep track of our thoughts while reading.
2. Quote Analysis: Who is the Villain?One of the common misconceptions of Frankenstein is that Frankenstein is the name of the monster,
rather than the name of the scientist who created him. This is an interesting confusion due to the fact
that one of the major questions raised by Frankenstein is who is the true villain, the creature who was
unknowingly brought back to life or the man who created him? For this piece of the assignment, you will
explore the question of who the true villain is in Frankenstein by exploring moments in the text that depict
Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature as either a villain or a victim.
Task:
• Record five significant quotes for each character (Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature). This may
be a significant act or speech from the character. This means you will have 10 quotes total. Limit
the length of your quote to 3 sentences of less. If you find yourself wanting to quote a longer
passage, summarize part of the passage and quote the most significant piece that illustrates the
villainy or victimhood of the character.
• Select quotes from throughout the text. Be sure to have quotes that reflect the entire story of
each character. Their endings matter!
• Categorize each quote as demonstrating the character is a villain or a victim.
• Write an explanation about why this moment shows why the character is a villain or victim.
Explain how the wording of the text influences your interpretation of the character in this
moment. Explanations should several sentences each.
Format:
• Separate your quotes for each character so that each character’s quotes are grouped together. •
Number each quote. You should have ten quotes total, five for each character. • You may create
a chart like the one below or develop your own system as long as it is clearly labeled and
organized.
• Typed
Quote (Cite page #) Category (Villain or Victim) Explanation (Several
sentences)
3. Be prepared for discussion/tests/essays on this text
Failure to complete this project will lead to an inability to complete the coursework for AP Literature.
You should expect to write an essay on the text, so you will need to have read it. As will be true for any
text we read next year, you should be prepared for a quiz on any reading you are assigned once it is due.
If you do not turn in a project at the beginning of the school year, you will be expected to complete the
assignment for partial credit if you wish to remain in AP Literature.
Part 2: Why Literature?
As you head into AP Literature, I want you to consider why we read literature. We will further discuss
and debate this question as we start off the year. To give you some food for thought in regards to this
topic, you will read several essays and articles discussing why we read and what we read. Your goal in
reading and responding to these articles is not to take them as fact, but to consider what ideas you agree
and disagree with and why.1. Read and annotate the attached articles
At the end of this assignment you will find the following articles. Annotate each of the articles as you
read. You may choose to do this digitally or you may print the articles out and annotate in hard copy.
You will need to access your articles in class.
● “How Reading Makes Us More Human”
● “The Most Human Art”
● “Should Literature Be Considered Useful”
● “Alaska school board removes 'The Great Gatsby,' other famous books from curriculum
for 'controversial' content”
● “Common Reasons for Banning Books”
2. Response Questions
Answer the questions below based on YOUR perspective. Draw on the articles you read to help answer
by addressing ideas you agree or disagree with. Bring in evidence from your own reading experiences.
You may also bring in evidence from other articles you have read on your own. Your responses should
be half a page to one page for EACH question (1-2 pages total). The goal here is not to write an essay,
but to think about the questions and what others are arguing in regards to this question so that you can
be ready to discuss with the class.
Format: Typed, questions labeled, MLA format
Questions:
1. What is the purpose and/or value of reading literature? Does reading literature need a
purpose?
2. What should students read? Should there be limitations/regulations on what types of texts
students read in school? Should there be more openness to what types of texts students read
in school?
3. Be prepared for a class discussion
The first week of school we will hold a seminar discussing why we read and what we should read. Be
prepared to reference the articles you read and use evidence as you discuss.
NOTE: If you have any questions you may email Mrs. Grove at egrove@bradshawchristian.com. I will
check my email periodically throughout the summer and get back to you.
DUE: Thursday, 8/12/21 (the first day of school)
SUBMITTING YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
● All typed work will be submitted through Canvas when the school year starts. Have access to your
typed work to submit on the first day of school.
● Bring your Frankenstein text with your annotations in hard copy to turn in on the first day of
school.
