A Decision About 1984
In “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” John Holt offered a litmus test for reading:
I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me…
I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.
The bolded sentences give us our approach to novels like 1984. You’ve had Orwell’s book for a month now, and the only real question is this: Have you given the story 30-40 pages? If not, that’s your assignment: to read far enough into 1984 to determine if you are going to keep reading or not.
We need to tweak Holt’s language a bit to make it more meaningful, of course. Waiting for an author “to get his story going” isn’t precise enough to be useful, and there are other reasons to continue a book beyond “lik[ing] the characters.” What matters is that you should be getting something out of 1984, and if you aren’t, you have the right to stop reading.
To make that decision, you need to invest in the attempt. You can’t begin a book expecting to hate it, nor should you bring your previous reading experiences to that particular table. Start clean. Recognize that many folks, including your teacher, think highly of the book you’ve been given. Go back to that post from November 18 and read what one of your predecessors wrote about the power of 1984. Then give Orwell a chance to hook you.
If you invest in the attempt, you can make a respectable decision to stop. Either way, you need to account for your decision, which brings us to what you do after giving Orwell at least 30-40 pages:
Write reflectively and metacognitively about your decision to continue 1984 or your decision to stop 1984. Explain your reasons as a result of earnest attempt to invest in the book’s world and characters. Justify the time you dedicated to reading the rest of the novel, or justify the choice to put it aside and look for other texts.
That is taken from the Google Classroom assignment, which gives you until Monday, December 19, to make this decision and account for it in writing. As always, the thinking that surrounds your decision is more important than the decision itself.
Some of you have are deep into 1984, and a few have already finished the novel. You can still answer the prompt above by reflecting on when you made the decision to keep reading. I also invite you to share your experience with your peers by posting on Google+. Would you recommend the book? What general reasons for reading it (or not) can you give?
Bookkeeping
You will eventually be asked to do something similar for the other three novels provided to you in mid-November. Start looking for the time it will take to give each author a chance, and invest in each novel to the same degree, at least initially.
We have a few copies of The Invisible Man on our bookshelf, a full class set of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but no hard copies of The Time Machine. You should attempt to read these novels online when possible:
- The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
These are shorter novels chosen as much for their length as the quality of the stories. Use that to your advantage.
Note: If you decide not to continue 1984, or if you have already finished it, return your copy as soon as possible. Another teacher is interested in teaching it, and I’d like to get them to her before Monday. You will check in your novel through the same Google Form used to check it out.
As always, ask questions about this process below.