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Comments
Yes, but that is the problem with theories. You are working with limited information, so you just don't know who's doing what.
I resent that
Theories are all well and good, it's just that when you try to guess an important thing from the next book when you have very little information to run with, you're not going to convince me.
Otherwise, theories are fun. I'm part of a Stormlight Archives theory community, and it's amazing how much they're able to theorize. They have me half-convinced that Sanderson is going to kill off Dalinar.
dammit brandon, why do you do this to me
Other theories I've heard that I like:
- Gavilar's last words were death-babbles, not a message to Dalinar.
- That the glow on Shardblades relates to the Knights Radiant's ethereal glowing.
- The Shardblade that the Parshendi Shardbearer carries is Gavilar's old Shardblade.
- That Teravangian is one of the lost Heralds.
- Odium has been messing with Szeth's mind since he was made Truthless, or possibly before.
How? They left the banquet when Szeth went to kill Gavilar.
I prefer the theory that Odium is messing with everyone's heads. Remember that thrill of battle they keep mentioning?
I do not know how yet. However, there has been no mention of what happened to Gavilar's Shardblade yet- and that is a significant event.
The quotes provided do make me think that this is plausible.
Odium represents the concept of hatred. Hatred and disgust.
I do think that the Thrill has something to do with Odium, but Szeth has repeatedly mentioned how he is coming to hate the people he is sent to kill- hate them for involving others, hate them for not being strong enough to kill them.
That is, I think that Odium is taking a personal interest in Szeth.
Gotta love the subtle foreshadowing there, really.
Yeah, I can't really say it isn't true; I'm just wondering about logistics.
Very likely, given that Odium really doesn't want Szeth to see his next target and go "what a nice guy. Maybe it would be more productive if I joined up with him."
It could be as simple as one Parshendi wandering up and taking it, or it could be as complicated as an Alethi working with the Parshendi. I don't know.
I think Odium is relying on Szeth's honour to prevail, here.
See, thing is, if Szeth isn't actually a Knight Radiant, then Szeth doesn't need to worry about being dishonorable (as he is) breaking his Honorpact.
So, okay. Cracked recently published an article on the various ways that high school makes people dislike reading.
What do you guys think?
I think that has less to do with high school and more to do with literary canon in general. And it's true facts; many people essentially end up resenting literary canon because of the attitude surrounding it and the narrow pool of reference from which books are accepted into it. When reading fiction for enjoyment is held against an academic standard, it's easy to lose interest in talking to others about books and therefore lose a frame of reference for future reading. What was once social is now solitary.
Compare and contrast this state of affairs with cinema. Many of the greatest critical darlings ever are also crowd-pleasers, so there's a much narrower set of films that can be counted as a "guilty pleasure". Films like Godzilla, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Inception are counted as classics, modern or otherwise, and these are all pretty much fantasy in one way or another. There's also a host of great films that aren't fantastical at all, but they aren't exactly distinguished from their more conceptually-imaginative counterparts -- they're just one of many legitimate methods of expression.
For that matter, the same can be said of video games. While some are undoubtedly more intelligent and deeper-thinking than others, the method of delivery (the invitation to master a system of rules in order to achieve success) ensures that every game is some kind of abstraction, with different methods of aesthetic delivery (fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror) being commentary on said abstraction rather than enforcing some kind of barrier between "genre" and "literature".
Basically, literary canon is far behind the times and too damn enamoured with its own brilliance to understand the damage it's doing to the business of writing and publishing books. Many of these classics are legitimately good or great books, but their position ensures a degree of academic elitism you just cannot find in other mediums.
Literary canon is responsible for choosing the books, but the problem described within the article, and it's one I've been noticing myself, is very much the fault of high schools.
See, literary canon is the group responsible for choosing which books are the 'classics'. They're responsible for shit like not recognizing that Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the like are great examples of the hero's journey and whatnot.
However, high school is the one that actively makes high school students read these books. This is important, because it is not so much the books defined as literary canon that turns people off- it is the fact that they are forced to read them for school.
Knowing, in the abstract, that many people consider Shakespeare to be a writer everyone should read, is very different from having to sit in class and read through multiple plays of his when you're not interested in that.
I pretty much agree with the article and Nova, though. High schools don't exactly do a whole lot to foster a love of reading. I was pretty lucky, in that most of the books I was assigned I liked, but if everything I got was The Grapes of Wrath or A Seperate Peace, shit would be bad, yo.
The fact that literary canon exists isn't the problem as much as the way that high school try to kill the magic as much as possible.
I definitely agree, but it is not so easy for schools.
Well, it is when they are able to get DVD's of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and the like, but restricting yourself to the few items which are available on DVD is not so great for high schools.
And even when it is, you are still missing out on a lot, as you are not actually seeing it as a play.
I disagree with four, or at the very least, it feels like the archetypical "Books suck, man" complaint, but by and at large, I agree with the rest of the article, although I feel that 2 makes somewhat erroneous assumptions about what depth entails in a literary work.