EVALUATION:Frankenstein Annotations and Marked Passages Score Sheet - 30% Assessment
Following directions, neatness /5
• Annotations are easy to find and read
• Any sticky notes or tabs are neat
• Post-its are clearly labeled
Completeness/Quality of annotations /20
• 20+ passages are marked in the text
• Text demonstrates other forms of annotations such as underlining, highlighting, and
commenting in the margins
• Annotations carry through the end of the book (don’t end half way through etc) •
Post-its convey insightful comments/questions about the text
• Annotations clearly point to significant passages that account for the various types of responses •
Chose interesting/important passages to mark
Frankenstein Quote Analysis Score Sheet - 30% Assessment
Content /20
• At least 5 apt quotes selected that depict the character of Dr. Frankenstein
• At least 5 apt quotes selected that depict the character of the creature
• Quotes are appropriate length
• Quotes reflect the transformation of each character by selecting appropriate quotes throughout the
entire text
• Explanations fully explain why the character is depicted as a human or a monster in the selected
quote with insight and depth of thought
Clarity and Organization /5
• Correct grammar and punctuation
• Complete sentences and complete thoughts expressed; Syntax is clear and understandable
• Typed, Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1 inch margins, proper heading; double or single spaced ok
• Uses bullets, paragraph breaks and/or headings to clearly organize the notes; Fluid/easy to read
• Each quote is cited by page number
• Quotes and responses are clearly labeled and organized
Why Literature - 30% Assessment
Annotations /5
• Demonstrates a variety of forms of annotations such as underlining, highlighting, and
commenting in the margins
• More than just underlining and highlighting; Contains textual notes and responses
Response Questions /10
• Thoughtful and clear responses to each response question
• Uses evidence to support response
• Responds to multiple articles within responses
• Typed, MLA format, ½ page- full page in response to EACH questionHow Reading Makes Us More Human A debate has erupted over whether reading fiction makes human beings more moral. But what if its real value consists in something even more fundamental? KAREN SWALLOW PRIOR, June 21, 2013, The Atlantic A battle over books has erupted recently on the pages of The New York Times and Time. The opening salvo was Gregory Currie's essay, "Does Great Literature Make Us Better?" which asserts that the widely held belief that reading makes us more moral has little support. In response, Annie Murphy Paul weighed in with "Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer." Her argument is that "deep reading," the kind of reading great literature requires, is a distinctive cognitive activity that contributes to our ability to empathize with others; it therefore can, in fact, makes us "smarter and nicer," among other things. Yet these essays aren't so much coming to different conclusions as considering different
questions. To advance her thesis, Paul cites studies by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. Taken together, their findings suggest that those "who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective." It's the kind of thing writer Joyce Carol Oates is talking about when she says, "Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul." Oatley and Mar's conclusions are supported, Paul argues, by recent studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science. This research shows that "deep reading -- slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity -- is a distinctive experience," a kind of reading that differs in kind and quality from "the mere decoding of words" that constitutes a good deal of what passes for reading today, particularly for too many of our students in too many of our schools (as I have previously written about here). Paul concludes her essay with a reference to the literary critic Frank Kermode, who famously distinguishes between "carnal reading" -- characterized by the hurried, utilitarian information processing that constitutes the bulk of our daily reading diet -- and "spiritual reading," reading done with focused attention for pleasure, reflection, analysis, and growth. It is in this distinction that we find the real difference between the warring factions in what might be a chicken-or-egg scenario: Does great literature make people better, or are good people drawn to reading great literature? Currie is asking whether reading great literature makes readers more moral -- a topic taken up by Aristotle in Poetics (which makes an ethical apology for literature). Currie cites as counter-evidence the well-read, highly cultured Nazis. The problem with this (aside from falling into the trap of Godwin's Law) is that the Nazis were, in fact, acting in strict conformity to the dictates of a moral code, albeit the perverse code of the Third Reich. But Paul examines the connection of great literature not to our moral selves, but to our spiritual selves. What good literature can do and does do -- far greater than any importation of morality -- is touch the human soul. Reading is one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. As many scholars have noted, and Paul too mentions in