Reading these texts, I felt the weight of life's synchronicity. Because I am taking DW’s World Religions Class right now, we have been grappling with the same concepts that Milton, Ovid, and many more have written about for ages. We have spent many classes contemplating, and we have questioned human life, form, and consciousness. Taking AP Lit at the same time as the World Religions Class has forced me to grow in ways I did not think school could make me grow. I have learned to make connections between texts and real life experiences, and I have forced myself to live in a space of uncertainty. In the texts were were assigned to read over break, I found connections of many forms.
To aid my process, I began by flipping back through the pages of my common place book and identifying key concepts that we have talked about this year. This allowed my reading process to be slightly more free because I could read and commonplace each text, and then have a board of concepts to come back to and draw connections as a second step. Overall, the theme that I think connects all of these pieces - and perhaps all art in general - is people trying to reconcile being alive. Our summer set of readings was mainly focused on the systems that control us and how we interact with them, but the thanksgiving set was about origin. It addresses the question of where we came from, and what good and evil are. Genesis and Paradise Lost felt the most similar to me. Paradise Lost felt like reading the unabridged version of Exodus that I had never seen before. Being someone with Baptists grandparents, I am relatively familiar with most biblical stories, so it was interesting to reread Genesis for school, but also, I found myself mapping the bible onto every single one of the texts. In terms of rhetoric, I found this reading to be extraordinarily beautiful. I particularly enjoyed Ovid's Metamorphoses. This is because there were moments that struck me without explanation. For example, “It is when heat and moisture join as one that life is generated; all living forms originate from these sources; for even though they are at odds by nature, the two of them create all living things, and their discordant harmony is suited to foster varied offspring in abundance.” ( lines 595-601) Not only is Ovid's language colorful and lively, it has a way of sparking a fire in the reader. Something inside of me feels comforted when I read the words “all living things.” The certainty of the language satisfies my need for connection to the world. At the same time, it makes me feel the need to live a life with eyes wide open. Ovid’s Metamorphoses felt more inspiring than the other texts. Perhaps it is because I am less familiar with it than the more biblical stories, but reading Metamorphoses, I felt what Stephen Greenblatt describes.“ I felt [....] a growing sense of excitement: not so much a governing ideas as a feeling of something brewing.” In contrast, the other stories made me feel uncomfortable. I found myself comfortably submitting to Ovid, but I resisted many of the others texts because they felt too authoritative. Moving forward, I am most interested to see how my perception of these text changes.
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What the heck are we doing? And Who are we? Marco? Polo. November 13th Throughout the year, I feel I have been thinking mostly about autonomy. I have speculated about what A.O. Scott and Greenblatt think about autonomy, and I have asked many questions. What are the limitations in regards to power and autonomy when it comes to the Alien, Authority, and Self who Greenblatt writes about? Is our biggest fear the loss of self? Or, is our biggest fear the loss of control? Is loss of self the same thing as the loss of control? Is our only power, the ability to control how we respond to the circumstances we are placed in? Is art a response to the human feelings associated with autonomy? Greenblatt challenges us to look directly at autonomy, while A.O. Scott requires an understanding of it.
