Tuesday Tunes
I love how many different themes I can hear in this piece that I’ve heard many times before.
Tuesday Tunes
I sometimes think that high school students are not mature enough to understand literature. I know I was not.
The books that were assigned were mostly boring. They were almost impossible to read. I slogged through but never “enjoyed” reading them.
The closest I got was when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. The play was in our textbooks. Which made it easy, but I was and am lazy. Lugging a massive textbook to class when I could carry a thin, light book seemed stupid.
So that’s what I did; I purchased a copy from the local bookstore and used that instead.
This was not an issue until I was asked to read a part in class. Which I did. When I got to the end of my passage, nobody spoke the next lines. They were all thumbing through their textbooks trying to figure out where the F that language and those visuals came from.
My teacher, Mrs. Trout(?) was just nodding along. She knew the real words of Bill. The teacher from next door came and closed our classroom door because her class was listening to us instead of her.
What had happened was that I was reading the unabridged version. The textbook had stripped out all the “juicy” parts.
By the end of the next week, everybody in class had the pocket version and was much more invested in the writings of Bill. Our teacher was thrilled.
The Scarlet Letter, Oh my goodness, I still despise that thing. The Fountainhead, I’m glad I wasn’t forced to read that. And one of my most hated assignments? The Red Badge of Courage.
One of my ESL students picked The Red Badge of Courage. I walked into it knowing I would have to slog through.
Then it turned into something wonderful. The language is visceral. The author’s use of anthropomorphic language brings emotion to the story.
And listening to Henry talk about the glory of war. The battles he would fight. The honors he would reap. His friend and he, looking at the officers with disdain while grasping at every rumor of battle.
But Henry did not earn honors in his first battle. He exposed himself. He stripped the glory from his uniform and dashed it in the mud.
He had to live with his actions.
The next time the bugles sounded, he stood and fought. He fought not as a man or a hero. He fought as a machine. Standing because he could not stomach another failure of his soul and honor.
He earned his honor. And he learned of the horrors of battle.