her piece, reading, unlike spoken language, does not come naturally to human beings. It must be taught. Because it goes beyond mere biology, there is something profoundly spiritual -- however one understands that word -- about the human ability, and impulse, to read. In fact, even the various senses in which we use the word captures this: to "read" means not only to decipher a given and learned set of symbols in a mechanistic way, but it also suggests that very human act of finding meaning, of "interpreting" in the sense of "reading" a person or situation. To read in this sense might be considered one of the most spiritual of all human activities. It is "spiritual reading" -- not merely decoding -- that unleashes the power that good literature has to reach into our souls and, in so doing, draw and connect us to others. This is why the way we read can be even more important than what we read. In fact, reading good literature won't make a reader a better person any more than sitting in a church, synagogue or mosque will. But reading good books well just might. It did for me. As I relayed in my literary and spiritual memoir, the books I have read over a lifetime have shaped my worldview, my beliefs, and my life as much as anything else. From Great Expectations I learned the power the stories we tell ourselves have to do either harm and good, to ourselves and to others; from Death of a Salesman I learned the dangers of a corrupt version of the American Dream; from Madame Bovary, I learned to embrace the real world rather than escaping into flights of fancy; from Gulliver's Travels I learned the profound limitations of my own finite perspective; and from Jane Eyre I learned how to be myself. These weren't mere intellectual or moral lessons, although they certainly may have begun as such. Rather, the stories from these books and so many others became part of my life story and then, gradually, part of my very soul. As Eugene H. Peterson explains in Eat this Book, "Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul -- eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight." Peterson describes this ancient art of lectio
divina, or spiritual reading, as "reading that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through our blood,
and becomes ... love and wisdom." More than the books themselves, it is the skills and the desire to read in this way
which comprise the essential gift we must give our students and ourselves. But this won't happen by way of nature or
by accident.
Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story
and Science of the Reading Brain, has studied "deep reading" in the context of the science of the brain. She describes the
fragility of the brain's ability to read with the kind of sustained attention that allows literature to wield its shaping
power over us:
The act of going beyond the text to analyze, infer and think new thoughts is the product of years of
formation. It takes time, both in milliseconds and years, and effort to learn to read with deep, expanding
comprehension and to execute all these processes as an adult expert reader. ... Because we literally and
physiologically can read in multiple ways, how we read--and what we absorb from our reading -- will be
influenced by both the content of our reading and the medium we use.
The power of "spiritual reading" is its ability to transcend the immediacy of the material, the moment, or even the
moral choice at hand. This isn't the sort of phenomenon that lends itself to the quantifiable data Currie seeks, although
Paul demonstrates is possible, to measure. Even so, such reading doesn't make us better so much as it makes us human.
The Most Human Art
Top ten reasons why we'll always need a good story
By Scott Russell Sanders, The Georgia Review
The Utne Reader, September/October 1997 Issue, pp. 54–56
We have been telling stories to one another for a long time, perhaps for as long as we have been using language,
and we have been using language, I suspect, for as long as we have been human. In all its guises, from words
spoken and written to pictures and musical notes and mathematical symbols, language is our distinguishing gift,
our hallmark as a species.
We delight in stories, first of all, because they are a playground for language, an arena for exercising this extraordinary
power. The spells and enchantments that figure in so many tales remind us of the ambiguous potency in words, for
creating or destroying, for binding or setting free. Italo Calvino, a wizard of storytelling, described literature as "a
struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs
literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary." Calvino's remark holds true, I believe, not just for
the highfalutin' modes we label as literature, but for every effort to make sense of our lives through narrative.
Second, stories create community. They link teller to listeners, and listeners to one another. This is obviously so when
speaker and audience share the same space, as humans have done for all but the last few centuries of our million-year
history; but it is equally if less obviously so in our literate age, when we encounter more of our stories in solitude, on
page or screen. When two people discover they have both read Don Quixote, they immediately share a piece of history
and become thereby less strange to one another.
