Description
The first blog entry will call upon your critical and close reading skills in an exploration of one recurring theme you expect to see this semester. Choose one (or two, if you would like to combine them) of the following thematic concerns: girlhood and boyhood, poverty, wealth, truth, power, emotion, reason, loss, love, guilt, grief, autonomy, control, and/or identity. In a close reading of either Little Women or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, think about how and why the writing engages with your chosen theme. Keep in mind the following questions as you write (but don’t think you have to take up all of these questions in your entry): Where is this theme best expressed, and what argument do you think the novel makes about this theme? Is the novel’s treatment of your chosen theme expected or unexpected, and is it a theme you expect to see carried through what we think of when we think of adolescence? How does this novel challenge our ideas of what books for or about adolescents have been and/or can be?