Change of Mind: Comprehension and Appreciation

This past quarter in English has been full of fairly new things to me like the process of story writing, and books like Heart of Darkness and Jane Eyre. It has brought further development for me in my comprehension and appreciation of art and I think that is one of the lessons that I am most grateful for and one that is rather important.

I never really read short stories before because I thought they were for kids because they were all short. I thought that true character development and a worthwhile plot were impossible in a short story. I was wrong.  Our class analysis of Cathedral brought this specifically to my attention. Every choice and word is intentional within a short story and is used to magnify the message. It is condensed and revised to make very acute points. However, this being said I also learned that good pieces of writing take good readers to understand. What I mean by this is that a middle schooler could probably read and comprehend Cathedral at the basic level however all the elements of irony, sadness, and the meticulous writing choices would be lost on them. Heck, it was lost on me the first time I read it! It would be like watching a movie with the volume all the way down. The pictures would probably help you piece together whats going on but you would lose out on a great deal of the experience.

 Another lesson I have learned from English this quarter actually applies to film and other forms of art. Once has been the movie that we have been watching and discussing in class the last few days and I honestly love some of the choices made in the movie. Mr. Allen phrased it perfectly when he said that the movie could have copped out and made a lot of "easy" decisions like having the characters kiss but chose not to as a means to prove that it is something more. I respect this a lot; though I don't think that cliches are the devil I do think that there are good ways to allude to things without the overkill. The portrayal of love in the movie was unique and original which is honestly something I hope I can one day reach in my own work whether it be a short story or something else. Yet, I'll always pay homage back to my high school English class where I was taught not to make the easy decisions.

Transitioning to the literature; there is even more growth for me as a learner here. Heart of Darkness particularly was an interesting book for me because it was unlike anything I had ever read before. Not only was it a difficult book to read, but its difficulty to read was an intentionally used tool to amplify elements of the plots. I thought that was pretty darn unheard of and was just like astonished by it. 

This quarter has opened a lot of doors for me in my mind but not just opened them. Its basically blown them wide open and thrown me into a vat full of new experiences. My ultimate goal is to be able to draw from the art that we have discussed and analyzed and learned and then to be able to use it to create something just as awesome. In hopes that one day somewhere maybe some class will be discussing a book or movie or poem of mine.