The strongest bonds are formed by sacred stories, which unite entire peoples. Thus Jews rehearse the events of
Passover; Christians tell of a miraculous birth and death and resurrection; Buddhists tell of Gautama meditating beneath
a tree. As we know only too well, sacred stories may also divide the world between those who are inside the circle and
those who are outside, a division that has inspired pogroms and inquisitions and wars. There is danger in story, as in anygreat force. If the tales that captivate us are silly or deceitful, like most of those offered by television and advertising, they waste our time and warp our desires. If they are cruel, they make us callous. If they are false and bullying, instead of drawing us into a thoughtful community they may lure us into an unthinking herd or, worst of all, into a crowd screaming for blood -- in which case we need other, truer stories to renew our vision. So The Diary of Anne Frank is an antidote to Mein Kampf. So Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an antidote to the paranoid yarns of the Ku Klux Klan. Just as stories may rescue us from loneliness, so, by speaking to us in private, they may rescue us from mobs. This brings me to the third item on my list: Stories help us to see through the eyes of other people. Here my list overlaps with one compiled by Carol Bly, who argues in "Six Uses of Story" that the foremost gift from stories is "experience of other." For the duration of a story, children may sense how it is to be old, and the elderly may recall how it is to be young; men may try on the experiences of women, and women those of men. Through stories, we reach across the rifts not only of gender and age, but also of race and creed, geography and class, even the rifts between species or between enemies. Folk tales and fables and myths often show humans talking and working with other animals, with trees, with rivers and stones, as if recalling or envisioning a time of easy commerce among all beings. Helpful ducks and cats and frogs, wise dragons, stolid oaks, all have lessons for us in these old tales. Of course no storyteller can literally become hawk or pine, any more than a man can become a woman; we cross those boundaries only imperfectly, through leaps of imagination. "Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" Thoreau asks. We come nearer to achieving that miracle in stories than anywhere else. A fourth power of stories is to show us the consequences of our actions. To act responsibly, we must be able to foresee where our actions might lead; and stories train our sight. They reveal the patterns of human conduct, from motive through action to result. Whether or not a story has a moral purpose, therefore, it cannot help but have a moral effect, for better or worse. An Apache elder, quoted by the anthropologist Keith Basso, puts the case directly: "Stories go to work on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories make you replace yourself." Stories do work on us, on our minds and hearts, showing us how we might act, who we might become, and why. So we arrive at a fifth power of stories, which is to educate our desires. Instead of playing on our selfishness and fear, stories can give us images for what is truly worth seeking, worth having, worth doing. I mean here something more than the way fairy tales repeat our familiar longings. I mean the way Huckleberry Finn makes us want to be faithful, the way Walden makes us yearn to confront the essential facts of life. What stories at their best can do is lead our desires in new directions -- away from greed, toward generosity; away from suspicion, toward sympathy; away from an obsession with material goods, toward a concern for spiritual goods. One of the spiritual goods I cherish is the peace of being at home, in family and neighborhood and community and landscape. Much of what I know about becoming intimate with one's home ground I have learned from reading the testaments of individuals who have decided to stay put. The short list of my teachers would include Lao-tzu and Thoreau and Faulkner, Thomas Merton, Black Elk, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Gary Snyder, and Wendell Berry. Their work exemplifies the sixth power of stories, which is to help us dwell in place. According to Eudora Welty, herself a deeply rooted storyteller, "the art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly, and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood." So we return to the epic of Gilgamesh, with its brooding on the forests and rivers of Babylonia; we return to the ancient Hebrew accounts of a land flowing with milk and honey; we follow the Aboriginal songs of journeys over the continent of Australia -- because they all convey a passionate knowledge of place. Native American tribes ground their stories in nearby fields and rivers and mountains, and thus carry their places in mind. As the Pueblo travel in their homeland, according to Leslie Marmon Silko, they recall the stories that belong to each mesa and arroyo, and "thus the continuity and accuracy of the oral narratives are reinforced by the landscape -- and the Pueblo interpretation of that landscape is maintained." Stories of place help us recognize that we belong to the earth, blood and brain and bone, and that we are kin to other creatures. Life has never been easy, yet in every continent we find tales of a primordial garden, an era of harmony and bounty. In A God Within, René Dubos suggests that these old tales might be recollections " of a very distant past when
