House of Danger is a choose your own adventure style
book for children ages 9-12, yet we have just read it in a college course, and
we have spent a good amount of time discussing the purpose and meaning of the
book. Why? Is it because it has great philosophical or intellectual
significance that is lost on a younger audience? No. We have read this novel
because Janelle knew that we would approach it with the intention of squeezing
out a grander meaning although (and possibly due to the fact that) we are not the
intended audience. We believed that there must be something to this book if we
were reading it in college. We believed that there must be something brilliant
in these illustrated pages. These beliefs did not turn out to be true. The
significance of the book is not in the writing. The significance of the novel in
our course is how it demonstrates that we have or have not developed our
interpretation and comprehension skills to the point that we can actually find
meaning in the meaningless text. Not only did we find meaning, we very quickly
found a way to apply the meaning of the emptiness of choice as a metaphor for
everything that anyone has ever experienced. That is a lot to come from
nothing.
What does this mean for our class? It means that we’ve learned
something.
This is great. "...we can actually find meaning in the meaningless text". You articulated my thoughts and my difficulty in drawing meaning from something that isn't there, to "twist" reality in a way. I see things for how they are and so I find it challenging to manipulate the "data" presented to me in order to find meaning where, as far as I'm concerned, there isn't any.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that I agree that House of Danger is meaningless, or any more meaningless than the other texts we've read. While unlike some of the other novels we've read, House of Danger was not written with a political agenda, I'd argue that about half of the analysis we do in class of any book has nothing to do with what the author intended. That's why we say that our essays and thesis statements are not about authorial intent, but about making an argument and proving it.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the so-called "literary fiction" we read is just the authors saying essentially meaningless stuff in fancy ways. We then apply our own meaning to those words and read it as intended, lauding the author as a genius. I'm sure that any of us could write a convincing analytical essay about House of Danger, praising it as a great literary masterpiece. So I actually appreciate that it does not masquerade as anything more than something to read for pleasure.
Also, and maybe this is just my inner NESCAC snob coming out, if Montgomery actually went to Williams like it says in the back of the book, he was taught to overthink everything the same way that we are, and you can bet that this carries over into his writing.
I think this is one of my favorite blog posts, because it articulates just how manipulated we've become that we can "find meaning in meaningless test", but eschews the dark connotations associated with the word "manipulated". In essence, we've learned, and this is presented as a great thing, even though we were manipulated to "learn something/apply it" in a specific way.
ReplyDeleteDoes this transpose itself to all learning as well? I am always told that I am "standing on the shoulders of giants" when it comes to learning, but have always unassumingly trusted that the giants knew. Perhaps I should be a little more cognizant of what I am standing on. Learning is a form of being manipulated, after all.