Thank you. I've already begun enjoying your poetry anthologies.
Here's what's next.
Read Going after Cacciato (336 pages) by Tim O'Brien by Friday March 4.
Now that we've concluded our all-poetry-all-the-time immersion, we're ready to tackle some new prose fiction.
We spent the summer and first semester dealing primarily with bildungsromans, repeatedly asking questions about the nature of identity and the self (who am I?), about the development of self (how does a self come into being?), and about the relationship between self, choice, and environment (what has shaped me?).
From here to the end of the year we'll be concerned primarily with journeys: Going after Cacciato (a novel including real and imagined journeys during the Vietnam War in 1968), Slaughterhouse-Five (a novel including real and imagined journeys during World War II and after), As I Lay Dying (a tragic-farcical novel told from many perspectives about a poor southern family's journey to bury its matriarch) , and Heart of Darkness (a dark, impressionistic novel about a journey from Europe to Africa then up the Congo River).
While reading Going After Cacciato think about and take notes on...
Themes
The significance of journeys (with destinations, purposes, the need for courage, failure of will, hardships, obstacles, success, survival, failure)...
The relationship between war, memory, and imagination....
(What is the relationship between memory and imagination, between what we recall and what we make up? What role does the imagination play in making memory (and present reality) bearable? How true are our memories? How true are the stories we concoct? When does factual truth deviate from experienced truth?)
The relationship between control and its absence, between order and disorder...
Technique
Narrative perspective and voice, narrative threads (there are three major narrative threads in GAC), narrative pacing, direct and indirect characterization, parallel characters and foils, suggestive imagery, the use of realistic and grotesque depictions, and anything else you notice.
Here's the original review of Going After Cacciato from the New York Times (February 12, 1978).
*******
Continue reading books for your independent reading and research project.
You'll turn in evidence of the reading on or before April 1.
You're expected to read between 500 and 1000 pages or so by the end of the term. (If you're reading difficult experimental fiction you'll likely read closer to 500 pages and if you're reading popular children's fiction you'll be expected to hit 1000.)
The goal of this reading is to prepare for the paper you will write during the fourth quarter. The notetaking and writing you do about the reading you are doing during third quarter will help you a lot when you write the paper.
There are three different ways you could show evidence of your reading and thinking.
Option 1: Keep a quotation response journal. You should have a quotation and response for every twenty to thirty (20-30) pages or so. Your responses should often relate to the central question and/or thesis in your proposal.
Option 2: Keep a double-entry notebook. Take notes -- quotations, paraphrases, other information -- on the left side of your notes & on the right side write down your thoughts about the information on the left side. What you write on the right side should often relate to the central question and/or thesis in your proposal. You should have a page of notes for every twenty to thirty (20-30) pages or so of your reading.
Option 3: Write short essay responses (300-500 words or so). You should write an essay for every fifty to sixty (50-60) pages of so of reading.
When I talked to you about this in class today I foolishly quoted total numbers that were too low. Sorry. By April 1 you'll either have between 8 -- not 6 as I said in class -- and 20 page-long responses or 15 -- not 12 as I said in class -- and 50 quotation responses/double-entry notes.
Going After Cacciato
ReplyDeleteAfter reading and then discussing the text in class earlier today, I realize that I have many questions that are unanswered. When does reality stop and imagination/dreaming begin? When is the distinction made between imagination and dreaming? Is Cacciato alive or dead? In the grand scheme of things, does that even matter? What do each character’s actions in Paul’s dreamscape/imagination mean about their personality or actions in real life? I listened to theories during our discussion, and I liked a lot of the ideas that were presented during it. Still, I need to read the book again, page through it rather, and clear up the parts that are hazy, and parts that I did not fully understand the first time.
What I did pull from the book is that Paul’s struggles in his life back home dictate many of his actions during the war, as well as during his bouts of imaginative fantasy. His self-imposed guilt about not living up to his father’s expectations is apparent, and he often revisits this when pondering a tough decision. Touching upon the subject of decisions, the soldiers as a group are quite dysfunctional, and are not able to decide upon anything unanimously; there are those who assert themselves and take control, and there are others who just follow along like sheep, taking orders as they come. They are described multiple times as childlike, and often fight among themselves; these scenes reminded me of elementary school. This is all a very simplistic view of the text, the reason being that I need to answer the aforementioned questions before I can assume a credible position about the meanings of metaphors and symbols and whathaveyou.