certain groups of people had achieved biological fitness to their environment." Whether or not our ancestors ever lived in ecological balance, if we aspire to do so in the future, we must nourish the affectionate, imaginative bond between person and place. Mention of past and future brings us to the seventh power of stories, which is to help us dwell in time. I am thinking here not so much of the mechanical time parceled out by clocks as of historical and psychological time. History is public, a tale of influences and events that have shaped the present; the mind's time is private, a flow of memory and anticipation that continues, in eddies and rapids, for as long as we are conscious. Narrative orients us in both kinds of time, private and public, by linking before and after within the lives of characters and communities, by showing action leading on to action, moment to moment, beginning to middle to end. Once again we come upon the tacit morality of stories, for moral judgment relies, as narrative does, on a belief in cause and effect. Stories teach us that every gesture, every act, every choice we make sends ripples of influence into the future. Thus we hear that the caribou will only keep giving themselves to the hunter if the hunter kills them humbly and respectfully. We hear that all our deeds are recorded in some heavenly book, in the grain of the universe, in the mind of God, and that everything we sow we shall reap. Stories gather experience into shapes we can hold and pass on through time, much the way DNA molecules in our cells record genetic discoveries and pass them on. Until the invention of writing, the discoveries of the tribe were preserved and transmitted by storytellers, above all by elders. "Under hunter-gatherer conditions," Jared Diamond observes, "the knowledge possessed by even one person over the age of 70 could spell the difference between survival and starvation for a whole clan." Aware of time passing, however, we mourn things passing away, and we often fear the shape of things to come. Hence our need for the eighth power of stories, which is to help us deal with suffering, loss, and death. From the Psalms to the Sunday comics, many tales comfort the fearful and the grieving; they show the weak triumphing over the strong, love winning out over hatred, laughter defying misery. It is easy to dismiss this hopefulness as escapism, but as Italo Calvino reminds us, "For a prisoner, to escape has always been a good thing, and an individual escape can be a first necessary step toward a collective escape." Those who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, tell stories as a way of fending off despair. Thus Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells of surviving the Soviet gulag; Toni Morrison recounts the anguish of plantation life; Black Elk tells about the slaughter of the buffalo, the loss of his Lakota homeland .Those of us who have not lived through horrors must still face losing all that we love, including our own lives. Stories reek of our obsession with mortality. As the most enchanting first line of a tale is "once upon a time," so the most comforting last line is "and they lived happily ever after." This fairy tale formula expresses a deep longing not only for happiness, but also for ever-afterness, for an assurance that life as well as happiness will endure, that it will survive all challenges, perhaps even the grave. We feel the force of that longing, whether or not we believe that it can ever be fulfilled. The ninth item on my list is really a summation of all that I have said thus far: Stories teach us how to be human. We are creatures of instinct, but not solely of instinct. More than any other animal, we must learn how to behave. In this perennial effort, as Ursula Le Guin says, "Story is our nearest and dearest way of understanding our lives and finding our way onward." Skill is knowing how to do something; wisdom is knowing when and why to do it, or to refrain from doing it. While stories may display skill aplenty, in technique or character or plot, what the best of them offer is wisdom. They hold a living reservoir of human possibilities, telling us what has worked before, what has failed, where meaning and purpose and joy might be found. At the heart of many tales is a test, a riddle, a problem to solve; and that, surely, is the condition of our lives, both in detail -- as we decide how to act in the present moment -- and in general, as we seek to understand what it all means. Like so many characters, we are lost in a dark wood, a labyrinth, a swamp, and we need a trail of stories to show us the way back to our true home. Our ultimate home is the Creation, and anyone who pretends to comprehend this vast and intricate abode is either a lunatic or a liar. In spite of all that we have learned through millennia of inquiry, we still dwell in mystery. Why there is a universe, why we are here, why there is life or consciousness at all, where if anywhere the whole show is headed -- these are questions for which we have no final answers. Not even the wisest of tales can tell us. The wisest, in fact, acknowledge the wonder and mystery of Creation -- and that is the tenth power of stories. In the beginning, we say, at the end of time, we say, but we are only guessing. "I think one should work into a story the idea of not being sure of all things," Borges advised, "because that's the way reality is." The magic and romance, the
