Monday, December 10, 2007

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1. I think that theme really helps to convey messages and an author's thoughts perhaps about life, society, love, friendship, or people and can be shown through experiences. The experiences can help make the character relate to modern/real world situations (not always though) in order to give the reader a link to the character and can help in learning life lessons. One piece of literature considered to be one of the greatest pieces of american literature is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and I think it has stood the test of time as a great piece of american literature of because of what it teaches. The experiences, however, such as travelling with a black slave and floating on a raft don't really relate to today's times but can still be experiences that everyone can relate to (importance of friendship with Jim).

However, perhaps the author does not intend for such a deeper meaning to be taken with the "themes" that critics, teachers, and fellow writers think the story is illustrating. I highly doubt that in many stories by some of the (considered) well-known writers think that their writing should only be read at the literal level of a basic story board (exposition-rising action-climax-falling action-resolution). However, with the normal story board, something HAS to be learned by one of the characters about something. Even in the most basic of children's stories, a lesson is learned, a moral is taught, and something is taken away from the story after it has been read.

2. I think the major thing that helps to maintain a story and stand the test of time, is what is being taught. The contents of the story (brick roads, spaceships, wagons) may not be relative to the time in which the story is being read, but the lesson, the theme, the message, the author's commentary of the world is taken away and spread to many people to hopefully make a difference in the world for the greater good. In world lit., we read a book called Brave New World and even though it was written in the early 1940s, the story speaks of a future not so far from the present time. A movie called Equilibrium that came out in 2000, I think is very related to Brave New World and it just goes to show the importance of lessons learned (specifically society in Brave New World). Another thing that recently has been helping to keep old books alive, is books being adapted into movies. Lately, many stories (LOTR, Harry Potter, Golden Compass, Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe) have been adapted to movies and have been renewed to the younger generation of people (although the stories won't exactly be flying off the shelves (because why read a book when you can see a movie?)).

3. I think that in order to make a difference, the cause must be widespread. A cause involving killing small animals won't exactly be the population of china in comparison to a cause for curing cancer. As far as personal impact on the world though, I think that indifference is the main thing that I would stand for and help to get rid of in this world. I don't exactly know how I would help to stop indifference, but I would try and go to schools and talk about it in order to help a generation grow because "the children are our future."

1 comment:

Mr. Miles said...

Actually, when movies are made of books, it does bring about greater interest in the books. When I taught middle school, my kids were all over the books that had been made into movies--Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Wuthering Heights.

I do think that author's intentionally put themes and ideas into their books. I have put them in mine, and as I get older, I see them more clearly in the writing. I used to think my English teachers were reading far more into books than the authors wanted them to . . . Now I have a different perspective.