To despair of literacy?

[Fugitivefrombrusstice]

In a now-deleted tweet the Sun made some comment about how 'snowflake students' think that Frankenstein's monster was actually a misunderstood victims.

Anyone who has ever read the book knows of course that THIS IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE NOVEL!

What other books do you think are chronically misunderstood or misinterpreted by people who refer to them despite have clearly either not read the book, or misunderstood it entirely?

Ignoring the book issue, I’m more confused about your title. Literacy is about learning the construction of and being able to understand language (as I always understood it) and literature is what GCSE students are studying when looking at when looking at Frankenstein.

And as an additional point, my students have always looked at the argument that the monster is responsible for his actions and has the ability to stop murdering etc. But then clearly, multiple interpretations aren’t what the ‘snowflakes’ should be given 🤨

Literacy in its broader sense includes being able to understand the meaning conveyed by a passage of text. You would be considered functionally illiterate if you could read a piece of text but not understand the meaning of it.

I don't know where you got the idea that I don't think multiple meanings should be considered. Not least because it's entirely possibly to argue that the monster is both a misunderstood victim and responsible for its own actions. But I think you would be hard pressed to defend the position that the novel doesn't address the question of the moster's victimhood at all.

I think you just wanted to make a dig about snowflakes, which is a shame for someone who is a teacher.

Literacy and literature are discrete areas.

Come on. It is not about its broader sense...
Lol

I disagree but for the sake of argument let's say I despair of literary criticism as well...

Absolutely snowflakes expect to be fed the right answer. It’s called cutting to the chase.

In the spirit of what I think you meant on the thread, and not just to whinge about snowflakes (I'm always bemused about that comparison - snowflakes caused a hell of a lot of disruption last week when they all acted together!) I find it very odd when politicians are inspired by Atlas Shrugged.

I can only assume they haven't read the end, when all but the 50 people "rescued" by John Galt starve to death. I assume they must think they're in the group of rescued, but a) those people were useful, not politicians and b) they might have had a brilliant doctor, but he would eventually die and unless they're able to do something drastic to overcome inbreeding, the colony would die out slightly later than the whole of the rest of humanity.

Argh, can't even have ONE fun thread talking about amusing misunderstandings about books without it being turned into an opportunity to bash young people. Mumsnet is so depressing sometimes.

@MissBartlettsconscience you showed up just in time to save my sanity! I totally agree, such an oddly bleak book to be seen as an inspiration!

I think The Great Gatsby is another. You see it idolised for glamour and love when really it was all a shabby illusion based on the selfishness of many people

1984. I'm ancient enough to have been around then, and it was seriously annoying how many journalists carried on as if it was meant to be a prediction and were crowing that Orwell had got it wrong.

Students studying Gatsby definitely do not “glamorise” it. That is an absurd thing to think.
Were you perhaps referring to a film maker’s interpretation, OP?

“Gatsby”

The OP isn't criticising students. She's criticising the criticism of students.

Breakfast at Tiffanys!
It's probably due to the film that people think it's much more romantic and glamerous than it really is.
I always found Holly Golightly to be a very tragic character, with a traumatic backstory and a harsh life. No real happy ending, either.

... We are talking about common misconceptions of books, rather than the conclusions drawn by students, right?r
I completely agree with a pp about Gatsby.

Holly Golightly is regarded as glamorous because of the Audrey Hepburn effect.

My dd despairs when she hears Wuthering Heights referred to as a romance. "It is a Romantic novel not a bloody Mills and Boon" - she gets quite irate at the misconceptions as in no romance would you ever find: dog hanging, digging up corpses or trapping children into sick mind games. She can rant about this one for days.

YABU For reading the Suns tweets.

There's a few I remember arguing about with people who didn't "get it":
Animal Farm is not about glorifying capitalism.
Lord of the Flies is not just a fun kids adventure,
Boo Radley is NOT the bad guy in To Kill a Mockingbird!

I think the whole idea of literary criticism is that multitudinous interpretations can be drawn from the same text.

The idea, IMO, that texts are meant to be deciphered in a prescribed manner is quite outdated. The idea of 'literary literacy' to me suggests having the functional and analytical abilities to access texts and deeper meaning yes, but ultimately is up to the reader to draw their own interpretations.

Who creates the text anyway? The reader or the writer?

Who creates the text anyway? The reader or the writer?

If Schrodinger's cat is in the woods and a tree falls did anyone hear it?

It's got nothing to do with literacy, or literature, the article would've been written by educated people who knew exactly what various interpretations were on the text, and could probably still knock out a passable essay on it today.

The article was written to an agenda and deliberately like that - why they chose to write to that agenda, and what they wanted to achieve is what you need to be asking.

@RoseWhiteTips now you're just looking for things to be annoyed about. I didn't mention students but a good example is that I was invited to a Gatsby themed fundraising ball which had the tag line 'now YOU can live the glamour of Gatsby in real life!' Presumably they weren't actually expecting anyone to end up shot in the back in a swimming pool...

@Blackteadrinker77 can't argue there

@Ginnotginger can't argue with her there! I remember seeing an edition of WH once advertised as Bella and Edward from Twilight's favourite book. While I think any attempt to get kids to expand their reading is great I couldn't help but think any kid expecting twilight and reading WH was in for a shock...

@TheHulksPurplePants I remember a friend sending her son off to scout camp for a week saying 'he'll love it it'll be like lord of the flies!' - err, hopefully not!