devils and divinities we imagine, are pale tokens of the forces at play around us. The elegant, infinite details of the world's unfolding, the sheer existence of hand or tree or star, are more marvelous than anything we can say about them. A number of modern physicists have suggested that the more we learn about the universe, the more it seems like an immense, sustained, infinitely subtle flow of consciousness -- the more it seems, in fact, like a grand story, lavishly imagined and set moving. In scriptures we speak of God's thoughts as if we could read them; but we read only by the dim light of a tricky brain on a young planet near a middling star. Nonetheless, we need these cosmic narratives, however imperfect they may be, however filled with guesswork. So long as they remain open to new vision, so long as they are filled with awe, they give us hope of finding meaning within the great mystery. Should Literature Be Considered Useful? By Adam Kirschm, September 2, 2014 The New York Times To reduce literature to its usefulness is to miss the sheer pleasure of word and sound that makes it literature in the first place. In his essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke invites the reader to consider literature in the light of the proverb. Proverbs, he writes, “name typical, recurrent situations,” in ways that tell us “what to expect, what to look out for”: They are verbal condensations of experience, formulas of practical wisdom. And with certain kinds of literary works, viewing them as a proverb or strategy — as active, useful knowledge, designed to clarify the reader’s world — is eminently sensible. “A Doll’s House” is useful in one way, “Gulliver’s Travels” in another, “Othello” in yet another: These works tell us something we need to know about sexual oppression, social convention, jealousy. Yet it’s immediately obvious that this approach does not help us make sense of other kinds of literary works. People have been debating for centuries what exactly we are supposed to learn from “Hamlet,” which presents us with a character whose equipment for living is highly defective. Lyric poetry, too, does not seem very proverb-like: What is the practical wisdom behind “Lycidas” or “Ode to a Nightingale”? More important, however, is that even when a literary work has an obvious message, the articulation of that message is far in excess of its meaning. You could say that “Othello” is a long way of saying, “Be careful whom you trust,” but if that were so, why did Shakespeare bother to write, “Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars. . . . Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump”? To reduce literature to its usefulness is to miss the verbal texture, the excess, the sheer pleasure of word and sound, that make it literature in the first place. The idea of literature as equipment for living seems puritanically utilitarian — as if you were to listen to a symphony in order to sharpen your hearing, or look at a painting to improve your vision. Yet there is a persistent impulse in our culture to offer such pragmatic excuses for art, as if only something that helped us gain an advantage in the struggle for life were worthy of respect. Nearly a century ago, the critic I. A. Richards advanced a psychological argument that reading poetry improved the responsiveness and organization of the brain. Today, the same argument is often made in Darwinian terms. There is a whole school of Darwinian aesthetics that explains art as a useful adaptation, which historically must have helped those who made it or those who enjoyed it to improve their chances at reproduction. To Martin Heidegger, however, this way of looking at art would appear exactly backward. Equipment, tools, “gear,” are for Heidegger what we don’t notice or pay attention to so long as it is working. A hammer in good condition is like an extension of the person using it, a way for him to work his will. It is only when the tool breaks that it escapes the banality of usefulness and takes on determinate existence as a piece of wood and a piece of metal, with its own weight, hardness and luster. Literature, in this sense, is a tool that is always broken. A functional linguistic tool is like a stop sign, which we barely even read, much less think about; we simply see it and put our foot on the brake. A poem stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from a stop sign, in that it demands attention for itself, its specific verbal weight and nuance, rather than immediately directing us to take an action. Indeed, literature famously has the power to impede action altogether, to sever our relations with the real world in ways that can lead to harm — that is one of the messages of “Madame Bovary,” to use Burke’s example. The life that literature really equips us to live is not the one Wordsworth derided as devoted to “getting and spending,” but the second life of inwardness and imagination. For those who do not believe in
