The class presentations thus far have been really enjoyable and eye opening for me. I love the large range of topics that people experienced while they read their selected books. I have been so focused on tweaking and figuring out my paper that I didn’t fully think out even my group members’ ideas until they presented them! As I heard other classmates’ presentations I couldn’t help but get lost in their theses as well as connecting it to my own paper. I think that the rest of my group has some really great working theses and hearing them verbalize their ideas made me really think of all the aspects of the book. I hadn’t really thought through the idea of killing being an art form and how there have been people in our world that have performed such acts. I think that focusing on journalism and ethics is really neat as well because it seems to be such a controversial idea within the world of journalism. I have to agree that James Patterson is brilliant. To be a solid bestseller is beyond my understanding and to analyze the ways in which he structures his books will be valuable knowledge.
Groups one and two have some really interesting ideas surrounding shunning, violence, abortion, and New Hampshire as a setting. I like that both Without a Map and Nineteen Minutes dealt with teenagers and the pressures of society on younger people. I think that it would be cool to look at shunning and health rights overtime, as well as cross-culturally, for those who are focuses their papers in relation to these ideas. This may highlight the argument that some of you are trying to make. Banishment, rejection, and shunning absolutely affect the human mind and I agree that it can be more damaging than some other forms of punishment. To shift gears a little, I can’t stop thinking about how Peter views death as a change in environment, not as an end to a life. He has trouble seeing how death in the video games he plays is not like death in reality. When should we be sympathetic as readers towards the victims of society, victims of bullying, victims of shunning, and victims of psychological problems? I think we can all agree that we are working with complex characters that lead unimaginable lives. When do we all feel for the characters, if we do?
What has struck me most from these presentations of the theme of the complex human being, which is every human. Through murder, suicide, killing, the psychological damage of shunning, killing as art, and school shootings I feel the characters in these works mirror reality. What is creepier is that people do kill as a form of art and two of these novels are set in New Hampshire. I love hearing about the reactions of those who are living in that proximity, and to see how it affects the community. Apparently Nineteen Minutes freaked out people who live near Sterling, New Hampshire, because it was so close to home. It’s always amazing to hear about what literature can provoke within people, whether it be fear, curiosity, and any given emotion. It’s really neat that the author of Without a Map is UNH faculty and published a book based on her experiences as a pregnant teen in a very conservative and conventional community during her youth.
I feel that we have articulated and thought about the emotional limits within the novels this week. Group three is focusing on a book, which works with high school pressures, social status, school shootings, sexuality, and more. I found it extremely catching that Paul, the troubled teen who shoots up the school, kills only one teacher in the school and it’s the one who identifies as gay. Peter is made fun of by his peers and is accused of being gay, which results in being called derogative names. The group said that he questions his sexuality throughout the book and that there is a chance that he might be interested in men, maybe not necessarily gay. Homophobia takes many forms and I have definitely heard of cases of closeted people being homophobic or violent towards LGBTQ+ people. Yet, I still can’t fathom why this happens because it’s so psychologically warped. This ties into the “high school hierarchy and wearing masks” paper because in order to survive many teenagers have to fake their identity to maintain a good position on the social ladder. I am really curious as to where this paper will go because the idea of wearing a mask and repressed identities are such complex ideas to even start thinking about!
