Yes, it's true, Gogol and his merry band of identity-confused Indian-Americans are out of our lives for good (at least until that stupid AP test thing or whatever), and in their place we pick up a new ensemble cast of mentally-challenged riffraff and I could not be more excited, but I have that terrible sinking feeling that this book (Like every single one we've read) will experience the titular AP English Curse. What is this curse, you ask? Well shut up, obviously I was gonna tell you, why would I write a blog about it if I didn't want to tell you?... Duh...Anyway, the Curse consists of a few things:
1.The Book Seeps Into Your Life: A growing problem among AP English students is their sense of living in the world of the book they're analyzing. Whether this be having (Gasp!) problems with their sense of identity, (Double Gasp) a feeling of wanting to escape their parents, or (Triple Gasp) being sold into slavery(...maybe that was just me), we just cannot escape connecting things in our life to our current book of interest. Thankfully, we are already all insane.
2.Hating the Main Character: Because living in the world gets obnoxious, a majority of AP English students tend to hate the main character. There is, however, always one person (No names will be said here...in order to protect Carolyn's anonymity) who will say things like "Chris McCandless is just...like...a free spirit" or "Inception", these people will usually suffer the collective wrath of the class for the shameless crime of actually thinking a protagonist isn't... you know... a source of ultimate evil/stupidity. This could prove problematic when the main characters all have mental disorders...awkward.
3.Beating a Theme Into the Ground:Maybe it's our critical analysis but I've been noticing that authors REALLY like making themes nice and obvious... and repeating over and over again. You'll notice in my copy of The Namesake on page 4 I have written "AMERICA IS NOT INDIA", or in other books I have penned "HEY IT TURNS OUT SLAVERY ISN'T SO GREAT" or "CHRIS MCCANDLESS IS AN IDIOT". This could just be me, but the sense of discovery in a book is lost when the moral is easily discovered before the end of chapter one. I have a sense with this book, but to be fair I've seen the movie, so I'll give it a pass and blame myself.
4....You're welcome?
Thought I would just respond to number four first by saying, thanks. No, but really, I found all of that quite true and nonetheless entertaining. I really loved the Carolyn quotes, maybe I should copy Alex and have Carolyn quotes instead of Sam quotes on my blog. Oh, I also wanted to add one to your list which usually surfaces, another book with depressing events and sad characters. I feel like almost all of the books that we read always have such depressing events or end tragically. Although at this point I just repress it.
ReplyDeleteDom, I know exactly how you feel. With the Namesake, I kept discovering all these similarities with my life that I just had to analyze. The situations seemed so similar that it did not even seem like a stretch to parallel them. However, a lot of people seem to experience the same phenomenon so I wonder if we all really do have lives that are remarkably similar to Gogol’s. Or, we might just be hyperaware and trying to find connections in meaningless events. Either way, I find it unsettling.
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