Now that you've read Dune, let's talk. The fathers and/or father figures in this books are well...how can I say this nicely....strange. We have a book that deal with multiple family relationships in a patriarchal society. Some fathers sacrifice for their families and some father figures, well, raise some interesting children. Each man's decisions becomes a major plot mover and central thematic idea within the book. What is even more interesting is the idea of familial obligations within each family and how the children react to those obligations and to their fathers. and father figures. How would you rate these families (least dysfunctional to most dysfunctional)? Are they dysfunctional at all given the setting and atmosphere of the novel? Did their political society and families create them? Explain your answers and don't forget about the Fremen.
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I think it's time that we address literature in terms of the particular and the universal. I know, I know, you were all thinking the exact same thing. It's weird how in sync we are already, right?
You ever notice how people seem incapable of leaving Shakespeare's plays in the time and place of their original settings? I mean, must we transplant Richard III into an early 20th century labor dispute or make Macbeth soliloquize in a dusty town square in the Old West? Can't we just leave well enough alone? Well, no, we can't. We do things like this because there is a universality to Shakespeare's work that begs constant comparison and reconsideration. Hamlet's plight is his, but it is also ours...to some degree, at least. We love Joyce's Dublin and Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha because they are incredibly specific microcosms for much larger spaces and struggles. They are miraculous, incomparable blends of the particular and the universal. Thomas C. Foster discusses this sort of literary phenomenon in much more detail in Chapter 9 of How to Read Novels Like a Professor. Treating a work of fiction as an allegory can be a tricky balancing act: do it just right, and you enrich it, greatly lengthening its reach and depth; do it wrong (meaning overdo it), and you actually simplify it, bleaching its unique hues and effacing its nuances. Naturally, Dune is ripe for allegorical interpretation. How do you think Herbert did on this score? Does his tale possess enough merit on its own as a work of fiction, or do you think he leans too heavily on the allegorical? What societal and personal issues do you feel he most effectively tackles, and what other works do you feel operate similarly? Can't wait to read what you have to say. Now I'm off to pen a Dune re-imagining that takes place in Prohibition-era Chicago. Screenwriting credits for anyone who contributes to my bold new vision! As the novel progresses, Paul gains the ability to see different paths ahead of him. He even questions whether or not this ability to see everything is a good or bad thing. Despite these questions about his ability, he makes decisions based on them. Do you feel that the decisions Paul made, using his visions, were good or bad? Give an example. Would you all want to be able to have these same type of visions in your life? (Pictured at left: the author of this post, preparing to propose marriage.) Okay, today we're going to talk villains. Everyone loves a good bad guy; without one, a story lacks vitality. Good needs something over which to triumph, and someone has to make sure that the course of true love never runs too smooth.
Villains can be fun, and they can be infuriating. And, as Thomas C. Foster points out in How to Read Novels..., they can actually carry a story pretty much on their own. One of his best examples is that of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, whose Humbert Humbert, while charming and occasionally sympathetic, is an absolutely abhorrent human being (of course, he has Clare Quilty to divert some of the blame). A well-executed, three-dimensional scoundrel is a beautiful thing. He or she complicates a story and richens it immeasurably. How well do you feel that Herbert handles this crucial aspect of the story in Dune? Does he give his antagonists the shading and complexity they deserve, or do you feel that they lack nuance? Beyond that, who's your all-time favorite villain of film, literature, etc., and why? What makes them unique, and why do you find them particularly compelling? Discuss amongst yourselves. I'm feeling particularly wicked now; I've got a lot of mustache-twirling and cackling to do. Where are my top hat and cape?! One of the things I love about Dune is that there are so many really good quotes that you can pull from it. Even though it was written in 1965, the material can easily be applied to our lives today. One of my favorite quotes is from the beginning of the book. The Reverend Mother says that, "once men turned their thinking over to machines in hopes that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them" (11). I can't help but see our reliance on technology and the people that create it in this. I mean you can go to a restaurant and see tons of people on their smart phones instead of having actual conversations with each other, or if you don't know something you can google it on your phone. The tablet is another piece of technology that has really changed our lives. It's another thing that I'll see at restaurants. What's funny is that most are on Facebook. We've become enslaved to technology. I wonder if we, as a society, could give it all up. What do the rest of you think about this quote? What is one of your favorite quotes and why? I can't wait to see what you guys have to say. So, being brilliant AP students, you're all well aware by now that an author approaches his or her work very deliberately - you're not likely to come across much in a novel that was not deposited there with great care. This can mean a line of dialogue, a bit of foreshadowing that will pay off later on, or even a green jellybean which, consumed carelessly by a villain, symbolizes the innocent nature of childhood and its eventual, inevitable mastication in the maw of a cynical, unfeeling world. Stuff like that.
