A vitality that could not be quenched...
My dear readers,
I greet you now from athwart a stack of term paper summaries, designed to verify that the students have actually read their books. Some students--including, but not limited to, those who have not read their books--take this opportunity to reinvent literary scholarship, vitiate the language, and spin out phrases that make their teacher emit a sound that is one part sigh, one part guffaw, and two parts despair. I will share several such groundbreaking proclamations here, interspersed among the forecast for the coming ten days or so.
Thursday, October 27th will be rainy. Rain will begin sometime around dawn and continue (some light, some moderate) through the early evening, tapering by around 6 or 7. Temperatures will fall from the mid 50s in the morning through the 40s in the late afternoon and evening (when the wind will pick up, too, making conditions feel like the upper 30s), then finally to an overnight low of 34.
Friday, October 28th will see some lingering clouds but a mostly sunny afternoon. It will also be much cooler than in recent days, with highs only getting up to 51. The overnight low could dip as low as the freezing mark.
Our first selection comes from a student who read a portion of the novel A Separate Peace, then consulted an online cheat-sheet, which used a phrase that he deeply misunderstood:
Finny breaks his leg once again, and this time he died because he had a vitality that could not be quenched, even by bone marrow.
An unquenchable vitality, you say? Sounds serious. My uncle had a certain je ne sais quois, but fortunately it was not fatal. And I knew a guy who had brass balls, but he had them removed by a friggin' ballbuster. But a vitality that could not be quenched? Even by bone marrow? Damn.
Saturday, October 29th will be cloudy and breezy with rain likely, especially in the morning and early afternoon. Some wet snow (!) could mix in, and the Poconos could see a coating to an inch of accumulation. Clearing and still a bit breezy at night. High will be in the low 40s, but conditions will feel like the low 30s or even the 20s for much of the day!
Sunday, October 30th will be sunny and far more humane. Highs will get into the low to mid 50s and winds will diminish. Overnight lows will still get into the upper 30s.
Our next bit of literary analysis comes from a student who read one-eighth, at most, of the Kate Chopin classic The Awakening. Here, the student struggles to encapsulate the lessons learned in a novel filled with infidelity, longing, and a desperate search for identity:
You believe that love is a one way train but near the middle you find out that it is not.
I believe that love is a one way train, do I? I most certainly do not. A two-way street? A freight train of passion? And don't tell me about the middle. What about the end, when the protagonist drowned herself? Was the train of love dashed on the shores of sadness? Ugh.
Monday, October 31st will see clouds mixed with sunshine, breezy, with a high in the mid 50s and a low in the low 40s.
Tuesday, November 1st will be far more seasonable: highs in the low 60s and lows in the low 40s.
Wednesday, November 2nd looks sunny and windy, with highs in the mid 50s (but wind chills in the 40s) and lows in the low to mid 40s.
Next up to the dais here at the Literary Transmogrification Conference is a student who read Alan Paton's South African protest novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. This student will discuss the experience of reading the book, and suggest who might find such an experience most meaningful:
Also alot of names and words are African, so it can be hard to follow. I would only recommend this story if you are really interested by African culture, but not like tribal culture, more about Johannesburg.
The characters in this story have names like Stephen, John, James, and Arthur. Granted, the surnames are Kumalo and Msimangu (along with Jarvis, Carmichael, and Harrison). And a pet peeve of mine: Africa is one of the largest continents on this planet, with more than 50 countries today. Even within a single country, there can be hundreds of ethnic groups and clans. The inhabitants of Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa are as different from one another as the inhabitants of Norway, Laos, and Peru. And yet we see Africa as a monolith. As the kids abbreviate, SMH (shaking my head)...
Thursday, November 3rd will be cloudy, a bit of rain possible, high in the mid 50s, low in the mid 40s.
Friday, November 4th looks partly cloudy and cooler with highs in the upper 40s and lows at or below freezing.
And finally, one student offers a ray of hope: coherent, insightful analysis. The sentence below represents the entirety of his A Clockwork Orange summary:
Alex makes up some brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends social pathology.
A couple of flies in the ointment, to continue the cliche parade: first, all evidence suggests that this student--who is now a quarter into his second senior year--did not read a single word of the book; second, the bulk of that sentence (from "brutal" to "pathology") was lifted directly from the book's back cover. And third, I might add, the student later insists that trouble ensues when the authorities do not allow Alex and his friends to use their invented language (glossing over the rape and murder sprees that may have had more to do with it). Sigh.
Saturday, November 5th will be sunny and gorgeous, with highs in the low 50s and lows in the low to mid 30s.
Sunday, November 6th looks the same.
Beyond we will see a return of wet weather (around the 8th or 9th) and slightly moderating temperatures (highs in the upper 50s and into the 60s).
I'll end tonight's post with a comment from a student who read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In that novel, which takes place in a mental institution in the 1950s. The sentence encapsulate what is so simultaneously maddening and gladdening about teaching seniors: unadorned, uncompromised, and unfiltered honesty--along with casting apostrophes to the wind. It also foreshadows the condition of their instructor by the end of this process:
Shock therapy was introduced and basically fried peoples minds.