^I feel that some plays work as movies. Then again, I feel that the big issue with how Literature is taught in classes it's that it's taught exclusively as text rather while visual forms are used as aids (Read: So that the curriculums doesn't get retarded by the students' inability to be able to finish Hamlet while keeping up with their other subjects, for example)
I thought that that complaint was saying that a lot of high school kids don't like the books that are the required reading, and that you can't blame people for that because taste varies?
Yeah, but the issue is that not everything you're going to read or watch in a class regarding creative art is going to be good. You can't only learn from the masters. Sometimes, you need to learn from other people's mistakes too. (Of course, this is addressed later in 3, which I feel is really important. Being able to argue a proper standpoint regarding the book's quality with the teacher would help the student appreciate what it's doing right, regardless of his own taste. But I still feel that it's not really a point that needed to be in the article)
Plus, hystorically important works are still important. A film major who doesn't watch Birth of a Nation or an English major who hasn't read Beowulf isn't worth their salt, regardless of how aged both works are (Well, Beowulf much less so).
That is a point, but at the same time, it also feeds back into the point of the article; that, despite how good these books are, there are also a hell of a lot of teenagers who simply do not like these books. And, yes, you do need to read books like that in order to understand how to argue a proper standpoint, but at the same time, forcing teenagers to read books like that tends to turn them off reading.
It may sound strange to people who consume a lot of media, like... most of us in this thread, but requiring high schoolers to read books along the lines of Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Shakespeare's works, 1984 and Frankenstein hurts probably as much as it helps, because in requiring teenagers to read books that they really don't enjoy reading, you're turning them off reading.
Okay, I'm sounding a bit silly here, but, well, take a look at some of the statistics of people who read in America.
It's frankly fucking ridiculous.
The thing is that high schools would have no basis from which to impose what they do without a literary canon, or if literary canon was more diverse. One thing that bothers me about literary canon is the implication it makes, and the supposed importance of studying mostly or exclusively books from its ranks. An attitude that often comes with adherence to literary canon is that of "but your books don't X". The implication that only books within the canon so intelligently make the examinations they do, as though Shakespeare wasn't writing to please a crowd and doing it with crude and vulgar humour at times.
The most insightful books I've ever read were written by Terry Pratchett, who I don't think has much chance of entering literary canon any time soon. A shame, because while Hard Times is busy being hamfistedly binary, The Hogfather provides a more more intelligent discussion down exactly the same lines, to the extent of giving the audience more credit and using its fantasy setting to reset our cultural biases.
My whole problem with the literary canon is that it's elitist, and its intellectualism closes in on itself and twists inside-out, so that we have a situation where some books are considered automatically to be more relevant or insightful than others. And that drips down into high schools, especially given that there are a lot of English teachers out there who envisioned themselves working at a university or college level, feeling the tug to exceed the bounds of their station.
This is why I don't consider it a problem of high schools, but an issue of literary canon or the way it's handled within academic culture. It's an intellectual farce as far as my opinion is concerned. While a literary canon has its uses, the distance between legitimate literary appreciation and intellectual posturing has rendered it null to me. There's always the implication of that binary, which justifies this kind of artistic complacency. Besides, what good is a work of high art that doesn't speak to a wide audience? The culture that deifies literary canon helps ensure the books contained therein (which are by and large legitimately good and interesting reads) are resented more than they're appreciated. Which is pretty much the opposite of what it set out to do.
Literary academics should take some notes from other mediums, I think, because the current, straightjacketed style of literary canon is so out of date and so narrow that it's turning students and adults alike away from both books and methods of reading that could be very intellectually stimulating. I don't suggest that anyone adds something dumb like Dragonlance to a school curriculum, just that the standards of literary canon don't enforce an attitude of binary quality.
I think it's also worth mentioning how hectic life is in this day and age. I mean, I used to read a lot more back when I was in high school and felt like I had the time. But when I started college, all I could ever read was the class' material because there's an actual stake on it. When I got out, I started reading again. But once I started working, I simply was unable to read because I always felt like I was under some sort of time constraint.
I was with you until you said that. The thing is, while I agree with the notion that art is about communication, the matter is that it shouldn't always be about communicating things as clearly as possible or even speaking to a wide audience. I mean, would Un Chien Andalou be in any shape relevant to both the environment it was created in and film at large if it wasn't a cryptic surrealist piece? I'm thinking no. And even if it somehow was, the point is not just that but the fact that art should be, first and foremost, a venture of expression and craft for the artist. Obscurity and density might be annoying, but the fact is that they contribute to art much the same way that a straightforward book does.
I think the best way is to simply not aknowledge the notion of a literary canon in the first place. It's really that simple. It may sound a bit too contrarian, but the fact is, that there's no golden standard you can use to create a literary canon. And even then, the notion that the only way to understand art is by going for the highbrow stuff is simply ridiculous. Or even for the quality stuff. Sometimes you need to waddle through the shit to appreciate the smell of fresh air, man.
