Response to Course Materials #9

                Over the past few weeks we have finished Ceremony, started reading Fifth Business, and talked about Jung’s criticism. In all honesty, I am still pretty confused by Ceremony. Not only was I thrown off by the flashbacks, but I still can’t fully grasp Silko’s intentions of the work. I can’t tell if she believed in taking in a mixture of traditional Laguna and American culture, or if everything associated with white people is “witchery”. Also, I found that aspect of the story to be a bit offensive because personally, I don’t think that I am a spawn of witchery (or at least I hope not). The annotations for this novel were a lot more difficult than those of the plays for me. Not only did they take a lot longer, but I found it harder to find things to analyze having less dialogue. I guess improving on reading into the novel style of literature will end up being helpful on the AP test because what we will be asked questions on probably won’t be straight dialogue.

                I really enjoyed the lecture on Jung’s criticism. I’ve never taken a psych class, but I found these ideas to be very interesting. I haven’t really noticed them while actually reading Fifth Business though, but I haven’t gotten very far so that is probably why. This novel is really interesting, but so far I don’t really understand the author’s purpose in writing it, assuming it wasn’t just for entertainment.  The format is different than most of the books that I have read in the past and I’m not really sure why. It’s written as a first person narrative and the whole thing is supposed to be for his boss to redeem himself after what was written about him in the school paper. One thing that I like is that the situation and the narrative voice tell a lot about who the character is. You get a good feel for his character by his actions alone, but by having him as the narrator as well, expressing thoughts and viewpoints, adds a lot to it. I think we are probably reading this book because it is so different from the other pieces we have read this year. It’s good that we’re being exposed to more kinds of literature because it will help us when we try to interpret passages on the AP test and in future courses.