We began the year looking at A.O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism. As a class, we expanded our thinking and defined words that seem undefinable. Our conclusions may have seemed broad, like our definition of art “something that moves someone,” but they were supported by textual evidence and thoroughly thought through. We found criticism to be “the subjective determination of what we know, what we feel, and what we’re talking about in response to something.” Defining these words was a crucial part of the process we took to understanding Scott’s message. Additionally, we related what we learned back to our own aesthetic experiences, and we debated why aesthetics are valuable. Inevitably, we asked ourselves, “Do we really get to decide our likes and dislikes? Or, are we products of a cultural context?” This lead to a discussion of autonomy, which ultimately, connected us to Greenblatt. Greenblatt is tricky, to say the least. As a writer, he constantly tickles our brains. He loves to talk about things which we think we understand, and then, he rewrites their story. For example, the word submission. Submission is to place oneself under the control of something. It is a seemingly gentle act, but Greenblatt tells us that the force of submission is the beginning of self fashioning. He talks about fashioning as something that is for people who are, at a minimum, middle class. These people all must submit to some sort of authority. His idea of submission is uncomfortable because he leads us to see the only true autonomy we have, and this contrasts our notion of gentle submission. He speaks of the force of submission. No matter what we choose in life, we are submitting to a force. By simply reading Greenblatt, we are in some way, submitting to him. All we can control in life is what we choose to interact with, and how we respond to the situation connected to what surrounds us. In AP Lit, we are learning to respond to Geertz, who said “There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.” Greenblatt asks us to question the systems which control us, and he leads us to feel there is no such thing as autonomous agency. A.O Scott, invites us to question what we consider as beautiful, so maybe we will be more cognizant humans. Both Greenblatt and Scott want us to understand that even though “There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture,” life can still be fulfilling. We have to choose to live with eyes wide open. I look forward to our future readings and the metamorphosis of our class that will result from reading works that focus on consciousness. After completing the third reading, “Renaissance Self - Fashioning,” I can start to picture more clearly what AP Lit will be like. I imagine we will spend a lot of time reading and discussing texts that contain many debatable topics. These topics will surround broad ideas like identity, culture, connection, and human nature. I assume that these will be heated conversations because they will surround age old unanswered questions. I am both excited and curious about the challenges ahead. In my Common Place Book, I attempted to explore some of the ideas laid out by Greenblatt. The first thing that struck me was the the quote from Geertz which said, “There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.” My gut reaction was to argue with this statement because of how definite it is, but in reality, I somewhat agree. If not read quite literally, it is true that no matter what, we cannot escape cultures influence on our being. Even if we choose to defy cultural norms, we are choosing to do so because of culture and therefore it is influencing us. But if you were to decipher the quote in a more literal way, would you argue that we are all just a piece of a tapestry under the illusion that we have some sort of freedom? At what point can we consider ourselves free from culture and independent? I believe this is where art comes into effect. Art plays the role of making us feel alive. Greenblat says, “Among artists is the will to be the culture’s voice - to create the abstract and brief chronicles of the time - in a common place, but the same may extend beyond art.” I believe that art does just this. It records the power shift within cultures. As art has become more accessible, its value is determined by many, but what is valuable becomes more difficult to determine. This is why I am lead to believe that in this day in age, we tie our likes and dislikes so closely to our identity. As Greenblatt says, it is a sort of self - fashioning, and this self - fashioning is almost like an escapism. If we can choose what we like in an oversaturated world, we begin to believe we can create our own identity. Greenblatt says this when he says, “We need such a drama because our own lives are saturated with experience artfully shaped.” He later goes on to explain that we look for art that can “both reward intense, individual attention and promise access to larger cultural patterns.” This is fascinating because even when we search for a sense of self or independence in art, it is also still in our nature to seek connection and understanding. This makes me wonder if people really want to feel like an individual or if they just want to feel a sense of control. The story within the epilogue touched on this human yearning for control. After hearing the story of the man sitting next to him, Greenblatt was unable to help the man with even a simple favor because he felt it went against his identity. He said, “ To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable.” This leads me to question if Greenblatt simply was insecure in his own being. By helping this man and saying words he would not otherwise have picked, he for a moment would have to give up the idea that he has complete control of his identity. He would have to play a character which he did not develop, and that is scary to him because it makes him realize that he is simply a character in a bigger picture. He affirms these thoughts with his concluding words. “I want to bear witness at the close to my overwhelming need to sustain the illusion that I am the principal maker of my own identity.” It is at this point, Greenblatt realizes complete self fashioning does not exist. At this point in my summer, I am about a quarter through my second reading. I am hoping that I will be able to pick up my pace since I finished taking the ACT this week! Thus far, I have found “A More Beautiful Question” more interesting than “Better Living Through Criticism.” I also think that “A More Beautiful Question” is easier to read. I have browsed through a few Brain Pickings, and I am excited to work on them in the near future because I will have much more time to devote to working through them thoughtfully. Based on what I have read so far, I am interested to see how this class will function. I am hopeful that it will improve my question asking, perspective development, and close reading skills. For the purpose of this blog post, I would like to focus mainly on what I have read so far from “A More Beautiful Question.” Below you can read further explorations of thoughts that I began developing first in my Common Place Book.