That is one point, yes. However, I believe the current quoted statistics are higher than can be accounted for, even considering that- with something like one in three high school students in America never reading a book after finishing high school, and two in five college students doing the same.
Yes, quoting statistics like this is a silly way of making my point, I will acknowledge that. However, I think that such a high number of people never reading anything after finishing school/college does speak of problems somewhere in the line.
That is:
My point is that while required reading does encourage some students to develop the skills that allow them to critically explore media, it also discourages some students from reading books, either recreationally or critically. Which is a damn shame, as reading is a good activity.
Most definetly. I just think it's silly to just assume one cause it's behind it all.
I don't think there's just one cause behind it all.
I do think that this is a major contributory factor, though- and, more relevant right now, what I'm saying is also what 4 in the article was saying.
Yes, but it's an immutable truth you simply can't accomodate a whole curriculum around, which is the biggest issue. It just seems like a pointless observation that seems to come from a place where the notion that the books that should be read should be the ones you like in a purely academical class.
You could let students decide which books they should read (Hey, it works here) but for the most part, that assumes that the student is willing to learn and not simply gain a credit.
I honestly don't know.
It is a problem- that much can't easily be denied. It is also true that it can't be fixed that easily.
However, just shrugging and saying "Okay, so we turn a whole bunch of kids off reading, whatever, it's still something that we have to teach" seems wrong to me. I mean, the purpose of having kids read these things is to teach them how to think about media critically- but if you are turning kids off of reading while attempting to teach them how to think critically about what they are reading, then that seems like a major issue that someone needs to fix.
I don't have any suggestions here. I'm just a teenager myself. However, I do know that simply accepting it will just allow the problem to fester.
Talking about it here probably won't help very much at all, but people bringing it up elsewhere may get people thinking about it, which is the first step in affecting change.
I think depends on the artist and their objective. In most cases, though, art has to be understood, even if that understanding is subjective or interpretative. But the example you outlined is, in any case, more of an exception than a standard example. Most widely-appreciated works of art, in any medium, are both accessible and interesting or entertaining while still expressing powerfully. And I think art being appreciated widely is important, because the arts are (at their best, at least) the pinnacle of the various human cultures. Some works of art will be obtuse, and rightly so, but I'd argue that it's more important to have a body of media that is both art and entertainment, and can be appreciated by wide and diverse audiences. The world would be poorer without its Un Chien Andalous, but the same could be said of Star Wars or, hell, the Die Hards and the Monty Pythons.
Of course, I don't want to enforce the notion that popular = good, but I think something that is both critically successful and popular among a wide audience has done some things very, very right in terms of reaching and affecting its audience on a fundamental level. And as much as more esoteric pieces are just as worthy of their praise, criticism and general attention, it will always be what is both popular and lasting that is the measure of an artistic culture. And nothing stays popular for decades or even centuries without being honest-to-goodness a really great thing on a variety of levels.
I do like how my school sidestepped some of those issues in the article, particularly point #3. If we didn't like a book, we were free to explain why in discussion or even in our essays as long as we actually related our arguments back to concrete things within the book. And we ended up getting some freedom of book choice a few times a year when the assignment was "Pick a book from this list, read it and write an essay about it"
Personally high school never made me hate reading, even after annoyances like Farewell to Arms or the A Separate Peace. It did however make me hate writing essays because a decent chunk of the time it was less about actually saying what I thought, and more guessing what the teacher wanted to hear.
The sad thing about that last point is that many teachers dislike their own opinions being fed back to them as well. But in our culture of exam hysteria, they're obliged to take the safest route towards getting you a pass, and they consider it mutually beneficial -- you pass the exam, and they don't risk their rating as a teacher taking a hit. Because how many "successful" students you turn out is a big deal in teaching bureaucracy, and teaching is both a hard and thankless job. So when your career is at stake because of narrow exam requirements and said requirements punish free thought and creativity, there's really just one road to take.
My school was pretty terrible with this. We were given a whole bunch of works that we had to work with- things like Shakespeare's The Tempest (in script form, not DVD form), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (At age sixteen!), The Kite Runner, and a bunch of poems by Robert Frost.
This ended up being a significant problem, because most of the class was completely uninterested in reading these books.
The one assignment we had that involved picking two texts of our own to compare to the DVD we were watching in class (it had something to do with the New South Wales Royal Police Inquisition, or whatever it's called, where there was that massive overhaul of the NSW police force because of widespread corruption), most of the class responded pretty positively, and quite a few people actually put a fair amount of effort into it.
Overall, though, most people hated the prescribed texts, which bled back into our exam results- the class average was a 32 on our eleventh-grade exam results, and I was the only person in the class to score above an 80.
This might have more to do with the fact that my school sucked, but the resentment within class built up, to the point that my English teacher eventually resorted to kicking three people out because they would not shut up about how much they hated Frost's poems.