This a blog for Mr. James Cook's eleventh grade honors English class at Gloucester (MA) High School. Remember what Northrup Frye writes in _Fearful Symmetry_, "No one can begin to think straight unless [she or] he has a passionate desire to think and an intense joy in thinking."

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Choose another dystopian novel to read on your own

Hamlet’s Dilemma & Dystopian Fiction
"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of [these] world[s]"

(Books followed by an asterisk* are books that are in the GHS English department book room. Books followed by # are in the GHS Library. Books followed by ^ can be found at Sawyer Free Library.)

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood#^
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury#^
1984 by George Orwell*
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut*
We by Yevgeny Zemyatin (spelling of his name varies)^

{Addition #1: for the past few years I've wanted to add Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood to the list, because I wanted a reason to have to read it myself. It deals with a lot of contemporary issues: commercialization, organ transplants, genetic engineering, online sexuality, online games, etc. I steered clear because a friend said it might be too racy for high schoolers, but then today I found that Mrs. Saunders bought the book for the GHS library. So if it's good enough for her it's good enough for me.}

{Addition #2: Thinking about it a bit I also thought I might include Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road which is more post-apocalyptic than dystopian but is still relevant to question we will explore: when one discovers the world is corrupted (deeply flawed, "fallen," etc.) how should one respond? How should one act?}

The GHS library and the Sawyer Free Library have both of these books.

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