DISCLAIMER: I am not intentionally negative, I probably should have said this in the beginning on my first post but I did not think it to be an issue, and I did not think that people would assume that I was, that was my fault. I just naturally see the bad.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, Let us begin unpacking this sad and depressing story. As I have stated before, I feel as though this story was very depressing. I know that you have questioned me and said that not everything in life is happy and positive, but I must say to you that not everything in life is sad, negative, depressing, and otherwise upsetting. You must be able to see it from my perspective; our readings have a severe negative twist. I am going to show the negativity in our past stories because that is how they are all intertwined. There was the story about the two couples having different opinions about love, the example with Terri and her abuse being “love.” Your essay about darkness (I did feel as though it was written very well and did like it); there is also the story about Sanjeev and his wife, well this one was probably the most positive (even though he wanted to lock her in the attic but that was just funny). Joel, although it had some (namely one) positivity, was negative with drought. I am sorry, but this one takes the cake. This is the most depressing literature that I have ever read. I feel like there is nothing else that I can write about because of all the sadness.
Please Professor Corrigan, THROW ME A BONE. All I ask for is a chance. Give us something to read that is not LOADED with sadness. I understand that life not happy, in fact it rarely is. BUT, and I stress the word “BUT,” there are a few times in life that are positive. For some it is shooting, others finding a good book to read, but everyone has a time that is positive and happy. Why are we not able to read about that? I look forward to the future and the positivity that you will have us reading. Thank you
Now… Time for a Zynex.
I don't think that all the readings have been overwhelmingly dark. Only a few have been completely dark. The rest have been mixed. And, if it is mixed, then it has light in it, so someone could just as well choose those aspects and say "Come on Professor Corrigan, why all this lightness and sweetness--it's sickening sweet!"
ReplyDeleteIf you want happiness by ignoring sadness, then you'll just end up with more of what you don't want: sadness. Except it'll be worse because you won't be prepared to handle it.
But if you can have joy that pokes through the darkness, then you have some legitimate joy.
Again, the works we are reading are not dis-proportionally dark. They represent quite a range of human life. You are misrepresenting what we've read. Joel has darkness in it, but is overwhelmingly positive in the end. The same thing goes for the book we're reading now.
You say "Give us something to read that is not LOADED with sadness." Well . . .
What about "Sure Thing"?
What about "The Traveling Onion"?
What about Babette's Feast?
What about "Why Read Literature"?
What about "Active Reading of Literature"?
What about "Reading for Transformation"?
What about "My Tea with Madame Descartes"?
What about "Literature Is a Thing You Do as Part of Life"?
Compare these texts--which seem mostly pretty positive to me--with the two or three that are very dark. Then I think you'll have to admit that you are exaggerating when you say "our readings have a severe negative twist."
Also, even poems like "A Story about the Body" and "The Colonel" and stories like "What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Love" can be read as ultimately positive; they deal with negative things, but those things happen whether we deal with them or not so what's positive is that they are being dealt with so that things can be better in the future.
In your future posts, you shouldn't waste more time pointing out negative things. Instead, you should work on engaging the texts on their own terms, interpreting them, applying them to your life, and/or any of the other ways of posting that I mention in my essay on "Literature Is a Thing You Do as Part of Life." Even if a text is sad, there are more interesting things to be said about it than merely that it is sad.
So get a grip man. :-)
I didn't think about the movie... i agree, that one was a very positive movie. you are right I did not think about all those stories. I apologize for the harshness that I came off with. I assure you that I will not go to the absolute lengths that I did in this blog, and I do deeply apologize for this.
ReplyDeleteNo need to apologize, I think, just to grow. Which is what school is all about. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe I responded a little strongly too . . . :-)
We're dialoguing here.