The first quotation I wrote down in my common place book from this reading was “What makes it funny, though, is the comedian’s brutally candid description of how frustrating it can be to be on the receiving end of kids questions. The adult, in the case, becomes exasperated, insecure, aware of his own ignorance, and reminded of his insignificance - all because of that word why.” The description of the comedians bid got me hooked on this reading. As a person who does a lot of babysitting, tutors children, and started a date night summer camp, I am well acquainted with this feeling. In fact, I almost found it validating to read the words “the adult, in this case, becomes exasperated, insecure, aware of his own ignorance, and reminded of his insignificance.” And though I found it relatable from an adult perspective, I also found it funny from a question asker perspective. I have attended Galloway since kindergarten, and I think it is fair to say that they are much more welcoming to question askers than the rest of the world is. And because I have been encouraged to ask questions, dig deep, and go off scripts throughout my entire education, there have been times I have felt like a foreigner when I journey outside the Galloway bubble. The intrinsic curiosity that is so encouraged with in our school walls is considered disrespectful in many communities. The place I have ventured and found people who find questioning most disrespectful is my Grandparents baptist church. I feel this is interesting to include because much of America and education was built by religious people, and through there is suppose to be a separation of church and state today, in rural towns where the majority of people share beliefs, there is no one to enforce this separation. I feel this is an additional factor in how schools, jobs, and the world around us is changing. As stated in the reading “teachers are very susceptible to external influences; their understanding of the goal of teaching directly affects how they respond when children spontaneously investigate.” What is going on in where schools are is obviously going to affect the students experience and the teachers methods. I found it fascinating that people have found “schools in many industrialized nations were not, for the most part, designed to produce innovative thinkers or questioners- their primary purpose was to produce workers.” This makes a lot of logical since, and I think that this gives us great insight into the financial divide which exists in our country. It seems that those who with more money who could afford to question things or those who were brave enough to question things became the people who are in control. This would be aligned directly with what is happening now. I, coming from a place of privilege, have gone to a school that has allowed me to ask questions and seek opportunities and change. I feel that for the most part, I can do or be what I want to be. On the other hand, people I know who have not had the chance to learn in such an open minded community do not feel the same way. A part of the reading which I wish I understood more is the quote “Interestingly, the more preschool models itself after regular school - the more it becomes a venue for loading kids up with information and feeding them answers to questions they have not yet asked - the more it seems to squelch their natural curiosity.” I understand that children will be more likely to enjoy learning information if they are the ones raising the questions, but I think there is a delicate balance to strike. How much structure is too much? How much information is too much? On one hand, children will be able to ask more complex and skillful questions if they have a certain layer of common background knowledge. On the other hand, how do you teach that information and how do you decide what common background knowledge is most meaningful or useful? I think that the reading further explores that. The three main questions focused on by Meier start the conversation of what makes learning meaningful and impactful. First, Is a test - driven education the most likely path for producing an inventive and feisty citizenry? I personally do not feel it is, but I think is varies for different people. Some people are highly driven by test taking, scores, and competition, and I think there is a place for that personality in today's industry, but I also think people who are not test oriented should be penalized for the way they process. This is what makes public education so difficult. In theory, we want all people to have equal education, so we use testing to measure education, but we also know as a society that tests cannot truly measure intelligence. The second question is “what would it look like and sound like in the average classroom if we wanted to maek “being wrong” less dangerous?” I really like this question, and I enjoyed the exploration of it that came further in the writing. I think that it is incredibly disturbing how much background affects education. This is a problem that is far bigger than the classroom and this question should be addressed in all parts of life. The third question was “ What might the potential for humans be if we really encouraged that spirit of questioning in children instead