THE DBE HAS ANNOUNCED THE NEW GRADE 12 PRESCRIBED LISTS FOR 2016, AND THE ANNOUNCEMENT HAS BEEN MET WITH VARIED REACTIONS.
One teacher that I know still believes it is an extended April Fool’s Day joke. I would love to hear what you think – please leave your comments below.
The controversial choice for the novel is The Life of Pi or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Unfortunately I don’t have fond memories of either novel: I couldn’t get beyond the first chapter of The Life of Pi, and my student-days recollections of Dorian Gray are bleak, gothic and undefined. My friend, Mr Google, has provided some thought-provoking comments which I thought I would share with you. I am now very keen to read both novels.
But for now, see what others have said about the titles:
The life of Pi
The website Good Reads posed the question Is ‘Life of Pi’ appropriate for teens?
Herewith some of the responses …
- I am 18 and read the book around a year ago. I enjoyed it and I think the themes are very interesting to think about. On the other hand, I read it with a high school book club and most of the younger students had a more difficult time understanding some things. It really depends on the reader’s desire to want to understand them.
- My son’s honors English teacher offered this book as one of five that students could choose from to read and do a project on. Although my son selected a different book, he said that students seemed to really like it.
- I know of at least one English teacher who regularly assigns this book in grade 11. The kids respond well to it, as they are pretty sophisticated readers by that age. I applaud this teacher for giving kids something new and fresh to study, instead of the same old tired stuff.
Other people have had this to say about the novel:
Because of its broad topical scope, Martel’s novel presents an extraordinary opportunity to engage students in an exciting, diverse adventure. The universal lure of tigers, the odyssey of survival and the combination of interlocking metaphors provide a rich platform for collaborative teaching. From A to Z, astronomy to zoology, students may select from numerous exploratory cross-curricular options.
Parents need to know that Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is the story an Indian zookeeper’s son, who survives a shipwreck. Though Pi generally describes his many days at sea as monotonous, he also describes the sexual behavior of zoo animals and relates tales of danger and survival with great tension, using elaborate detail to describe wild animals killing and eating each other and humans killing and eating animals. The novel also includes acts of murder and cannibalism. This is a gory book, no question, and not recommended for the squeamish. Parents might also note that Pi forms his own belief system from the teachings of the Catholic, Hindu, and Muslim religions, saying that he simply wants to “love God.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
One website listed the following comments about the novel:
- If you can get past most of the superficial and unlikeable characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray, this story does indeed have its place in the horror genre. While I understand the setting and the characters were a reflection of the actual class distinctions during the Victorian time period, I found the shallowness and narcissism of Dorian Gray and his circle of acquaintances tedious.
- It shows how individuals can slowly deteriorate because of the evil lying within themselves. The evil of this book is the evil created by one’s self and thrusted upon one’s self. The power of greed and selfishness take over Dorian Gray and create an ugly evil side to him. The mid eighteenth century was a very influential era, specially in England
- The major purpose of this novel is how much power art has over others. When an artist composes a great piece of work, he puts his heart into it. Part of that person is invested into its creation, which makes it more than just a statue in a museum, or a picture on the wall. In the novel, more than the artist’s heart is put into his painting….
A Guardian reviewer once said: Reread today, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a wonderfully entertaining parable of the aesthetic ideal (art for art’s sake). What began as an outré, decadent novella, now seems more like an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian gothic, than the depraved fiction alleged by his outraged critics.
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What makes a book a good friend? This is the question English majors have been debating over this semester. The question itself is derived from Wayne C. Booth’s The Company We Keep (1988), a text that has reinvigorated the discussion of ethics in literature.
Essentially Booth sees a book as a friend and acknowledges that choosing what we read is not much different from choosing with whom we will associate. Both books and people have an impact on what we become. Most literary critics in recent decades would say, “Art is art. We create art for art’s sake. We don’t use it for moral instruction.” Booth, however, believes art influences character, and so it is also important that we ask, “Does this book help me become a better person?”
We’ve recently discussed a book that illuminates Booth’s claim—that books, like people, have the power to inspire or corrupt. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the protagonist, Dorian Gray, is destroyed in part by a novel he reads advocating the thrill of sensory experience divorced from moral consequence. Lord Henry Wotton, Gray’s close friend, claims, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it”. As a friend, Wotton shares with Gray a novel whose hero aptly exemplifies Wotton’s hedonistic code. It is a novel Gray finds spellbinding.
Most of us remember hearing about, if not reading, The Picture of Dorian Gray during our high school days. Then the book truly sounded like an episode from The Twilight Zone. The young Dorian Gray’s beauty and innocence are captured on an artist’s canvas. Falling in love with his portrait, the innocent Gray makes a whimsical wish that comes true. (Interestingly Wilde is credited for having said, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”) In person, Dorian Gray will have eternal youth and good looks; his portrait will absorb the effects of aging and the consequences of his moral choices.
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And a final word: A story of evil, debauchery, and scandal, Oscar Wilde’s only novel tells of Dorian Gray, a beautiful yet corrupt man. When he wishes that a perfect portrait of himself would bear the signs of ageing in his place, the picture becomes his hideous secret, as it follows Dorian’s own downward spiral into cruelty and depravity … The Picture of Dorian Gray is a haunting, Gothic novel that combines beautiful writing with a deceptively simple plot. It’s a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable cautionary tale encouraging us not to give too much purpose to art and warns us about the aesthetic ills that society can possess.
Good luck with the choice, and let me know your decision.
MacMo