Five Books You Must Read in This Lifetime

Reading Catcher in the Rye made me think about the books that I've read with the potential to change a life. That in mind, here are the five books that I believe everyone must read. I'd be interested to hear what others have to say.

  1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  2. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
  3. The Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda
  4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  5. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago
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AP Multiple Choice Practice Over Break

These are the planned times for AP Practice multiple choice over the break:

  • Monday, April 9th: 7:00 p.m.
  • Tuesday, April 10th: 11:00 a.m.
  • Wednesday, April 11th: Dead Poets Society @ Fireside, 6:30 p.m.
  • Thursday, April 12th: 7:00 p.m.
  • Sunday, April 15th: 1:00 p.m.

(Other than the DPS meeting, we will meet at school, in delightful Room 14) 

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From the Blogs…

Quick note. For those of you still working on blogs (and that means everyone who has missing assignments), I think I have finally found a really easy system to use.  If you are not using the WordPress blogs in the separate folder, you can write blog entries by clicking on "MyBlog Dashboard" on the menu on the left. You just need to be signed in.  The only catch? Make sure that you publish your entries!

That said, there are a few interesting posts for you to take a look at or even comment on:
  • peacefreak77 explores "books," focusing on Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Brave New World
  • tiaphaneee offers a poem by William Butler Yeats that influenced our friend Chinua Achebe
  • trailblazer89 takes a look at Alfred Tennyson's"Crossing the Bar"
  • Mr. Pogreba awkwardly compares Holden to Huck and Henry
 
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AP Essay Revision: The Letter, Jane Kenyon

For the revisions for "The Letter" by Jane Kenyon, once you upload them, I will try to correct as I receive them. If you go back to the screen where you uploaded the files, you will see a new folder called "Evaluated AP Essays." If your essay is there, it means I have looked at, and commented on it.

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Holden, HDT, and Huck

Even though it's probably quite likely that Holden Caufield would regard Henry David Thoreau as one of the world's great phonies, it's interesting to think about where Holden fits in the pantheon of great American non-conformists. In a literary tradition loaded with celebrations of defiant indiviudalism, Holden stands apart, as a uniquely critical voice challenging American conformist thinking.

What I love about Holden is his powerful, critical eye for hypocrisy, for "phoniness." He skewers people who deserve to be skewered, like the pretentious Luce and slovely Stradlater, which allows the reader to take part in criticism of people we wish that we didn't so often tolerate. In a sense, this criticism seems quite similar to the way that HDT destroyed his neighbors, not with violence, but with truth, or the way that Huck Finn's innocence helped him expose the frauds he encountered on his journey.
Holden becomes less lovable when his venom is directed at people who perhaps don't deserve it. His attacks on Ackley and the tourists from Seattle, while fun, are a little uncomfortable, because his criticism is not directed at people who have influence or power. Thoreau's enemies are nameless, Huck's are usually deluded or outright evil, but Holden's are sometimes regular, vulnerable people, not the typical targets of satire.
What redeeems Holden, though, is that his criticism is tempered by his innocence and desire to protect others. His love for Phoebe and Allie, his faith in Jane, and his desire to wipe away all the obscenity from all the walls in the world in order to protect children from losing their innocence is the source of his cynicism. He genuinely longs for the innocence of childhood and the honesty that youth allows. In that sense, he stands with HDT, who despite his unwavering assault on the lives of ordinary people, believed that we could transcend to build castles in the air, and Huck, who always believed in people, no matter how often that faith was challenged.
Yesterday, I told you that I always have a strong, if different reaction to Catcher in the Rye.  This time was no different: instead of feeling sorry for Holden or the loss of his idealism, I came away believing in it. Mr Antinoli was wrong; the only real fall for Holden would be giving in to a world that he doesn't believe in.
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Reactions to Holden

I really enjoyed the discussions today about Catcher in the Rye, though I found myself feeling a real sense of melancholy, as I often do whesalinger.jpgn I think too much about Holden. Everything about his character, from his dishonesty to his instinctive fear of adults suggests someone who has been deeply hurt, perhaps irredeemably so.

The real tragedy, though, is that the people who seem to want to help Holden may do more damage than anyone else. The efforts of doctors, his family, and his teachers to correct his behavior and force him to acquiesce to a life of acceptance has the potential to be tragic.

I think Phoebe saves him. 🙂

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