of closing it down?” Galloway is not a utopian society of learning by any means, but I think it does an excellent job of encouraging the questioning spirit. I think that if all schools functioned more like this then we would probably have more empathetic, exploratory, and fascinating people in the world. The reading that I have done up to this point has been incredibly thought provoking. The writing is not as difficult to read as I expected, but the pages are filled with interesting comparisons and arguments. Because there are so many ideas within the writing that I want to explore, there are places I wish ideas could be expanded on further. In all honesty I think that I enjoyed the introduction of chapter two, “The Eye of the Beholder,” from Better Living Through Criticism, more than the majority of the chapter. Something that I found particularly interesting are the ideas of biologist E. O. Wilson. He said, “Rich and seemingly boundless as the creative arts seem to be, each is filtered through the narrow biological channels of human cognition.” Being a person who is especially dedicated to the arts, I felt slightly shocked that someone would boil them down to “biological channels,” but I was also fascinated. My interest was truly sparked as he went on to say, “ the creative arts became possible as an evolutionary advance when humans developed the capacity for abstract thought.” As a person who is fascinated with science, philosophy, and religion, this line drew me in. I was expecting a “Sapiens” style argument to form, but instead the lines which followed lead me further down a rabbit whole of thoughts. The paragraph goes on to say “ we became conscious of our enormous power and also our limitations.” This quote immediately made me think of two things which go hand and hand - the story of Adam and Eve and the saying “ignorance is bliss.” Along the same biblical story lines, the paragraph ends by referring to the biblical story of creation. It argues we are “Not unlike the original critic in Genesis, who cast his eye over what he had made and decided it was good.” The choice to end the introduction with the comparison of human creation and critique to God's creation and judgement fascinated me, so I would like to elaborate on my Common Book Pages related to this choice. For a few pages I brain dumped my thoughts surrounding quotes from the introduction. Additionally, I did a brain dump from two quotes that are in the first few pages of “The Eye of the Beholder” chapter. The first quote I chose was “There is axiomatically, no disputing taste, and also no accounting for it. And yet, the conventional wisdom applied to this fundamental human attribute [...] amounts to a heap of contradictions.” The second quote I chose was “Do you know, somehow, in advance? Do you like what you like because of who you are? Or is it the sum of your likes and dislikes that makes you who you are?” The questions these quotes created for me were: How do we know if we actually like something? Does culture decide for us? Does this mean that the creator of the universe is the only one who can be an authentic critic? Or was the story of the creator just made by a well known critic? Can we ever rightfully say our opinion is our own? To show my thought development around these questions, I created an additional page filled with timeless questions. Where did people come from? Does perspective shape our understanding of everything? Are we all different or the same? I used the picture of Adam and Eve in the garden taking the apple from the snake because it reminded me of the introduction. Adam and Eve gained the wisdom of God, and this was both beautiful and the worst mistake in history. Then I chose a political cartoon from a case arguing evolution should not be taught in schools. I thought this was interesting because the introduction uses both science and religious stories to make a point (something that I think is somewhat uncommon). Then I used a picture showing the evolution of man because I wondered who the first person to evolve to have abstract thought was. On the Next Page, in the center there is the cover page of the book ZOOM. This is a children's book that reflects how different the world can look depending on your perspective. Surrounding the title I divided the page into different sections oriented around a small star. I did a brain dump about perspective around this because I think this is a complex subject which is tightly bonded with critique. Based on the reading, I am excited for this class. I hope that we continue to read pieces like this and have interesting conversations about them. I am looking forward to hearing a teacher perspective about these ideas and also other student perspectives. I can already tell this class is going to make me a deeper thinker. (You can see all of these pages in order below) |
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AuthorElizabeth Finley is a 12th grade AP Lit student. She enjoys theater, dance, singing, playing the piano, and watching movies. If she could only do three things before she died, she would go on a Safari, sky dive, and visit her grandparents at church and help them work in daycare. Archives
December 2019
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