Huck Finn

Here is a really interesting link, from Costco (believe it or not), debating if "classics" should be sanitized or not. This is timely, given the recent re-working of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

As a historian and educator, I feel that we shouldn't tamper with the original works. Looking at fiction provides us with insight into the societal and political problems of a decade. For example, Huck Finn gives a modern audience information about racial issues in America. Some are critical of Twain for the language used; however, it is only a product of the times that Twain lived. As another example (although not as controversial), Jude the Obscure (one of my all-time favourite novels) shows us about the treatment of strong women during the 19th century. When Hardy published the book, he was lambasted for depicting sexual relationships outside of marriage, and, indeed, his novel critiques the treatment of these unmarried couples too (poor Sue and Jude!). When we sanitize these historic novels, we deny our own shortcomings as human beings. We need to be honest with literature and with ourselves.

Othello

"O! now, for ever/Farewell the tranquil mind; farewell content!"

Oh how Othello is most favourite and treasured of all the Shakespearean tragedies! The sexiest of all the tragedies, and, indeed, the most tragic. What a warning against hubris you give to us! Beware of the darkness that lives in us all.

I read you first in high school, when I was an angst-ridden teen who hated any and all Shakespeare because it was "boring". I approached you with disdain, but by the end of the first act I was hooked. For the rest of those O.A.C. weeks, I was completely engrossed in this tale of human emotion, manipulation, betrayal, and vengeance. I wrote an astounding essay on the Moor, and it was empowering to see that I could actually understand and critique Shakespeare's language. Since then, I have read the play numerous times, watched the movies, and have, hopefully (ha ha), passed my love for this play down to my students when teaching.

The universal theme of jealousy is one that resonates throughout the play. As the audience, it touches us because many of us have been motivated out of jealousy, and have allowed jealousy to cause foolish decisions. How many of us have fought with our boyfriend or girlfriend based off a suspicion? How many of us have resented the success of others - feeling that somehow we also deserved this success?I know that I have felt this was on occasion, and, when speaking to my friends about this, they have admitted similarly,  my friends have too. Quite simply, humans are fickle like the chameleon, Iago, or the Moor, Othello.

Living in the North, I have struggled to make Shakespeare relevant to my students. When studying Othello, I do a couple of major things to help with this conundrum (aside from the usual activities). First, I have my students watch O , which is the modern adaptation of the play, as it puts the plot and themes in the applicable teen context. My students like the story of Odin and Desi, and are disgusted by Hugo. Watching the movie, triggers emotions in them. Second, I always use Spark Notes' No Fear Shakespeare: Othello to read. We read the play in modern English as a class, and, I supplement the content by doing notes and discussing Shakespearean language on occasion. I find that this version of the text is easy for my students to understand (especially since several of them are ESL), and, more importantly, they can giggle and laugh at the story.  Suddenly Shakespeare doesn't seem to unapproachable!  While we do work on other activities (essays, questions, crosswords, quick writes, film reviews of Othello, et cetera), I honestly believe that putting Shakespeare into the modern world for my students does wonders for them, and they get the play.

Needless to say, I look forward to teaching this play again next year. 

Readers, what's your favourite Shakespeare play and why?

Halfbreed

My students, in ELA A30, finished reading Halfbreed last week. Their feelings about said memoir were mixed. A few felt it was "boring" and lacked "action". These students believed that Campbell's history was uneventful, and not too different from what these students have experienced in their own lives. Yet, other students found it to be depressing and hauntingly moving. These were my kids that felt Campbell's grief at the passing of her mother, and whose hearts' bled when Campbell left Smoky behind. And, finally, some others were forced to realize the price that Aboriginal and Metis communities have paid in the name of colonization. These students were stunned and horrified to discover that Metis peoples hadn't always ha status, and that their lives had been just as full of discrimination and hardship as any other Aboriginal group.  Luckily, none of them, though, regretted having read Maria Campbell's autobiography, and I honestly believe that all of them took something away from this book.

In other words, this book is a classroom hit!

As an educator, a woman, and a Canadian, I highly recommend this book. It should be taught in schools, as it helps to put into perspective the hardships that marginalized populations faced. It also provides students with invaluable history about the Metis peoples, and, furthermore, a way of life that has since vanished. As a female, one can identify with the womanly issues that Campbell faces, such as maturation, pregnancy, and domestic violence. This book is a feminist call-to-arms, and demands that women abandon their blankets of shame just as all minorities should abandon their blankets of shame too. As a Canadian, I felt that this book was a wake-up call to me, and forced me to realize that Canada is not quite the just country that Canadians like to believe it is. Read this book!

5/5

Information:

Halfbreed Maria Campbell University of Nebraska Press (1982), Paperback, 157 pages

My Last Duchess

I just finished reading My Last Duchess. I found the book to be a bunch of easy-reading malarkey, which I suppose should have not surprised me given that said book was marketed as a "historical romance". The author, Daisy Goodwin, had borrowed much of her plot from A Portrait of a Lady, but, unlike James, Goodwin was unable to make the story truly compelling. I found the book to be weak and unremarkable.

The heroine of this novel, Cora Cash, is a self-absorbed American heiress, that seemingly escapes an overbearing mother in order to marry a ludicrous prig, the Duke of Wareham. As you might have guessed, I have little sympathy for Cash or the "conflicts" that she finds herself to be embroiled in. Cash's lack of personality and her boring marriage doesn't really leave me rooting for her when threats arise.

This book is the type of book you buy in an airport, read on the plane, and then never bother looking at again.

2/5 

Information:

My Last Duchess Daisy Goodwin Headline Review (2010), Paperback, 448 pages

Poetry Break

Yesterday, I exposed my students to this and powerful beautiful poem by Sharon Olds:

Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941

That winter, the dead could not be buried.
The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,
the coffin wood used for fuel.  So they were covered with something
and taken on a child's sled to the cemetery 
in the sub-zero air.  They lay on the soil,
some of them wrapped in dark cloth
bound with rope liek the tree's ball of roots 
when it waits to be planted; others wound in sheets,
their pale, gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons that will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming undone, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a cloak, a hand reaching out 
with no sign of peace, wanting to come back
even to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
even to the icy winter, and the siege.

It made them think of the influenza epidemic of 1919, and how stories related to that tragedy      are handed down in families. Of how bodies weren't placed in coffins, but merely

placed in a shroud. Bodies taken away to an island for an anonymous remembrance.

After reading said poem, one my students asked, "Alexis, do you like death like a lot?" I had 

to think for a moment (because I had made them read The Black Cat, Do Not Go Gentle, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, and The Cask of Amontillado)  to think about my

 response. I realized that I had picked poems/short stories that relate to death because death 

poetry and short stories usually have a lot of figurative language in them.  This makes it easy for students to analyze for literary devices (oh metaphor!). Furthermore, death is a universal theme, of which everyone can relate. Reading about death, quite frankly, makes one think about their own personal experiences, and usually forces students to think critically about the poem or 

short story at hand.

And there, my dears, is my story.