the reality of that second life, no amount of insisting on the usefulness of literature will justify it; for those who live it, no such insisting is necessary. Alaska school board removes 'The Great Gatsby,' other famous books from curriculum for 'controversial' content Bookstores are fielding requests for works removed from Mat-Su Borough School District classrooms. By David K. Li, NBC News, April 28, 2020 An Alaska school board removed five famous — but allegedly "controversial" — books from district classrooms, inadvertently renewing local interest in the excluded works. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison were all taken off an approved list of works that teachers in the Mat-Su Borough School District may use for instruction. The school board voted 5-2 on Wednesday to yank the works out of teachers' hands starting this fall. The removed books contain content that could potentially harm students, school board Vice President Jim Hart told NBC News on Tuesday.APRIL 29, 202002:47 "If I were to read these in a corporate environment, in an office environment, I would be dragged into EO," an equal opportunity complaint proceeding, Hart said. "The question is why this is acceptable in one environment and not another." "Caged Bird" was derided for "anti-white' messaging," "Gatsby" and "Things" are loaded with "sexual references," "Invisible Man" has bad language and "Catch-22" includes violence, according to the school district. Dianne K. Shibe, president of the Mat-Su Education Association teachers union, said parents and her members were stunned by the board action. Even though the school board had listed an agenda item to discuss "controversial book descriptions," Shibe said, no one believed those works were under serious threat. "Most of the community didn't respond, because these books had been used forever," Shibe told NBC News. "Now in retrospect, it's like, 'duh.' I could have seen this coming." Shibe said her union would push board members to reconsider their action. "This is not set in stone," she said. "The union is all about educating students, and this flies in the face of educating students." Mary Ann Cockle, owner of Fireside Books in Palmer, about a mile from district headquarters, said her store ran out of copies of the books within hours of the board's action. "People who had read the books years ago are buying them to read again and to give away," Cockle said Tuesday. "Our biggest outpouring of support are people buying the books and donating them or leaving them to us to distribute for free." A new shipment of "Caged" and "Invisible Man" arrived at Fireside on Tuesday, and Cockle expects them all to be gone by Wednesday. "I don't think they realized they were treading on censorship, and people are completely opposed to censorship," she said.
Hart insisted that the books are not "banned" and said they all remain in district libraries.
Even though students are still free to read the books on their own, Hart said, it would be unfair to ask teachers to
have to navigate their pupils through the complicated subject matter.
"These are teachers, not counselors," Hart said.
Several books that were not removed from classrooms also came under harsh scrutiny.
"The Jungle" and "A Christmas Carol" could be interpreted as advocating for socialism, while "A Street in
Bronzeville" was called into question for showing too much "realism" in describing racism against African
Americans, according to a district memo.
"Common Reasons for Banning Books"
Each book that is banned or censored is done so for the content within the pages. There are a few commonreasons that books have been banned or censored in schools, libraries, and book stores. These include: Racial Issues: About and/or encouraging racism towards one or more group of people. Encouragement of "Damaging" Lifestyles: Content of book encourages lifestyle choices that are not of the norm or could be considered dangerous or damaging. This could include drug use, co-habitation without marriage, or homosexuality. Blasphemous Dialog: The author of the book uses words such as "God" or "Jesus" as profanity. This could also include any use of profanity or swear words within the text that any reader might find offensive. Sexual Situations or Dialog: Many books with content that include sexual situations or dialog are banned or censored. Violence or Negativity: Books with content that include violence are often banned or censored. Some books have also been deemed too negative or depressing and have been banned or censored as well. Presence of Witchcraft: Books that include magic or witchcraft themes. A common example of these types of books are J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series. Religious Affiliations (unpopular religions): Books have been banned or censored due to an unpopular religious views or opinions in the content of the book. This is most commonly related to satanic or witchcraft themes found in the book. Although, many books have also been banned or censored for any religious views in general that might not coincide with the public view. Political Bias: Most Commonly occurs when books support or examine extreme political parties/philosophies such as: fascism, communism, anarchism, etc. Age Inappropriate: These books have been banned or censored due to their content and the age level at which they are aimed. In some cases children's books are viewed to have "inappropriate" themes for the age level at which they are written for. Many books have been banned or censored in one or more of these categories due to a misjudgment or misunderstanding about the books contents and message. Although a book may have been banned or labeled a certain way, it is important that the reader makes his/her own judgements on the book. Many books that have been banned or censored later were dropped from banned books lists and were no longer considered controversial. For this reason, banned books week occurs yearly to give readers a chance to revisit past or recently banned books to encourage a fresh look into the controversies the books faced. Source: "Common Reasons for Banning Books," Fort Lewis College, John F. Reed Library. Banned Books, Censorship & Free Speech. November 15, 2013. Web. March 19, 2014.
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