This also applies when it comes to characters. In chapter 6 of How to Read Novels Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster addresses the role of minor characters in fiction. Unlike their more fleshed-out counterparts, the major characters, minor characters are "two-dimensional cardboard cutouts rather than fully-developed, complete persons" (84). They are there, like everything else, to serve a purpose. This can mean supplying much-needed exposition, helping to develop a theme...all that heavy lifting with which our major characters need not be bothered. And because we see them less and they are more devices than people, minor characters are more sketches - suggestions, if you will - than full-on folks in whom we can feel totally invested. So, what say you? Do you agree with Foster's assessment? Can you think of any minor characters in fiction that break his rule and appear as three-dimensional, fully realized people instead of cardboard cutouts? Can you think of a minor character in Dune and determine its basic function? And, lastly, do you think that there's something to be said for characters who are less than fully defined, characters for whom the reader must supply the details? I eagerly await your replies and hope they will supply me with all the backstory and nuance that major characters such as yourselves deserve. I just got asked a great question. For assignment number 1 (the journal), it needs to be single spaced. If you choose to double space, then each portion must be one page in length instead of half a page.
From the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to this idea that the Bene Gesserit have been manipulating the genetics of the Great Houses and have planted ideas across the universe in order to gain control of the universe eventually. Jessica wonders, on more then one occasion, if the Bene Gesserits planted the idea of the Kwisatz Haderach centuries before on Arrakis. She believes that they can use it to their advantage, and Paul himself see's this as a way to manipulate things to his advantage. Once Paul figures out that they are all related to the Barron, their sworn enemy, we can see the idea of "plans within plans". After all, the Bene Gesserit wanted Jessica to give birth to a girl that they could wed to the Harkonnen.
If I were to tell you the story of my life, I would probably come out looking pretty good. Mine would be an epic tale filled with wild adventures and derring-do, featuring a protagonist possessing rakish good looks, a devil-may-care attitude and an incorruptible code of honor. Someone else, on the other hand, might tell my story just a bit differently. I might come off a little less like a hero and a little more like...well, like an actual human being. That narrator, for example, might choose to include the story of the time I crashed a go-kart on a family vacation, then sat there crying for a solid half-hour and refused to remove my seatbelt and exit my sad, bent little vehicle until everyone stopped laughing at me. I would probably exclude that particular anecdote from the tale, but, hey - to each his own.
The point is this: narration is everything. We encounter the world in a book through the narrator's voice, and we trust them - unwisely, in some cases - to be our guide through that world, presenting it to us as it really is. On page 51 of How to Read Novels Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster lists the drawbacks of the first-person narrator (frequently mistaken, may be hiding something, etc.). He then lists the advantages of the same narrator, and they are...exactly the same. It turns out that, sometimes, the story benefits from a narrower, more selective narrative lens. Where Dune is concerned, this is a moot point, because Frank Herbert decided not to utilize the first-person narrator. And it's hard to imagine such a massive, sprawling story being told by a single character. At least, it is for me. But what about you? Do you think this novel could be composed with any other narrative voice than the one chosen by Herbert? And which do you prefer in general: the broader scope of the third-person omniscient narrator; or the narrower, more intimate touch of the first-person narrator? Is the reliable-or-unreliable guessing game we must play when reading works utilizing the latter something you enjoy, or do you find it overly-complicated? Either way, once you've mulled it over and answered a couple of the above questions, give me an example of something you've read which you felt benefited greatly from first-person narration. And then, when the epic recounting of my rise from pint-sized hero to...I don't know, I guess, like, gallon-sized hero?...is finally written and published, you can add that to your list. The fiction book that we have asked you to read is Dune, a masterpiece of the Science Fiction genre, by Frank Herbert. He uses all of the aspects and characteristics of the genre in order to post great questions about society, life, ecology and religion. This book was so popular that it influenced David Lynch, a famous director, to create a screen version of the movie in 1984. This movies is important in that it allows the message of the novel (if it's handled correctly) to reach a wider audience. In fact, if you look below, you will see a six part interview from YouTub called "Dune: an Interview with Frank Herbert and David Lynch". You will hear the author talk about his motivation and the themes of the novel, and the director talks about the challenges of making this book vinto a movie. After you've read the book, we challenge you to watch the YouTube video interview and the 1984 movie of Dune. A word of warning, this movie is an adaptation, it will not follow the novel exactly. After you've read the book and watched the YouTube interviews and the movie, answer the following questions for you blog assignment. 1. Does listening to the interviews with the author help you in understanding the book or enhance your reading experience of the novel? 2. How close does this movie adaptation come to the novel? 3. Did the director take out vital information or just the fluff of the novel? 4. Was the director true to the message of the movie? If you answer no, why do you think he deviated from the main themes of the movie? 5. If you answered yes to question number 3, how did the director manage to get the themes across successfully? |
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