Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge:
Discuss a book you had to read in school that you didn't like.
Topic Keywords
literature, school reading assignments, The Pearl, childhood depression, junior high English, teenage book preferences, literary analysis, student experience with classic novels, emotional impact of stories
Being a Cold War kid colored both my writing and the way I view the world. That tree looks like a mushroom cloud to me.
The teacher pictured here is actually a reasonably accurate, if more smiley, caricature of my eighth and ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Muldrow. Mrs. Muldrow always wore a grave expression. Thinking back on it, she actually had a wonderfully wicked if supremely subtle sense of humor.
Mrs. Muldrow was a great fan of John Steinbeck. If there were a John Steinbeck fan club, she would probably be one of the officers. She made us read The Grapes of Wrath when I was in the eighth grade. However, I think her favorite Steinbeck story was The Pearl. She loved The Pearl so much that she made us read it two years in a row.
I am the daughter of a professor of literature and humanities. I have always been drawn to dark writing. I learned to read at the age of four and was reading Edgar Allan Poe by the age of six. I would have been happy to read any or all of Poe's works for English class. I adored horror and science fiction. Poe's stories possessed a supernatural element that appealed to me.
I was too short-sighted at that stage of my life to realize that The Pearl did possess subtle supernatural elements. Steinbeck based the story on a Mexican folk tale. The story's protagonist, Kino, suffers from devastatingly bad luck after finding the pearl. Despite the presence of a cursed item, the story was too realistic to offer much solace.
So, why did Steinbeck's stories make me sad while Poe's brought freaky glee to my twisted little soul?
I was a wretched young lady, badly bullied by my peers and misunderstood by my parents and teachers, who were always scolding me for not paying proper attention to my schoolwork. Real life was not enjoyable. I wanted to escape from it. Kino's misery mirrored my own. I felt as cursed as he was. His unhappiness hit too close to home.
Now that I'm nearing the final quarter of my life (assuming I live to be 100), I have more appreciation for Steinbeck's bleak, realistic works. My Libby subscription allows me to both read and listen to the classics. I'm going to give both The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl another shot.
Mrs. Muldrow was actually one of my more supportive teachers. I may have been a daydreamer and a doodler, but as long as I got the work done and didn't disrupt the class, she didn't care. I got A's and B's on all my assignments and tests.
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1 comment:
I hear you about bullying classmates and parents/teachers who couldn't care less. That was my past, too. Like you, I escaped by reading everything I could get my hands on.
A year or two back, I reread The Pearl. Was depressed for days after I finished it. Given the current situation in the world, I understand why readers want HEAs.
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