Stay or Go?

I think that House of Dangers should be kept on the course’s list of required readings. Content wise, as well as sophistication of the writing, this book is not up to par with the others on the list. The silly children’s book serves no real purpose as far as literary analysis goes. Nonetheless, I would not take this book off of the reading list.

            As Janelle has pointed out probably every class, this course is a course on manipulation. Especially this past class, she stressed how much she wants us to be aware of the manipulation around us. I think what this book does is provide a blatant example of this. The majority of us came into class and recognized that even though we had a choice of our adventure, we were still being controlled by the confinements of the book. There were not infinite options as far as the outcome of each of our individual stories. This is inherently the main concept of the course. Yes we have choices that we can make, but we limit ourselves to the ones given to us by Janelle. We never push past those boundaries and create our own direction for the course. Now in all fairness, I really enjoy the direction of the course. I like looking at the manipulation of both the texts and the class itself. I personally believe that the way the class is run makes kids not want to push back against the class or the lessons because it is enjoyable to make the journey into awareness. Therefore, House of Dangers provides the perfect end point to the texts within the class because although it explicitly states the amount of choices we have, it actually is more limiting than any of the other texts we read.